Page 52 of For The Ring

“I know you thought I hated you, but you were one of my guys. All I wanted was for you to succeed.”

I want to respond, but I have no idea what to say to that.

Thankfully she doesn’t seem to need a response.

“C’mon, Davis,” she says, only a little bit louder than her heckling.

I join her. “Let’s go, kid. Get one to drive.” I clap a bit, like I would if I were standing in the dugout right now and I’d penciled him into the cleanup spot myself.

The next pitch is pure heat like the last, but instead of at Davis’s ear, it’s belt high on the inner half.

With what seems like just a quick shift of his weight and a snap of his wrists, the bat glides through the strike zone and barrel meets ball.

And then the ball whistles in a low rising drive what has to be four hundred and fifty feet to dead centerfield.

My eyes flash to the scoreboard to see the pitch speed. 101mph. I don’t even want to hazard a guess at its exit velocity.

Fuck.

The kid can hit.

I can almost feel it in my hands, the sheer power of that moment when a round ball hits a round bat squarely, the hardest thing to do in professional sports. It happened in my very last at bat. We were already down 9-0 in the bottom of the 9thinning and there wasn’t anyone on base. A meaningless home run that made the score 9-1 when the Yankees won the World Series. Five minutes later the game was over, the season was over and my career was over.

But for Cole Davis, it’s all just beginning.

Hell, he probably wasn’t even out of diapers during my rookie season.

He rounds third and heads for home and, just as he crosses home plate, he turns toward us, looks me dead in the eye and points.

The little fuck.

Yeah, I want to manage this kid.

I lean toward Frankie and say, “He reminds me of me.”

“Yeah, except he’s a switch hitter.”

“Show off.”

She laughs and her shoulder bumps into mine as the next batter makes the final out of the inning and she finishes up her scoring.

“What do you think so far?”

“Can’t tell a lot in one half inning.”

“You know a lot of kids that can take 101 to dead center from the left side?”

“Fair point.”

“Anyway, the homer was impressive, but I think his work behind the plate is even more valuable. Look at his framing, it’s so subtle,” she says, her chin brushing against the top of my shoulder as she does, nodding out to the field where Esposito is set to pitch. “He can turn a ball into a strike with just the slightest movement of his wrist. Fools the umpire almost every time.”

“Yeah,” I say, holding a hand out in front of me like I’m about to catch a ball, demonstrating the twist of my wrist in a motion that mimics how I used to create the visual illusion for the umpire that a borderline pitch was actually a strike, giving my pitcher the advantage. It’s a dying art, one that will probably go away entirely once they have cameras calling balls and strikes instead.

“When I got to college, I had a coach that insisted that just yanking it back into the strike zone was better,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I literally had to do a video presentation to show him.”

“Don’t even get me started on that bullshit. Are the umpires fooled by it? Sometimes, but if you’re consistently framing it right, the amount of calls you’ll get the benefit of the doubt on are so much higher.”

Davis receives another pitch from Esposito framing it, but it’s a little too obvious. Ball four and the batter can take first. I click my tongue. “That wasn’t bad, but he’d do better to just gently lift with the wrist. Once they see your elbow is moving, you’re toast.”

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