The Batboy (22 page)

The next pitch, a 96-mile-per-hour fastball on the inside corner, answered that question. Strike one.

The pitch after looked pretty much the same, and the Tigers’ hitter fouled it behind home plate. The count was 2-2.

Here comes the sinker
,
Brian thought. Lay off it.

The hitter did. Twice.

A walk.

That brought up Hank with a runner on first.

Would Davey let him hit? Or bring in a pinch hitter?

If Hank was wondering the same thing, he never showed it, just walked slowly to the batter’s box, the wind and the rain coming at him just a little harder now.

The crowd rose as if on cue, the sudden ovation filling the stadium, as if everyone wanted the Bishop of Baseball to know they still believed in him.

Brian looked up at his mom. She was standing like everyone else, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouting encouragement to Hank, words that were carried away with the wind and energy of the moment.

The Twins’ closer had been warming up in the bullpen, but their manager left in the rookie to finish what he had started, the ultimate battle of youth versus experience.

Hank stepped in. Took a deep breath. Set his hands again. Stared out at Kevin Cross, oblivious to the flashbulbs going off yet again.

This was the best of baseball, Brian knew, whether a guy was trying to hit a milestone home run or not. This was the whole thing: pitcher against hitter.
This
pitcher’s best stuff against whatever best Hank still had in him.

Neither one of them knowing how it was all going to come out.

Cross reared back and blew a high fastball right past Hank, the ball smacking the glove of the Twins’ catcher before Hank had even finished his swing.

Now,
Brian thought again. You can’t let him get to his sinker. You’ve got to catch up with his fastball.

Yet Brian had just seen: Hank
couldn’t
catch up with Cross’ fastball. You couldn’t will things to happen in sports, no matter how hard you tried, no matter what kind of magical powers you thought you had as a fan.

Brian put his head down and thought, Maybe next game.

If there
was
a next game for Hank Bishop.

He didn’t keep his head down long. Good thing. If he had, he wouldn’t have seen the picture-perfect swing Hank Bishop put on the 0-1 fastball from Kevin Cross.

Brian would have heard it, though.

And would have known.

Sometimes you could hear wrong. Sometimes you thought a guy had caught one and he hadn’t. Sometimes the ball didn’t have the legs or the elevation, or the wind would knock it down.

Not this time.

Not today.

This baby was on its way to dead center and on its way out of Comerica, leaving the big field here as easily as balls had left the field at Royal Oak last Sunday night.

Brian was standing now in front of his chair, the way Davey and the guys in the dugout were standing on the front step, watching the flight of the ball, watching Darby Kellogg, the Twins’ center fielder, finally stop running and just watch as Hank Bishop’s 500th cleared the wind and the rain and center-field wall.

By a ton.

A two-run walk-off home run that proved the Bishop of Baseball still had it.

Now the sound of Comerica was deafening and the lights this time were coming from the scoreboard as it kept flashing “500” over and over again. The sound system cranked out “Glory Days” from Bruce Springsteen so big and loud that Brian was sure they could hear Bruce and the band in Canada.

Hank made his way around the bases, carried by the music and the noise and number 500, and the Tigers were all up and out of the dugout, waiting for him at home plate as if he’d just hit a home run to win the World Series instead of an August afternoon game.

Brian quickly took his eyes off the field because somehow he knew his mom’s were on him. Could feel them. He turned and there she was, smiling like she was the happiest kid in the ballpark. Like she was the kid who used to sit in Section 135 when Hank was young.

Hank reached home plate and seemed to be high-fiving the whole Tigers team at once. Springsteen was still singing. Comerica was crazier than ever, no one in the mood to leave just yet. Hank finally came out of the crowd of his teammates, a few feet from home plate, stopped and pointed to all corners of the ballpark.

While all that was going on, Brian sneaked around the celebration, picked up Hank’s maple bat in the grass on the Twins’ side of Comerica, and ran back with it to his spot near the dugout.

That’s where he was when Hank broke away from Willie Vazquez and Curtis Keller and Mike Parilli and Rudy Tavarez and walked over to him.

As if it were just the two of them.

Hank Bishop smiled now, as if the last part of the celebration was the most important of all, and he reached out with his fist.

Brian smiled back, and put out his own right hand. The two of them pounded fist in front of the whole place, Brian feeling as if he and Hank were sharing this moment in front of the entire baseball world.

“Thanks,” Hank said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Brian said.

“You did a lot,” Hank said. “You showed me how to love baseball again. And reminded me why I loved it in the first place.”

Brian’s answer was to hand him the bat.

“I guess this belongs to the Hall of Fame now,” he said.

Hank Bishop shook his head, handed it back to him.

“No, kid,” he said. “It belongs to you.”

T
he Sting won their semifinal game against Clarkson on Thursday night, the same night Brian came home to find out Hank had hit two more home runs, numbers 501 and 502, against the Indians in Cleveland, giving the Tigers a one-game lead over the Indians in the Central Division.

Brian had two solid hits against Clarkson. The second was a single with the bases loaded in the fifth as the Sting scored five and blew the game wide open and made Coach Johnson’s pitching gamble—not starting Kenny Griffin—pay off.

Even though it was now a one-game season, he had started Brendan DePonte against Clarkson, wanting to save Kenny for the finals. Before the game Brian had been sitting with Coach the way he always did, the two of them watching the other team warm up, Coach explaining any changes he’d made in the batting order, just because he knew Brian cared. Because he knew Brian didn’t just like to play the games, but wanted to coach them, too.

Without being asked, Coach Johnson had said, “Just so you know? I’m pitching Brendan because he’s
supposed
to pitch the semis and Kenny is
supposed
to pitch the finals.”

As if that explained everything.

“I’d do the same,” Brian had said. “Clarkson’s not as good as either Motor City or Birmingham, anyway.”

Coach Johnson had nodded. “Brendan will win tonight and Kenny will win Saturday night and then we’ll go to the states and figure out a way to win there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Brian had said. “To get to Saturday night and
not
have the ball in Kenny Griffin’s hand would be dumber than rocks.”

Brendan gave up two runs in six innings before Will Coben finished up. Motor City beat Birmingham in the second semifinal. So the finals were set: the Sting versus the Hit Dogs, Saturday night at Royal Oak. Same place where Kenny had pitched to Hank the other night with Brian in the outfield running down balls.

Only this time it was all for real.

“Pitching to Hank was pretty great, don’t get me wrong,” Kenny said after they finished their warm-ups before the final as he and Brian sat in the grass behind their bench. “But this is better.”

They were still at least twenty minutes from the first pitch. But the bleachers, on both sides of the field, were nearly full already.

“This is where you’re supposed to be,” Brian said. “
Zackly
where you’re supposed to be, as Willie Vazquez would say.”

“It’s where
we’re
supposed to be,” Kenny said. “Dude, we are a team. Now more than ever.”

“Hey, you two chatterboxes,” they heard from behind them.

They both turned to see Kenny’s dad leaning over the fence.

“You get good and warm?” Greg Griffin said.

Kenny grinned. “No, Dad, as a matter of fact I didn’t,” he said. “Decided to go out there in the biggest game of the year completely cold.”

“Funny,” his dad said. To Brian he said, “Is he this funny with you?”

“Never, Mr. Griffin,” he said. “Unless you count the way he thinks he can beat me in the Home Run Derby.”

“Now
that’s
funny,” Kenny said.

“Remember,” his dad said, “don’t try to do too much too early. The only time you get into trouble is when you over-throw.”

“Dad,” Kenny said, “I got it. Swear.”

Then Mr. Griffin gave his son a long look and pounded his heart twice and Kenny did the same. In that moment, even with a lot of green between them, it was as if they were completely connected, as if Mr. Griffin had reached all the way over to the bench and put his arm around his son.

It was funny. Brian was the one whose dad had played in the big leagues, played for a long time. But when it came to baseball nights like this, sometimes he felt as if he’d never had a dad at all.

In the first inning Kenny did what he’d promised his dad he wasn’t going to do:

He over-threw as badly as he had all season.

By the time he’d stopped being wild high—or wild outside, or wild inside, or wild in the dirt—he’d walked two guys, hit another, and had given up three hits and the Sting were losing the big game 3-0 before they’d even come to the plate. Kenny got out of the inning without further damage only thanks to Brian running down a line drive in left-center that would have scored two more runs for Motor City, catching the ball for what was always the best reason in baseball:

Because he absolutely had to.

When he came running back toward the infield, having already tossed the ball back in, Kenny was waiting for him out behind second base, and the two of them pounded gloves.

“You kept us in the game and you might have kept
me
in the game,” Kenny said.

“You’re not going anywhere for another six or seven innings,” Brian said. “And by the way? Those Hit Dogs have gotten the last run they’re going to get off you tonight.”

Problem was, the Sting couldn’t get any runs off Adam Connolly, the Motor City starter, a right-hander with just as much stuff as Kenny had, and just as good a record during the regular season.

Brian was batting fifth tonight, behind Kenny in the three hole with Will Coben batting cleanup. He thought he’d gotten the Sting back in the game in the sixth inning, Kenny on third and Will on second with two outs, absolutely crushing a ball that he was sure was going over the third-base bag and down the line in left.

But somehow the Hit Dogs’ third baseman did his impression of a Gold-Glove-winning major-leaguer. The kid timed the ball perfectly, dived full out to his right, and gloved the ball about two inches above the bag. It was the most amazing play Brian had seen an infielder—and that included Kenny—make in their league all season.

A hard out.

But still an out.

And still 3-0, Motor City.

Brian thought, My dream week cannot end like this. Cannot. Cannot end with the Sting getting
shut out
on a night when we have our best pitcher going and we’re supposed to be playing our way into the states.

That’s not the way
his
story was supposed to be written. Brian found himself looking up into the bleachers behind him a lot as the game ground its way through the middle innings, looking for his mom more than he usually did, sometimes catching her eye, sometimes not. She was sitting between Mr. and Mrs. Griffin, Tigers cap back on her head, and when they would lock eyes, she would shoot him a fist of encouragement, or pound her heart the way Kenny’s dad had done. Heart was one thing Brian had plenty of.