It was a good plan in theory, except for my all-encompassing fear of the Little League coach, Coach Tierson (a.k.a. Tears You One). He wasn't just a big guy; he was a red-faced spittle shooter, who, as far as I could tell, hated children. He was like a snapping bulldog on a leash, so close to throttling you that if it weren't for the choke chain of potential lawsuits, you'd be in pieces scattered all over the field.
My first mistake was showing up in a clean uniform the first day of practice. Everybody else on the team had broken theirs in; their pants and jerseys were smudged with dirt, grass stains, even dots of blood. Their gloves were dark with sweat marks. Their cleats were clogged with mud. I was sparkling. I looked like I'd stepped out of a commercial for Tide laundry detergent, and this immediately earned me Coach's ire. He thought I was soft. My shoes were new, from the Sports Chalet in town, and my glove still had the tag attached. Coach took one look at me and introduced me as the new kid all the way from New Mexico who was afraid to get down in the muck. I guess you think we look dirty. Not used to the dirt, kid? Fifty push-ups, let me hear you count 'em, kiss the dirt, kiss the dirt.
My second mistake was being my mother's son. Coach Tierson used to teach social studies at Palm Valley High. Well, now he had to reapply for the position against cheaper, nonunion hires, and it wasn't looking good for the ol' man. It was the only time I remembered being happy about a stranger's misfortune. The schadenfreude went down like a cherry Slurpee: it wired me up and left my brain tingly. Another drink that does nothing but make you thirsty. What is sugar, after all, but kids' booze?
My third mistake was telling everyone my granddad worked at Lockheed Martin, and how Lockheed was the name of Shadowcat's dragon in X-Men, and wasn't that swell? (To soothe the pain of moving, my father had bequeathed to me his entire comic book collection from the 1970s and 1980s.) This was a piece of trivia I thought the other boys might appreciate. Wasn't I clever, integrating a fun fact of Palm Valley with a fun fact about superheroes? What it got me was blank looks and a "nerd" brand.
I decided I'd better shut that part of myself down, quick. All of it. Everything I liked, everything that made me me was to be suppressed, ignored, and denied, until I could no longer remember what it was I'd been hiding. I'd be a jock. I'd be the quiet but effective type who said all he needed to say on the field via his baseball prowess.
In short, I'd be like Ryder.
Ryder was our star, the best hitter, runner, fielder, and thrower. His eyes were quick and bright, he was always accurately predicting where the ball would land, and he could catch anything: grounders, pop-ups, line drives, fly balls.
I was a good hitter, but I always threw my bat. I couldn't help it; it was like this trajectory my arms were on, and there was no way off the track once I started on it.
It was inevitable.
I could tell myself all morning, "Don't throw the bat"-I could be thinking it even as I stood at the plate-but it made no difference. I'd swing wide and connect with the ball, feel the tremors up and down my arms, the bat vibrating so hard it stung my palms, and I'd let go, the bat flying away and smashing into the chain-link fence. I'd be off and running toward first before any of it registered, until I could hear a faint din growing louder and louder like a train coming out of a tunnel, and then I'd realize it was a full-on meltdown from Coach Tierson. "Dixon! What have I told you about throwing your bat? Get back here and pick it up!"
Confused, I'd halt three-quarters of the way to first base, turn around, and look at Coach. He'd throw his glove onto the grass, scattering dust and grit, and start toward me. The urge to flee would nearly overwhelm me; It's not worth it, Charlie, I'd think, just get out of here…I didn't even know how to find my new house from the field, though. If I'd taken off running, I'd be lost. I was stranded out there, helpless, until Mom came to pick me up. Besides, it was too late to run; I was frozen in place, dumbfounded and perplexed about what I'd done wrong, and he was a red-faced blubbery flubber storming toward me.
Day after day, the same words flung like shit against a wall, and I was the wall. I was worthless, a pussy, a fucking pussy, was I going to cry like a pussy? Did I need to practice with a NERF? Did he have to duct tape my hands to the bat so I wouldn't throw it?
When I told Ellie a shortened version of the story, the put-downs were the part she found most infuriating. "Why does every man think the absolute worst insult he can sling is to call someone a girl? And now all those boys think so, too. Asshole."
I just knew I was terrified of him.
We always had to hustle, too. Don't lose that hustle; let me see you hustle; who's got the best hustle; hustle, infield; hustle, outfield; move it, move it! Ryder's got the right idea, if only I had a team full of Ryders maybe we woulda won last night against Pacoima.
I thought about telling Dad. Every night at dinner, when he'd ask how practice was going and if I'd made any friends, I'd feel a lump form in my throat, poured there like concrete and hardened into a ball so I couldn't talk. I was afraid what Coach Tierson said about me was true, and that my dad would immediately see it. I was soft. Useless. A loser who couldn't hustle.
Deep down I wondered if Dad was soft, too; if that's where I'd gotten it from.
Besides, if I told my parents, it would only get worse. If they confronted Tierson but kept me enrolled in Little League, he would take it out on me even more. If they confronted Tierson and pulled me out of Little League, the whole team would know I'd squealed and I'd be a laughingstock for not being tough enough to take it. He yelled at everyone except Ryder, but no one got it as bad as I did.
I hated my life. I cried myself to sleep. I missed New Mexico.
Despite how "bad" I supposedly was at the game, I'd managed to help us reach the local midseason playoffs. This fact gave me no joy; I knew even if we won I'd get no reprieve, and we'd still have a month's worth of games ahead of us.
On the morning of the game in question, I didn't see how it would be possible for me to drag myself into my rank uniform. I'd refused to let Mom wash it, even though the material gave me rashes and it stank like the homeless people I used to see downtown, with caked-in sweat, dampened and dried, sticking to my skin like a graft.
It was the sort of day when, if you loved what you were doing, the bright sunshine and clear skies made it perfect, but if you dreaded what you were doing, the bright sunshine and clear skies made your experience even worse: sharper and clearer, impossible to deny.
Adding to my misery was the fact that, unbeknownst to me, Coach had ordered everyone to ask their mothers to wash their uniforms the night before this particular game. I showed up according to the previous rules, looking like a slob in front of all the other parents and saw them lean in to one another in a gossiping frenzy, wondering what things must be like at home.
My own parents weren't at the game because I'd told them it was a boring double-practice day.
Somehow, I made it to the top of the ninth without incident. My teammates' uniforms had acquired roughly the same amount of filth as mine, so at last I looked like a member of the group.
The visiting team was leading, 1-0. There were two outs, with no one on base. The batter hit a line drive to center field, which was where I was playing, and I held out my glove to catch the ball. But the ball hit the heel and landed on the grass near my feet. I picked it up and threw it back to the infield as quickly as I could, but not before the runner reached first.
The next batter hit a fly ball to Ryder, who was playing left field. He glided over toward the line and made the catch easily. He and the rest of the guys headed toward the dugout en masse, but I trudged slowly by myself, listening to Coach berate me the whole way.
"What was that?" he called out to me, shaking his head with disgust. "You couldn't catch a beach ball." That was unfair and I knew it. In New Mexico, I was a decent player. But you're only as good as your last game, and in all my games under Coach Tierson I couldn't do anything right, because I was shaking with fear.
He decided to use our final at-bat for an announcement, which he delivered in a hoarse voice. "All right, listen up. If anyone throws his bat from now on, you're off the team. Walk off the fucking field and don't come back. You're done. You won't finish the season, you won't play next year. I've had it. If you can't follow that one simple instruction I've got no use for you."
Everyone knew he was talking about me. I was a pariah. No one sat near me, Contagious Charlie, the freak.
I wasn't going to have a single friend come fall. I'd just moved here and I was already done.
Then Ryder got up to bat.
It was the bottom of the ninth and we were down a run.
The first pitch came in. Meatball. On a platter. Served up with a big "Hit me!" sign.
Easy home run-well, easy for someone like Ryder.
Yes, he knocked it out of the park.
Tied game, just like that.
All the guys leapt off the bench in a line of whoops, screaming, cheering, waving their caps. We could still win now. The day was saved.
But Ryder didn't move.
He just stood there and watched the ball fade into the distance.
"Go! Go!" people screamed. The crowd waved their arms frantically, stood up from their seats, called out to him. This was back when his parents were still together, so they were there. So was Griffin.
Ryder looked at the crowd, and then he looked at Coach, and then he slowly wound up and threw his bat in a huge arc, so there was no mistaking it. It smacked against the chain-link fence right near the visiting team's dugout.
Despite devouring Dad's comic book collection, I'd never believed in superheroes before, not really, but now I knew. They were rare, but they existed.
Ryder slowly circled the bases, and when he got back to our dugout, he looked Coach dead in the eye, daring him to say something. But Coach's mouth was open; he was dumbfounded and speechless for once.
Ryder walked casually along the bench to where I sat, by myself. He stopped in front of me. "Are you coming?"
I smiled so hard, I thought my teeth would shatter and puncture my mouth, like clay plates shot into pieces in the air.
We chucked all our gear to the ground: helmets, gloves, protective padding; shed it all right there like we were already at home, and then we took off, walking, not running, walking off the fucking field, the way Coach had told us to. And we never looked back.
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