The Pitcher 2 Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  WILLIAM HAZELGROVE

  “You can taste the ballpark dust, feel the smack of the ball in your glove, and feel assured that, somehow, these three strongly drawn characters will push on to victory.”

  —BOOKLIST

  “While ostensibly a contemporary baseball story, Hazelgrove’s expansive fifth novel also tackles issues of class, immigration law, and inequity. Thirteen-year-old Ricky Hernandez has a 75 mph pitch and dreams of making the freshman baseball team in Jacksonville, Fla., as the first step toward a professional career. He’s dyslexic, of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and is ceaselessly taunted by his peers, led by a kid named Eric with an inside track to making the team. While most of Ricky’s teammates can afford sports camp and private lessons, he and his mother are broke due to his abusive father’s lack of financial support and his mother’s mounting medical bills. Despite her deteriorating health, she has loads of attitude, brains, and charm. She singlehandedly persuades their neighbor, “The Pitcher,” who played in the World Series, to set aside his beer, leave his garage, and coach Ricky.

  Hazelgrove (Rocket Man) measures out a generous sprinkling of American idealism while weaving in legitimate threads of sorrow, employing the oft-used baseball metaphor to fresh and moving effect. Adult characters are particularly well-crafted, giving the book crossover potential.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Hazelgrove knits a host of social issues into a difficult but believable tale in which junior high–age Ricky has a gift: He can throw a mean fastball…An engaging, well-written sports story with plenty of human drama—this one is a solid hit.”

  —KIRKUS

  “Hazelgrove is skilled at creating fully fleshed-out characters, and the dialogue carries the story along beautifully. While there is plenty of sports action, The Pitcher is ultimately about relationships, and personal growth of the characters will appeal to a wide audience.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

  The Pitcher 2: Seventh Inning Stretch

  by William Hazelgrove

  © Copyright 2015 William Hazelgrove

  ISBN 978-1-63393-002-5

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  3 Griffin Hill Court

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  281-465-0119

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  For Kitty, Clay, Callie,

  and Careen

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PREGAME

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Never let the fear of striking out keep you

  from playing the game.

  —BABE RUTH

  PREGAME

  MOM HAS A DREAM, and it’s to see me walk down the aisle with my graduating class. In her dream everyone has on the blue caps and gowns, and the Superintendent is reading out the names, and he finally comes to mine. And then I walk up and he hands me my diploma and my mom screams “You did it, Ricky!” That’s my mom’s dream.

  Mine is a little different.

  In my dream I am on the mound in Wrigley Field and it’s the opening game. It is a beautiful day with the wind blowing off the lake, and the sky pure blue. The stands are full, and I am bringing the ball in and throwing the first pitch. I have just signed with the Chicago Cubs, and I am The Pitcher.

  What actually happens is somewhere between those two dreams.

  1

  TY COBB WAS THROWN OUT of baseball for beating up a fan who heckled him. The man had no hands, and Ty Cobb stomped on him with his spikes until the cops pulled him off. When Van Johnson banished him from baseball, his team went on strike in support of him. Cobb went back to playing, and no one remembered who the man was he beat up. Ty Cobb was fined fifty dollars. I would have rather faced Ty Cobb than the wrath of telling someone I wasn’t taking her to prom.

  Esmeralda’s mouth is inhaling French fries and telling me all about her prom dress. And her lips are like blood red and her mouth is white fire with her teeth chomping up and down. I’ m nodding and thinking she really is very pretty. She has long dark curly hair, and her earrings jump around like Mom’s, and her eyes are deep brown, almost black. We’ve been dating for like two years. I have known her like all my life because she lives right down the street, and she is already talking about my Major League career and having kids and all sorts of stuff. But right now, the biggest thing she talks about now is prom.

  But I have to drop the big one.

  “Listen, Es,” I begin.

  She’s doing the head wobble with her mouth moving. The tat of the rose on her shoulder looks blood red, and I have barely made a dent in my quarter pounder because this is not going to be good. She is now slugging on her big Diet Coke that is almost like a bucket of soda, getting her even more wired. There is no good time, so I just lay it out there. Because eventually you just got to pitch, and I figure a curve ball will work here.

  But she’s babbling on and on, not giving me a chance to deliver.

  “And so I told her no way am I getting in a limousine without a bar because if I am going to pay good money….”

  Alright, maybe not yet, maybe I should hold off. The truth is I wouldn’t even be in this situation if it wasn’t for Christine Sanders coming up to me after a Facebook post that MLB scouts were talking to me. Christine is like one of those girls who never talks to Mexican dudes. So, it really freaks me out when she asks if I’m going to prom. I mean, we are talking blond cheerleader, and she is like one of the richest girls in school, with the blue eyes and a cheerleader body. She asks if I will give her a ride home, and we never like even make it to her house.

  I mean bam. Right there. I fall in love. And I’m like, Es who? But you know everybody wants to be my friend now, and I ask Christine right then if she wants to go—even though I am going out with Es. And by the time I get home and some of the shock of it all had worn off, I realized that I am going
to the prom with two girls. And so then I made it my mission to tell Es. But I keep chickening out. So, I decide I got to do it, I got to man-up, right here at McDonald’s. She is now draining down more Diet Coke, and I breathe heavy and say again.

  “Listen, Es.”

  “Yeah, you said that,” she says.

  “Yeah…”

  I squirm and my burger is ice cold. I’m getting chicken again, thinking about her temper. She has thrown a few things my way over the years because she gets jealous real easy, and so I know this is not going to over good. But Christine has already gotten her dress, and I’m supposed to go over to her house for dinner, and I figure it is now or never, man, now or never.

  “Listen, Es.”

  Her eyes do the mom dance. You know, like angry marbles or something.

  “What you think, I’m deaf or something?”

  “No,” I mutter.

  Her eyes really are moms. I mean they shimmy back and forth and light up like pin balls and do the back and forth thing when she is pissed. And right now they are waiting on the dude who is strangling on his words.

  “Yeah, listen, Es.”

  “Rick, you are starting to worry me. Are you getting stoned or something? You already said that three times. ”

  “Listen, Es.”

  “Ricky…what!”

  Alright. So I throw my curve.

  I blink and talk down to my burger

  “Look, about prom.”

  “Uh-huh. What about prom?”

  “Yeah….”

  I kick back and stare out the window and wish I was anywhere else but now. She already bought the dress, bro. Bought the dress. But I am going with Christine, who is like some exotic leopard that has slinked into my world, and man, I can’t even think when she is around. And like I see this as my future, you know. Exotic women just rolling in when I’m a MLB pitcher.

  I throw my pitch.

  “Yeah…listen…I…don’t think I’m doing the prom thing.”

  Es is like looking up from her bucket of pop, and her eyes narrow in.

  “What did you say?”

  I swallow and nod and shake and mumble and grumble and murmur.

  “Yeah….I think…I think…I think, Es….I think I’m going to go with Christine.”

  Smack. My curve was supposed to be in the pitcher’s mitt, but I see now it was a lob.

  Because the bomb is lit. And Esmeralda’s eyes go wide like portals to a very dark universe. Her chewing stops and her fires go cold and her bucket of pop is like right beneath her. Her mouth is slightly open, and I can see where her lipstick has painted her front teeth.

  “What did you say?”

  I open my mouth.

  I mean, I could bail. I could say I was just kidding. I could say anything, but she is leaning in like with her chin slightly above the table and her eyes are doing the mom thing. Side to side. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And now comes ghetto land. She sits straight up. Her chin is going back and forth and her head is wobbling and her mouth is cranking up like an engine.

  “Did you just say you are taking somebody else?”

  Like she yelled it, but she didn’t yell. Sort of like someone loading a gun. I sit up and face her and her head won’t stop moving and still I consider turning back. I consider that this might not be such a good idea after all, and maybe I should just tell Christine I am already committed. But this is not what I want to do, so I just say like a dumbass.

  “Yeah.”

  Then her mouth rotates once, and her eyes pin me to the booth.

  “Christine? Christine who?”

  “Oh…”

  “She’s a cheerleader,” I say.

  And now, man. I don’t know how many liters McDonald’s puts in a large Diet Coke, but I can tell you this, it is enough to take a shower. I mean, she grabbed up that Diet Coke so fast it was like I never saw it coming, and all of a sudden the world goes dark and fizzy and ice and pop flow all down through my shirt and through my underwear and down into my pants. And by the time I open my eyes, Es is up in the middle of the McDonald’s with everyone staring at us.

  Es is dropping F-bombs like every other word. Then she calms—just a little.

  “After I bought my dress, you are taking somebody else!”

  And her head is bobbing and her mouth is moving and she’s got her hands on her hips, and she is crying. That is the worst part, and now here comes my ring, which hits me in the forehead. And now here comes my letter jacket, which slaps me in the face. Now comes the bracelet I gave her, which puts a welt on the right side of head, and now her spikes are up and doing some real damage to my knees. Now here comes my burger, which bounces off my nose and leaves ketchup on my cheeks. Fries rain down from above, and then my own Coke goes into my eyes and I’m blind again and I can feel someone slapping me and kicking me and crying, and then all of a sudden she is gone, man.

  And I open my eyes, and the whole McDonald’s is staring at the dude covered in pop, ketchup, fries, meat, pickles with welts on his face and bruises on his knees, and I smile back and say,

  “We aren’t going to prom.”

  And then some old man with a Marlins cap on who watched the whole thing go down says.

  “No shit.”

  2

  FRED SNODGRASS DROPPED THE ball in the 1912 World Series. He played for New York and he was in left field and the ball was a straight up fly, and Snodgrass got under it and then just dropped it. Boston went on to win. For the rest of his life Fred Snodgrass was haunted by that moment. Everyone remembered him as the man who lost the 1912 World Series. Sitting with Mom in front of the man from the Immigration Department, I felt like she was Fred Snodgrass and would never live down the fact she had come to America illegally.

  Like Fred Snodgrass. They just wouldn’t let her forget.

  “What I’m saying, Mrs. Hernandez, is you have to show us why you should be allowed to stay in the United States.”

  “I am married to him,” Mom says, showing her wedding ring from the Pitcher. “He’s American, and I am his wife.”

  “Well, I am afraid there’s some question about your motivations.”

  That’s how this dude in the tie and blue suit with the perfect haircut said it. We are in our living room. This dude’s dark blue car with the stubby antenna with the star on the license plate is parked in our driveway. And Mom is looking at him like she wants to vaporize him, and the Pitcher looks like he wants to take his head off with a bat. “This is all bullshit!’

  That’s Mom. Curly dark hair with eyes blazing and her mouth pinched and her fist in the air. You remember her temper, but in this case she is right. Three years of lawyers and money, and she still isn’t a citizen yet. And now this guy appears, and he looks like all he wants to do is deport Mexicans. Mom is standing over the guy like she is going to take him out.

  “A Mrs. Payne provided us with quite a file….” He looked up, his eyes almost friendly. “Did you do something to her? I have never seen someone so obsessed with the legal status of someone else.”

  Mom’s eyes flatten with her gum moving a million miles a minute. Yeah, can you believe it? Eric’s mom. Like the dark force has come back. Darth Vader of the baseball moms. You would think after all this time she would get over it, but not the Paynes. Eric now plays in the outfield, and I think that just burns her that I have been the starting high school Pitcher for the last three years, and I have been kicking ass.

  Mom stares at Mr. Government.

  “Yeah. My son beat her son out to be pitcher of the high school baseball team,” she says.

  Mr. Government just stares at her and smiles. Then he laughs shortly and makes the ticking noise. Talk about a nerd. He had to be one of those dudes with pencils and pens always in his pocket in high school.

  “You’re kidding,” he says.

  “No.” Mom shakes her head. “She’s a bitch.”

  His eyebrows go up, and then he goes into this nodding thing as if he is saying I se
e, a bitch. But he then clears his throat, and the Pitcher, my stepdad, is staring at him like he wants to take his head off with a Louisville Slugger. He has been quiet up until now, but I can tell he is pissed. The vein on the right side of his forehead has inflated like a snake.

  “She is a bitch, and it’s bullshit you would let her manipulate you like this. My wife deserves to be a citizen. She is more American than that rock head woman will ever be.”

  Yeah to the Pitcher; I know he wants a cigarette. He is sitting there with his hawk eyes and his hair combed back, which has more grey in it now, but his hands are still steady and he looks like he could take Mr. Government apart piece by piece.

  “Hmmm….” The man says then squints down at his paper. “Well, she has painted quite a picture….” He holds up this fat file. “She contends you only married Mr. Langford so your son could try out for the high school baseball team, and that the marriage is a sham so you could stay in the country.”

  “What a load of crap,” the Pitcher rumbles in his plaid shorts and yellow golf shirt. “That woman’s head is full of rocks. “

  “She’s a bitch,” I say.

  “Ricky,” Mom says.

  “You just said it,” I point out.

  “That’s different,” she says.

  The government man shakes his head.

  “Yes. Well. The problem is we only have Mrs. Payne’s side of the story, and she has provided us with documentation, affidavits. She also says you married Mr. Langford for his money.”

  “Well, she screwed up there,” the Pitcher mutters.

  “She’s nuts,” I say.

  Mom is staring at the man like she can’t believe what he is saying. It’s like three years have just vanished, and we are right back to where we started, only I made the team. But that darkness is back, like something outside the door that you just don’t want to let it. She shakes her head, and her eyes are doing the death dance. She stands up and looks down at the little man.

  “Is that all, Mr. Jones?’

  Really? The dude’s name is Mr. Jones. How white can you get? He shrugs and raises his eyebrows and starts putting the papers back in his black briefcase. He reminds me of a hen the way he is clucking and folding papers, and then he stands up and adjusts his glasses and faces Mom.