Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,16
in ice baths, down on the massage table, or carb-loading in the player’s only dining room. Grounds crew mill about, checking the diamond and grass. Some of the announcers are testing the PA system, and I saw a reporter mosey by before with a rookie they were doing a feature on.
But I’m just focused here, smacking the ball over and over until each one rattles the chain-link fence wall of the cage violently.
“I heard your swing was getting slow, but now I see there really is something to report about.”
A crinkly, familiar voice chuckles with sarcasm as I grunt into the next pitch, this one with a little extra oomph behind it as it slams into the cage.
“I’d like to see you put a helmet on, old man,” I challenge, not even bothering to look at him.
Another ball, another timed swing. It’s off, the bat just clipping the edge of the ball, and it burns out on the ground before reaching the back wall.
“Don’t be too sure of beating me, kid. If I were a betting man, I’d say fifty bucks I could hit one harder than you.”
I snort. “You are a betting man, that’s why Ronnie won’t let you go to Vegas anymore.”
The machine clicks off, as all the balls have run out, and I drop my bat back into the bucket. Turning, there is Bryant Templeman, legendary sportscaster and, as luck would have it, my fairy godfather.
He hates when I call him that, says it sounds too ridiculous, but I do it just to tease him. Leaning against the fence, he’s in his usual T-shirt and jeans, when most of these reporters show up in sharp suits. But Bryant is of the old realm of journalists, with a notebook stuck in his back pocket and a pen behind his ear. He rarely carries a cell phone, doesn’t dress to impress anyone, and would rather spend time sitting near the bat boys during games than in the press box.
“Eh, Ronnie doesn’t know what’s good for her. That bag she cried over at Christmas was only bought using the money from my blackjack winnings.” He waves off the comment about his gambling and his wife.
Two wrinkly arms lean against the chain-link, the black skin of them sagging with age and littered with spots. Taking a good look at him, I notice he looks thinner than the last time I saw him a month or two ago. His face, still freckled with a cinnamon-colored trail across the bridge of his nose, is more wrinkled. But he still has the freshest haircut a good barber could buy, and for that I’ve always admired Bryant. The man cares about the important things; a good shave, a firm handshake, a decent, fairly-priced beer. He taught me to care about those things as well.
Growing up, I had no one. My father, as the story goes, split before I had even made my entrance into the world. My mother had hung on a while longer, but as far as I could trace my birth back, she was young and decided to give me up at a fire station near San Diego. Other than that, I have no concrete facts on the people who gave me life.
So foster care it was, and once my baseball talent was discovered, I was “sponsored” by travel teams so that I could basically help them win. Then the families on those teams became my sort of guardians, looking after me and helping to take care of me. But only so long as I didn’t surpass their own sons.
Oh sure, they’d take in the charity case when they felt like doing something good. A teammate’s family would take pity on me if I was good friends with their son, and they’d want to provide for me. I’d be as quiet and courteous as I could, causing no trouble in the way their biological kids would. I’d travel with the team, and they could claim they were “giving love” and “providing comfort” to the orphan of the bunch.
Except it always ended. Usually badly. One time, it was because one of my friends, the son of a family who had taken me in for close to six months, got cut from our travel team. This was around the time I was in middle school, and things were getting more competitive. I’d grown four inches that year, and my voice dropped. I started being able to make plays that some of the other kids couldn’t,