Bryan did not know.
“Gambling.” Mitch threw his head back and guffawed. “The idiot ponied up on the Yankees. He probably paid some season ticket holder a fortune for those seats so you would have to look up and see them every time you threw to first. Fucking asshole. He’s counting on your yips.”
“I don’t have the goddamn yips!” Bryan shouted.
But he did, and he knew it. Fuck, every baseball player knew it. The yips were like the herpes virus. They hibernated in your nervous system, patient and harmless. Until the day, for no apparent reason, they exploded into your game.
The batboy ran down the tunnel, nervous and flustered, and thrust out Bryan’s batting helmet and gloves.
**********
Bryan stood near the on-deck circle, swinging KERAUNOS and pointedly not looking over at the dugout.
The Sox leadoff batter had grounded out. The guy at bat, the shortstop, watched a 3-2 pitch cross the plate. The crowd groaned, but the umpire stood and pointed at first base.
The ancient bones of Fenway trembled as the collective voices of 37 thousand and more fans screamed approval.
Bryan waited until he knew the cameras would be on him, then he raised his bat and very pointedly kissed Megan’s name. Oh, yeah. Win or lose, the press would be asking about that.
He peered down at the third base coach, who flashed nonsense signs. No play on.
He walked slowly to the plate, then went through his ritual of preparation. He tapped his cleats, he tapped the plate. He leaned back, stretched his arms high, brought them down into position, and took a deep breath.
It didn’t work. The acts which were supposed to calm and ground him were as dry leaves swirled and shredded by the hurricane inside. He shook with anger. His teeth clenched tight; his jaw muscles bulged.
He had never rage batted before. He had a horrible premonition of taking three wild flailing swings and retreating in humiliation. To the dugout. Under the sneer of Owen Archer.
That made him so much more furious that the catcher noticed and quickly changed the number of fingers he had dropped between his shielding thighs. He inched his mitt slowly up in the zone.
Kaplan rocked and delivered. His catcher had first called for a slider away, then abruptly switched the signal to a fastball high and tight. It wasn’t what the book on Monnic suggested, but Kaplan trusted his catcher. The guy had backstopped all of his 18 wins, and this was not the situation to start overthinking.
Bryan watched the ball approach. He hadn’t done his mental trick of imagining the play through a high-speed camera. He could not. He didn’t have to. Fury had seized him, altered his brain chemistry. He saw the ball as a fat alabaster orb floating gently toward him. Up and in.
He wanted to stick his face out and eat the damn thing, just bite down on it. He hated that goddamn ball with the entirety of his soul, and that hate seemed to give him superhuman strength.
No sound. No motion on the earth other than the pale enlarging sphere.
Bryan swung, and the swing contained his whole being. The swing was an entity incarnate, with a family tree and a life of its own. Every one of his 185 pounds went with prejudice down the barrel of KERAUNOS to greet that fucking ball.
Then the sound turned back on. The sound of giant waves crashing against rock chased him out of the batter’s box.
He ran. He reluctantly dropped his wooden friend as he raced from the batter’s box. Glanced left to see how fast he would have to run. Which fielder had the ball.
But nobody was fielding this ball. Not this time. The noise battered at him like jets scrambled from a carrier under attack, the solid intense music of the home crowd pouring out their love for him.
The tiny dot of white rose up and up and up in the intense light of the outfield lamps. Moving inexorably, an ivory satellite against the pure black sky that hovered over the tall green wall. Up and up and over and gone.
**********
They attacked him as he crossed the plate and pummeled him as he dragged a crowd of teammates to the dugout. He was so full of joy he didn’t even think about Lauren and Archer sitting yards away. He hugged and high-fived everyone in the dugout, drank some water, stuck fresh bubble gum in his mouth, then picked up his glove and tried to refocus on defense as he watched Mitch hit a long fly out and the next batter ground to third.
Back onto the field he ran. The park was buzzing, with the Sox up by two runs and the starter cruising. The first Yankee batter lined out to short. The second man hit a laser beam one hopper to Bryan’s right.
He turned and snagged it, then hesitated for such a short time that probably nobody noticed or would ever notice without replaying it several times.
Bryan had just come down from the ecstasy of slugging. All of a sudden, the insidious doubts those happy feelings had stiff-armed away flooded back. He shouted – one sharp syllable – to the shortstop, who had also run at the ball. The shortstop had his eyes on Bryan.
Bryan flipped the ball out of his glove on a backhand to the shortstop, who pegged it to Mitch. The runner was out by five strides.
Fenway roared, convinced that they had just witnessed a heady, quick thinking defensive play. The play-by-play guys and the color guys from the four broadcasts present were busy agreeing that it was brilliant. The Spanish feed shouted that it was muy bien.
Simple analysis: The second baseman got to the ball in plenty of time but was going in the direction opposite from where the throw needed to go. So he got the ball to the player who was facing and moving toward first.
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