Behind the Plate (The Boys of Baseball #2) - J. Sterling Page 0,5
or where the hell it had come from when he asked, “What kind of bullshit?”
“The Jack Carter’s your dad, egotistical asshole teammates, and girls who don’t take no for an answer kind,” I said with a tired voice and a nod.
It wasn’t anything Mac hadn’t heard or witnessed before. We’d been friends since we were freshmen, playing together for just as long. He always said that my loss was his gain. I needed the girls to stay the hell away from me, and Mac wanted them all, especially after he’d gotten his heart broken one time after a game. We were complete opposites when it came to females, but there wasn’t anyone I trusted more than him to have my back.
“Standard Carter shit,” he said as he took another bite into the fruit, the juice spraying everywhere.
“Pretty much.”
“Tell me about it though. I want to hear details, man. My summer team blew. I did all right, but the competition was weak,” he said as I continued to hang up my clothes in the closet and toss shit into my dresser without folding them.
Mac had gone to play at a lower league than I had played in, but it was still one of the best in the country. I was actually surprised to hear that he hadn’t had a good time. The whole point of playing during the summer was to be seen by scouts and to face competition we wouldn’t otherwise. Summer ball was supposed to give us the chance to get more exposure.
“Your team wasn’t good?”
He shook his head. “Not like I was expecting. Every team we played was like playing here. I think I wanted more. A chance to get better, you know? To play against guys who would push me to push myself.”
“I completely understand,” I said because that was the whole reason I’d gone to college instead of playing professional baseball straight out of high school. I wanted to get better first. “I’m sorry your team sucked though.”
“Just sorta felt like a waste of time, you know?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t. Trust me.” I stopped putting shit away to look at him. “I guarantee that scouts who didn’t know you before saw you, and now, they’ll be watching you. Playing there will be a good thing in the long run.”
“Always seeing the positive,” he said, finishing off the apple and tossing the core into a trash can I hadn’t even known was sitting next to the desk. “Tell me something, Carter.” He didn’t finish his thought, so I gave him a look, and he continued, “The guys on your team really gave you shit about being there?”
“Just one,” I said as I thought back to the last few months on the East Coast.
“How does anyone play with you for a single inning and think you got there because of your dad?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But I’m used to it by now. I’ve heard it my whole life. I know it’s bullshit,” I said with a bored look as my mind started replaying the night it had all exploded.
The first thing I’d learned since stepping onto the field this summer was that Dylan Breakers was an asshole. He played right field, and God had blessed him with an arm from the heavens. That kid could throw someone out at home from two hundred feet away without breaking a sweat. But like I’d already said, he was an asshole. I’d even heard rumors that his teammates back home couldn’t stand to be around him. It was hard, competing with an ego that choked all the air out of a room.
“At least we’ll be getting drafted off of our skills and not our daddy’s last name,” Dylan said one night during a group dinner out.
I hit the top of the table, making a glass of water spill and silverware clatter. The rest of the team stopped moving, even their mouths stopped chewing. To be honest, I thought everyone was holding their breath.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been accused of riding my dad’s coattails, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last, but I’d had enough of Dylan’s piss-poor attitude today. He’d thrown a hissy fit during the game when he got called out on strikes during two of his three at bats. He had kicked the dirt, yelled at the umpire, and thrown his helmet in the dugout, narrowly missing a teammate. Dylan was a fucking virus who had the ability to infect a whole team, and I