their laps, I take in the bright blue sky and the cool breeze that picks up the freshly cut grass scent around us. Baseball season, my favorite season of all.
Growing up with three older brothers and a dad obsessed with baseball, I had no choice in the matter of what sport I liked to watch. They started me at a young age, taking me to every Chicago Bobcat game my parents could afford, decking me out in Bobcat gear, and sticking me in front of the TV whenever the game was on, listening to them analyze every swing, every pitch, and every catch.
I became addicted.
I spent my weekends driving from ballpark to ballpark with my parents, watching my brothers play, offering them my advice and encouragement. I soon became my brothers’ good luck charm and they started to fight over whose game I attended during the season. My parents got so sick of the bickering they finally wrote out a schedule of what games I attended based on importance.
I have what seems like hundreds of scorebooks stacked in my parents’ attic from watching my brothers play. Scrapbooks full of newspaper clippings, of pictures of them on the field, of their stats that I would print out and share with them. I was their own personal historian and coach when it came to their baseball careers. They all went to college on full-ride scholarships for baseball, but only one attended Brentwood, my oldest brother, Cory. He plays for the Baltimore Storm now, six years deep in a contract, playing first base, and absolutely killing it this season so far.
Rian and Sean, my other brothers, own a Division One training facility outside Chicago where they train athletes looking to move on to Division One programs. They focus on agility and power, working in heavy weightlifting and quick cardiovascular spurts to drive up the heart rate. Last year, they were named the best gym in the area and are now expanding to a second location. I couldn’t be prouder, and I also like to think I had a little piece in their success. Being hardcore baseball fans has benefitted all of us in some way over the years.
“Coach Milly, do I have to wear my batting gloves?” Dennis, the runt of the team, asks as he stumbles over to me, pants too big, and helmet covering his eyes.
I catch him right before he faceplants into the grass and squat to his level so I can help him with his helmet and pants.
“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to, Dennis.”
He holds up a hand where one of the gloves is on backward. The fingers are barely filled by his small hands, and the fingertips of the glove look like deflated balloons.
Oh Dennis.
“Were these your brother’s gloves?” He nods. “Well, they seem a little big, and they might get in the way rather than help you.”
“I thought so.” He takes the glove off and then smiles a toothless grin at me. “I can put them in my back pocket like the big leaguers. Like an asessory.”
“Do you mean accessory?”
“Yeah, like my mom has necklaces. I have batting gloves.” He turns around in a short circle for a moment, trying to reach his back pocket and when he does, he shoves the gloves inside, making his little butt very large on one side. “There. How do I look, Coach?”
I smile kindly at him. “Like a ballplayer.”
Chapter Two
CARSON
“Thank fuck,” I answer, placing my EarPods in my ears. “I need to hear your voice.”
“You make it sound like we’re dating,” Knox says, on the other end of the phone.
I huddle in the corner of the dining hall, waiting for my teammates to show up. Because of my show of unsportsmanlike conduct on the field yesterday, Coach Disik suspended me from practice today and is benching me for the next game as well. Just what I fucking need when I’m trying to enter into the draft at the end of the season.
I’m already behind thanks to my injury, add to it my shitty performance on the field, and now warming the wood in the dugout, I’m never going to make it to the big leagues.
“We are dating. We’ve been dating since freshman year,” I say.
“When you say shit like that, it makes our relationship seem weird.”
“Hey, I warned you I was clingy when we first met. It’s not my fault you let me into your world. How’s your mom by the way? I miss Mama