of us were actually doing this.
Darryl showed up a little bit later, and made sure to walk slowly by my office so he could give me a wink. I blew a kiss back at him. Soon after that I heard the manager call him into his office, which was adjacent to mine. With the doors open I heard the conversation clearly.
“I’m benching you again today,” the manager said. “Give you another day to clear your head.”
“I want to play,” Darryl replied eagerly. “I’m ready. I feel confident today.”
“You didn’t look confident half-assing the ball yesterday.”
“Today’s different. Give me a chance to prove it, coach. Rafa’s on the mound and I want to contribute.”
“I’ll think about it.”
Darryl took extra batting practice before the game, and the hitting coach must have liked what he saw because when the game started, Darryl was penciled in at first base, batting fourth in the lineup. The first pitch of the game was a line drive hit right at him, and he flashed his glove and snagged it out of the air to prevent a hit.
He came up to bat in the bottom of the first with a runner on base. After taking two pitches he crushed a slider deep into right field, but the outfielder made a diving catch to make the out.
“That was good contact,” the hitting coach told Darryl when he came back into the dugout. “Keep grinding and eventually they’ll fall.”
Meanwhile, Rafael was having a fantastic game on the mound. Aside from a double he gave up in the third inning, he was perfect through eight innings. The other team looked hopeless at the plate.
But our offense had been held scoreless too, and the game was tied 0-0 in the bottom of the eighth. Our speedy shortstop drew a walk to start the inning, and the next batter got an infield single. With two men on base and no outs, Darryl came to the plate.
“Come on Darryl,” I whispered to myself. “Here’s your chance to break out.”
The opposing starting pitcher was still in the game, and had thrown over a hundred pitches. Darryl quickly fell into a hole with two strikes, but then fouled off the next three pitches. He took two balls, then fouled off five straight pitches in a row. Even though the pitcher had an electric changeup and a biting slider, Darryl managed to get a piece of the bat on them to stay alive. The tattooed, hulking man had a determined look in his eyes. He was really battling out there. It was just a matter of which of them would blink first.
Finally the pitcher threw a changeup that stayed out over the plate. Darryl’s bat was a blur, and the sound echoed throughout the stadium like a gunshot. Everyone in the dugout jumped up to the railing to watch.
“GO!” I screamed as the ball soared through the air toward left field. It was close to going foul. “GO, BALL!”
The ball was hooking to the left. From my vantage I was certain it would go foul. But then it curved around the foul pole, and the umpire in left field spun his finger in the air to signal a home run.
The crowd lost its mind. Everyone in the dugout—myself included—reacted about the same, jumping and screaming as Darryl circled the bases. The home run fireworks went off above Globe Life Field. The two runners who were already on base touched home and waited for Darryl as he made the slow trot around third. He stepped on home plate, then fist-pumped each of them happily. The rest of the team congratulated him as he walked back down into the dugout.
There was a new look in Darryl’s eyes, and a confident skip in his step. I knew his slump was over.
With a three-run lead, Joel came in to pitch the ninth inning. He gave up a solo home run, but that was the only blemish in our 3-1 win.
“Coach Betts,” the manager said to me up in the clubhouse after the game. “Heard what you did with Bryant after the game yesterday.”
My immediate reaction was panic. He must have been talking about our locker room sex. We had been caught, and now I was going to pay the price.
But instead, the manager only said, “If I had known making him shag grounders would bust him out of his slump, I would’ve done it weeks ago. Good work.”
Up until this point the manager had seemed skeptical about my role as the