Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,36

base, and tagged the player running from second. I have never done that since.

We made it to the state semifinal and lost. But I didn’t mind. On the way home the whole team went out for McDonald’s. My mother had no one to talk to because all the other adults were couples, and she’s shy, but she sat there and smiled and my coach went up to her and sat with her for a while, telling her how much promise I had and how proud he was of me. I had two Big Macs and a vanilla shake and fries and an apple pie. My mother said I could have anything I wanted, I deserved it.

This same man, Ted Jaworski, coached a summer league team too. He invited me on and I said I could not pay for it. I knew this without asking my mother. He raised the money for me. From that point on I have played for town and school and club. My summer team now is the Cardinals who are the top team in the state of New York. For three years I have played with the Cardinals from the end of the school year through the summer. We take the bus and travel all over the place. The boys on this team are my friends but not my good friends because we are all competitive with each other.

The first article about me came out when I was fourteen. For Kel Keller, Baseball Is Life. Someone came to interview me about baseball and growing up in Yonkers and going to school where I do, in Pells Landing, which happens to be the richest town in the state of New York—a fact that my mother does not fail to point out regularly. It was just after Pells won state for the first time in three decades. In playoffs I hit .570 with 12 RBIs. And I was still a freshman. He took a picture of me tossing a baseball in front of my house. I spent the morning before he came trying to clean up all the leaves and the spare papers and pieces of trash that had found their way onto our little lawn. I even asked my mom if I could paint our door which was peeling like a joke and she said no because paint is expensive. So our house looked crappy in the picture which is probably what the reporter wanted anyway. If you Google my name it’s the first thing that comes up. This has always embarrassed me.

The most recent article came out last month and it was about my prospects as a major league player. I’m not kidding. It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in my life and I even showed it to my mother who cried, from sadness or happiness I’m not sure. She wants me to go to college first. Last year, my junior year, a bunch of college recruiters called me up or contacted me through my coaches. But I have never been a good student and pro ball is where I want to be.

So it was very exciting when it started last spring: a few bird-dog scouts began coming to some of my PLHS games, and a couple of them talked to Coach Ramirez about me, and Coach told me what they said. Over the summer a few more came to my Cardinals games. At Pells it was clear who they were there for; I was the only one who had a shot, and everyone knew it. But my league team is different. A bunch of us probably have a hope of getting drafted. Then last July, in the middle of a tournament in New Jersey, one of my teammates said Do you guys know who that is? and pointed to a gray-mustached man in the bleachers. A general murmur started. Mets scout, said the boy, and nodded slowly. All of us avoided each other’s eyes. It was the first time a supervising scout had come out—all the others had been young guys, hungry for money, but this one was patient and kind of looked like it didn’t matter to him whether we were good or not—and the best part was he was from the Mets. My father’s team. I played like a tornado and I knocked one out of the park. At the end I had a chance at a grand slam but the pitcher walked me and I’ve never been