Grand Slam Read online

  Gertzy rested an arm on each of Jalen’s shoulders so he could look Jalen in the eyes. “So, we are in. No one else knows.”

  Gertzy looked around before continuing. “College scouts come to this tournament. We’re talking SEC, ACC, like Florida State, LSU, Vanderbilt, places that really crank out the pros.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard,” Jalen said, desperately wanting to be alone to google on his phone.

  “Jalen!” Coach Allen called from behind home plate.

  Gertzy glanced nervously at the coach. “Shh. Don’t say I said anything.”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry,” Jalen muttered, then took off like a rabbit until he pulled up short in front of home plate. “Coach?”

  “You never used one of these to help you hit, have you?” Coach Allen took up a long stick leaning against the backstop. It was a bat handle attached to a stick that ran straight through the middle of a baseball.

  “No.” Jalen had seen them and always thought they were a gimmick, a fancy piece of equipment he didn’t have the money for anyway. He was grateful Coach hadn’t called him over to grill him about his conversation with Gertzy.

  “I thought not.” Coach Allen took up a batter’s stance. “Here’s what you do. You begin your swing and stop your hands here, like the handle is a flashlight you’re shining straight at the pitch. See?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the ball is down by the handle, but when I finish the swing…” He swung and the ball hit the far end of the stick with a loud pock! before he handed it to Jalen. “It makes that sound, like hitting a pitch. Try it.”

  Jalen took the stick and swung, but the only sound was “Umph!” from his gigantic effort. The ball hadn’t moved more than three or four inches.

  “You’re trying too hard. That’s what I thought. It’s more about timing than strength. Your hands need to break at just the right moment, and that allows the force of your hips and legs to transfer through your bat. Here, watch me again.” Coach Allen took the stick back. He began his swing and froze. “See? I’m shining the light on the ball, then—”

  Pock!

  Jalen took the stick his coach offered him and tried again. “Shoot!”

  “Almost. Try again.”

  Jalen tried but made no sound, and he studied his coach’s face to see if the whole thing was a joke.

  “Again,” said Coach Allen, without a smile.

  Jalen focused, swung, and…

  22

  POCK!

  “Excellent!” Coach Allen thumped Jalen on the back. “Now you got it. I want you to take this speed hitter and swing it a hundred times a day. We are going to speed that swing up—get your lower body into it—and turn you into a monster. You’ll be crushing dingers to left, right, and center.

  “And when you practice with this, I want you to visualize that you’re up to bat with every swing. Got that?” Coach gave him a funny look.

  Jalen nodded. “Sure.”

  “And every swing I want you to see it end with the biggest prize a batter could wish for.”

  “A home run.”

  “Nope.”

  Jalen let out a small burst of laughter. He knew that he was right. “Nothing’s better than a home run.”

  “How about a grand slam? Right?” Coach Allen tapped his skull. “That’s what I want you to visualize with every swing—last inning, bases loaded, two outs, down by three, everyone on edge, and bang! You knock it out. Got it?”

  “Like Sunday.”

  Coach Allen smiled and then nodded. “Like Sunday. I know, your swing was just fine. But your swing is pure instinct. If you want to connect twice as often, you have to develop repeatable technique. Hitting is all about repeating technique. All the pressure in that moment, and you still relax that swing. Got it?”

  Jalen grinned and lifted the speed hitter. “Got it, Coach. Thanks.”

  Coach Allen checked his watch, blew his whistle, and shouted, “Okay, guys, bring it in! I have some big news!”

  23

  WHEN EVERYONE HAD SETTLED DOWN, Coach said, “That was a heck of a win yesterday. And when you win, good things happen, right? And they sure did, because I got a phone call from Lakeland, which is this sports academy down in Bradenton, Florida, right near Tampa, that runs the most prestigious baseball tournaments in the country.”

  “My brother went to Lakeland,” said Jay Katz.

  Gertzy leaned over and whispered in Jalen’s ear. “His brother plays for the Dodgers low-A club.”

  “And, because they had a last-minute cancellation, and because we won that tournament,” Coach Allen continued, “I got a call earlier asking if we wanted to attend. Since we were scheduled to travel this coming weekend anyway, and I spoke to one very generous parent who immediately offered to pick up the expense for everyone to fly to Florida, I have accepted Lakeland’s offer.”

  Gertzy’s grin said it all.

  Coach Allen now cast a stern look at them and spread it all around before speaking. “But I don’t want to do this unless you guys are ready to play to win. I don’t need to go down there to work on my tan. If we go, we go to win. Deal?”

  Everyone murmured, “Yes.”

  “Really?” Coach’s mouth fell open. “That doesn’t sound like you want it. Do you want it?”

  “Yes!” This time it was a shout.

  “Are you gonna win it?”

  “YES!”

  The roar sent a chill skipping down Jalen’s spine.

  “Good!” Coach shouted. “Tomorrow morning, practice at nine. Guys who were in the starting lineup at the end of the championship game will be with Coach Miller. The rest of you will be with me in center field.”

  “Coach!” Charlie Kimber raised his hand. “You want me with the starting lineup?”

  Jalen paused to see what would happen.

  “Were you in the lineup at the end of the championship game in Boston?” Coach Allen stopped to scowl. Everyone else stared.

  “I should have been in it.” Kimber held his chin high, and Jalen couldn’t help admiring the kid’s guts.

  “Who’s the coach?” Coach Allen’s face was tight.

  “What do you mean?” Kimber asked.

  “Who’s the coach of this team?” Coach Allen was getting angrier with each word. “Are you?”

  “No, sir. You are.”

  “And the coach decides who plays and who doesn’t, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So how could you say you were supposed to be out there?” Coach Allen spread his grim look over the entire team. “I’m here to win, guys. If you or your parents don’t like it, there are plenty of other travel teams out there.” He clapped his hands twice fast. “Now let’s get home.”

  Jalen unzipped his bag at his locker. He fished around inside, felt something on his hand, and yanked it out with a bloodcurdling scream.

  24

  JALEN DROPPED THE BAG, BUT a swarm of angry spiders were already on his hand, racing up his bare arm and into his shirtsleeve.

  He beat his hand against his pants while at the same time wriggling out of his shirt. Somehow he ended up spinning around, tripping, and going down so that one hand landed in the bag. He felt the spiders inside popping like tiny grapes beneath his hand and howled again.

  He shot up and whipped his shirt off, stamping it like a burning blanket. His teammates surrounded him, going crazy with laughter.

  “Are you serious?” Jalen yelled at them.

  They laughed harder.

  Finally Gertzy stepped forward and shook Jalen’s hand. “Welcome to the Bandits. It’s official now. You got ‘got.’ ”

  “Got what?” Jalen scowled around at the grinning faces. He was surprised and super mad when he saw Daniel laughing along with the rest of them. He focused on his shirt, giving it a violent shake before tugging it on and sweeping his legs clean.

  “Just ‘got,’ like ‘Got you.’ Everyone gets got. Relax. Rules are, it’s got to be funny, but it can’t be mean, and no o
ne gets hurt,” Gertzy said.

  “I thought this team was different, a bunch of good guys pulling for each other. But on the bus, you gotta pay to use the bathroom. And you gotta watch your back every second, because even someone you like might try to poison you.”

  “Poison?” Gertzy wrinkled his nose.

  “Spider bites are poisonous.” Jalen looked up and down his arm. “I just got lucky.”

  “Dude, they were like the size of a penny,” Gertzy said, holding his finger and thumb quite close together.

  “More like a cookie.” Jalen made a circle with his forefingers and thumbs.

  “Whatever.” Gertzy dropped his hands. “Everyone goes through it. No one gets hurt, and it’s this fun thing that connects us all. No one is above getting laughed at.”

  “What did they do to you?” Jalen asked.

  “Ha!” Gertzy said. “Frogs.”

  “Frogs?”

  “Frogs, which they knew creep me out, in my hotel bathroom. Four in the tub, two in the sink, and after I thought they were finally all gone, one in my bed.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “Maybe not for you. I howled like a maniac. When I was a little kid, my older brothers scared me out of my mind about frogs. They had a tree frog in their terrarium, and I think they wanted to scare me into not messing with it, so I got fed all these creepy, scary frog stories—which I no longer believe—but the damage was done. I hate frogs.”

  Hearing all the commotion, Coach Allen waded through the team and asked what happened.

  After Gertzy explained, Coach made a sickened face. “I hate spiders. Where’d you get them?”

  Fanny produced a huge empty pickle jar. There were several spiders still inside. He held it up to show off. “Took time to fill this bad boy.”

  “You filled it?” Coach Allen asked.

  “To the brim.” Fanny puffed up his chest.

  Coach shook his head. “I just told you we’re playing Lakeland this weekend. That is the biggest team anyone can play. This is no time for fooling around.”

  “But this was gonna happen before we knew,” Gertzy protested.

  Coach held his hand up. “I don’t care when it was planned. Anything more like this before the weekend, the perpetrators get benched. Don’t think it won’t happen. I’ve got kids begging to be on the Bandits. Fanny, get Jalen’s bag cleaned out.”

  “Me?”

  “They’re your spiders.”

  “It was Gertzy’s idea.” Fanny pointed at their star pitcher, and Gertzy blushed.

  “It’s better than peanut butter,” said Gertzy with an apologetic shrug at Jalen.

  Fanny peered into the bag. “I don’t know. He mushed a bunch of them.”

  “Clean it,” Coach Allen growled at Fanny. “Now.”

  Jalen struggled to find the right attitude. After his anger faded, he felt silly for overreacting.

  “I get it,” he said. “The spiders just freaked me out. How’d you know that?”

  “I didn’t,” Gertzy said, “but who wouldn’t freak out over spiders in his gear bag? Everyone knows you and me are good friends, so I couldn’t take it easy on you, right?”

  “I get it.” Jalen tried not to grin.

  25

  AS FANNY BENT OVER THE bag, his loose pants dropped a little too low on his butt.

  “Hey,” Daniel called out. His face twisted as if he’d smelled something gross, but no amount of control could keep him from busting out in hysterical laughter and choking on his punch line. “I hope no one’s looking at my Fanny’s crack!”

  The team stared at Daniel in disbelief. Daniel’s laughter fizzled out in his throat, and as he looked around, anger and disgust crept across his face.

  “What?” he shouted. “When I say it, it’s not funny?”

  Damon LaClair, the team’s shortstop, made a settling motion with his hands. “Dude, not cool.”

  “Oh, I’m not cool, huh?” Daniel shouted at the team. “All I hear is ‘Fanny this’ and ‘Fanny that’ and ‘where’s my farty Fanny,’ but when I say one little thing, it’s all of a sudden not cool!”

  He turned back to Damon. “Well, you’re not cool, you’re a hot mess!”

  Damon made a fist. “You think everything is about you and your baseball-genius buddy, but this isn’t about you. It’s about Coach telling us that the fooling around is over. And just so you know, we were winning championships before you two arrived, and we’ll be winning them when you’re gone.”

  Daniel made two fists and took a step toward Damon.

  From the other side of the locker room, a whistle shrieked. Damon closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  Coach Allen’s voice blasted as he marched their way. “You two got time to chat? I know you don’t have time to fight. But anyone on this team would know that if he wanted to stay on this team, he sure as heck isn’t even dreaming about fighting! Okay, get out on the field! Single file behind Kimber! EVERYONE! Lap the field, and don’t stop until I say so, and you better not loaf when you’re sprinting to the front of the line! That’d be a good way to get yourself out of the starting lineup! If you quit when practice gets hard, you’ll quit when a game gets hard too!”

  Without hesitation, the players filed outside. The only sound was the clack of their cleats against the floor. Before long they were stretched into a broken line of stragglers as the running took its toll on their hearts and minds. Jalen was just in front of Daniel, so he heard the curses uttered by the kids who passed him in a sprint.

  They ran until Fanny broke ranks, hugged the trash can, and puked his guts out.

  Fanny looked up from the trash can as Jalen walked past, down the first base line. On Fanny’s lower lip, suspended from a string of acid drool, hung a chunk of hot dog like a little jewel on a pendant. “What are you looking at, genius?”

  Jalen tasted the sour brew from his own stomach involuntarily creeping into his throat, and he dry-heaved as he looked away.

  26

  AFTER THE RUN, DANIEL AND Jalen declined Gertzy’s peace offering to meet the team at the Häagen-Dazs, like they had after last Friday’s practice.

  “Catch you later,” Jalen mumbled to Gertzy, following Daniel outside to the waiting pickup. When they were opening the truck doors, Jalen asked Daniel if he was sure he didn’t want to join the team for ice cream. Daniel replied with a bitter, “No.”

  Daniel’s father must have been looking forward to another dulce de leche. He gave Daniel a funny look from his seat high up in the truck.

  “I got a headache,” Daniel explained as he climbed in. “Besides, I’m sick of all their rules: ‘say this,’ ‘don’t say that,’ ‘do this,’ ‘don’t do that.’ It’s hot sauce, if you ask me. Can everybody take a joke, or can’t they? Me? I can take a joke. Them? They can take their Peanut Butter Salted Fudge and shove it. I’m so sick of phonies,” he grumbled from the front seat. But, like Jalen’s mother said about his father, Daniel never could stay mad long.

  “Besides, now I’ve got to wait to get it like you did. You heard Coach. I wanted to get it over with tomorrow!”

  “Uh… so you’re okay with it?” Jalen knew he’d gotten way too upset by the prank.

  Daniel snorted. “You think I’m afraid of some spiders or frogs? Snakes? They put a snake in my bag, I just might chomp its head off. You ever see that video of Liam Grover swallowing a lizard? I could do that too. It’s the pro thing to do. Ha! Imagine the looks on their faces then.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yeah, my middle name is disgusting.” Daniel twisted around in his seat up front. “Amigo, they got the wrong guy.”

  “For sure. You’ll laugh it off and you won’t miss a beat.”

  “Darn straight,” Daniel said. “Hey—what’s that YouTube video doing?”

  “Only fifty more views. It’s circling the bowl.”

  “Hot sauce!” Daniel said Cat was a genius for telling them not to worry. “She knows things. And she knows how to do
things too.”

  “Yeah, she’s the best.” The way Daniel looked at him made Jalen wish he could take it back.

  Daniel turned to face the road. “Hey, I know you like her. You can’t fool your amigo.”

  Jalen had to laugh. They’d all been best friends for so long. “Yeah, you’ve got my number.”

  He was going to text Cat about the video when a message came in from his mom.

  Did you tell your dad yet?

  “No,” Jalen barked aloud, “I didn’t!”

  Daniel spun around and his dad cast a nervous glance in the mirror.

  “I…” Jalen held up his phone. “Not you guys. I was talking out loud about this text.”

  Daniel covered for him. “My amigo is shaken up. You should’ve seen his face. Fanny put spiders in his bag. I’m talking, like, thousands. He reached right in and my man did a dance and fell right into them.”

  “Hey, I’ll get over it!” Jalen paused. “Actually, I think I need some air. Do you mind dropping me close to the diner?”

  After Daniel’s dad dropped him off in the center of town, Jalen walked toward the Silver Liner. As he got close, he felt the urge to just march inside and blurt it out to his dad, but even the idea embarrassed him. He felt like he had betrayed his father on two counts—the video and his mom—at the exact time when everything was going perfectly with his dad’s restaurant. So Jalen kept walking.

  27

  LATE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE POURED DOWN from above, baking the gravel driveway and exciting the locusts and bullfrogs in the wetlands on either side. The end loop of the driveway was just inside the woods. Jalen strode into the cool cave of shade, enjoying the whisper of the trees. Suddenly home didn’t look as awful as he’d come to think. Inside, he was struck not by the crooked walls, but by the comfort of the sagging couch that he always fell asleep on. His father’s big chair that leaked its stuffing from a split seam…

  Jalen knew he was crying and fought to pull himself together. Baseball, that was what he wanted to think about, not how to tell his dad about his mom’s sudden appearance.