Moonshot - Alessandra Torre Page 0,12

energy in the air with a new player. You know that.”

“All the more reason to have me out there. Someone you don’t have to worry about messing up.” Snagging a fair ball as foul. Too much Mississippi mud on the balls. Grabbing the wrong bat. Not having dip, braces, lotion, headphones … all of the idiosyncrasies that set up each player for success. Yes, I was a ball girl—the job typically done by prepubescent boys. But I was the best one in the league. And it was ridiculous for him to pull me from this game, to punish me for … what? Chase Stern’s presence? “I’m going to the game.” I crossed my arms tightly in front of my chest, swearing on Babe Ruth’s grave that I was not about to cry, not right here, on sacred soil, with the eyes of the others on us, my father’s face as old as I’d ever seen it.

“Don’t fight me on this.” He hung a hand on the fence beside us. Long fingers, cracked at the seams. Talented appendages linked with a structure designed to keep worlds apart. There was an analogy there; I just didn’t see it. “You’re seventeen, Ty. You’re beautiful. Don’t…” his voice broke in two, “…don’t grow up on me just yet.”

“I’m not trying to grow up. I’m trying to go down to the baseline and help the guys prep the field.” I tried to smile, but my fear—that he’d try to take this away—stopped me.

“He slept with a player’s wife. Don’t think he’ll behave around you.” Our dance of avoidance stopped, the issue front and center.

“You’re giving my beauty way too much credit. I came from your ugly stock, remember?” I reached down and hefted my heavy backpack onto my shoulder, because he would let me go, he had to. So help me, if he didn’t, I’d turn into every other hellacious teenager that slunk through this stadium.

“Tyler.” Just one word from him, but it said so much.

“Dad.”

We stared at each other for an eternity, one long stretch of silent communication where I begged, and he countered, where I screamed and stomped my feet, and he hugged me. It all passed through our eyes, his stance unchanging, and I knew I had won when he finally moved, pushing off the fence and dropping his hand.

“Fine.”

“I love you.” I reached out a fist. “Spikes first?”

He reluctantly met my fist in the air. “Spikes first.”

Ty Cobb once spoke about sliding into base. Something about how his foot was coming up fast, his spikes out, and if the baseman happened to get in the way, oh well. Shit happened. Dad first told me that story when he was teaching me how to slide. I was eight, and still stubbornly clinging to the concept of dolls and dresses, and the thought of intentionally getting dirty was terrifying. It had been early February and hot, my cleats stained red by the dirt of an Orlando practice field. We had battled on that field, he and I. I hadn’t wanted to learn to slide, the entire lesson stupid, one I would never use, and he had insisted on it, one of the rare moments in those early years when he had put his foot down. The Ty Cobb story had made me smile, mostly because Dad’s retelling of the story included the word ‘shit,’ a forbidden curse that gave me a shot of glee.

On that day, on that field, I had gotten dirty. Even though I wouldn’t admit it, I enjoyed it. Afterward, we’d gone to a sports store, and Dad had bought me some sliding shorts, a few T-shirts, some pants. That day had been the first crack in my little girl veneer. And from then on, spikes first had been our code. Our mantra in life, the thought that you dove full force into confrontation, damn the repercussions to others, should they be too dumb to move out of the way. Sometimes you made it there safely. Sometimes you didn’t, the enormous effort a waste. But if you had the opening, you had to try.

I said spikes first in that bullpen to remind him of that. To remind him of the girl he’d raised. She wasn’t the type to go home when there was a game to be played. Chase Stern be damned. Naked bodies be forgotten. I was here for one reason, and it wasn’t lust.

22

Pregame, batting practice. I didn’t know what idiot created the standard baseball uniform, but they