The Ninth Inning (The Boys of Baseball #1) - J. Sterling Page 0,2

lose.

This was my last year on the field. It was my last chance to impress the baseball scouts enough for them to want to take a chance on me. I had been eligible for the draft after last season ended, but there wasn’t even a single scout sniffing around or talking me up. No one reached out, told me they liked what they saw on the field but to get that batting average up over the summer. Not a damn scout had said a damn thing. And not a single agent had unofficially talked to me, letting me know they wanted to represent me when the time came.

That was when the panic had officially started to set in. I was on a clock that would eventually stop ticking. My days to further my baseball career were numbered, and I was getting down to the wire. What the hell would I do with my life if I didn’t play baseball? I really didn’t want to follow in my old man’s footsteps. I wondered how long it would take to get over feeling like a failure if that happened.

It was the one question every athlete asked themselves. Most of us had been playing for so long that the sport was tied up in our identity. It was a part of who we were. If I didn’t have the game and wasn’t a baseball player, who was I exactly? I’d been working toward this dream, this goal for so long that I’d abandoned any other dreams I might have had, not that I could think of any in the moment.

Baseball was all I saw. And I was not unique in that perspective. Baseball was all most ballplayers saw. We all shared the same dream—to get to the minor leagues and hopefully get into the bigs one day.

I knew that I could go work for my dad if this dream died, but the last thing that interested me was being an electrician for other people to snub their noses at. Not that it wasn’t a fine profession, and my dad made plenty of money; it just wasn’t for me. But then again, outside of baseball, I wasn’t sure what was.

“You think your parents ever hung out here at the house?” I asked, knowing it was a fucked up question, but every player at Fullton knew the story of Jack and Cassie Carter. Or at least, part of the story.

Jack had been the best pitcher the college had ever seen at the time. He had gotten drafted but not before falling for a sassy and mouthy girl he had to work to get. There was more to the story, but the part that had been most drilled into us was the part about the girls who would stop at nothing to hitch a ride to a player heading out of town. We had been warned to be careful, to think with the head on our shoulders and not the one in our pants.

“Dude. Really?” Chance grimaced, and I laughed. “I don’t want to think about my parents right now.”

He shuddered, like he was washing away a bad memory, and I laughed more, tossing the rest of my beer into the grass. I wasn’t in the mood to get drunk even though we had just won the series and should be celebrating. The season was in full swing, and I needed to be in my best shape.

Beer made you round. I’d seen it happen. The last fucking thing I wanted to be was round.

“Who on the team do you think is most like your dad was?” Another weird question, but I found myself lost a little in time, thinking back to when the great Jack Carter had gone to school here and how it must have felt to be him.

Chance narrowed his eyes at me, knowing exactly what I was asking. Who was the biggest player? Within a second, he gave a nod of his head toward the door and said, “Mac. Hands down.”

I followed his gaze and watched as Mac attacked some girl’s face with his own. He had a different girl as often as he wanted, even when we traveled to away games. How the hell he seemed to pull it off with little to no drama was beyond me, but that was Mac for you. A line out the door of girls always wanting more. None of us understood it.

My smile dropped instantly when I spotted the familiar girl wiggling her way around