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told him that if he was serious about making it as a baseball player he should focus on playing second base or shortstop where height wouldn’t be as much of a factor. Ryan was thinking about it, but then, when he was fourteen, he saw an Olympic gymnast interviewed on TV. The gymnast had some childhood disease that she’d overcome to make her dream come true, and she said she’d made it because she didn’t quit; she knew in her heart what she was meant to do, and she wouldn’t let anything stop her. Ryan felt the same way, and decided either he’d make it as a pitcher or he wouldn’t make it at all.
    During junior high and all through high school, Ryan did yoga stretches and hung upside down on gravity boots, and took vitamins and minerals and drank protein drinks with brewer’s yeast, bee pollen, and soya lecithin, trying desperately to increase his height. But when he was seventeen, he stood at only five-nine and three-quarters. His lack of size didn’t seem to have much of an effect on his pitching, though, because he was still the most dominating high school pitcher in New York, and maybe the whole East Coast. Although he didn’t throw particularly hard -his fastball peaked in the low to mid-eighties - he still had great movement on his pitches and uncanny control. Most games he walked at most one or two hitters - remarkable for a teenager. He also threw a great hook. You weren’t supposed to throw curves until you were finished growing, because it could tear up your elbow, but Ryan’s curveball broke so sharply, and he had such great control of it, that he couldn’t resist tossing at least a few of them every time he pitched. He’d wait for the key spots in the games, when he was ahead in the count and really needed a strikeout, and then he’d let one fly. The batter would usually duck out of the batter’s box, thinking the ball was heading right toward his head; then a stunned look would appear on his face as the pitch nailed the inside or outside corner and the ump called him out.
    During the spring of his senior year of high school, scouts became seriously interested in Ryan. They watched every game he pitched, and there was talk that the Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, and Astros wanted to sign him. But while the scouts were very impressed with Ryan and viewed him as one of the top prospects in the country, Ryan was always ‘the other guy’ scouts came to see on the South Shore team. The guy they were really drooling over was Ryan’s South Shore teammate, Jake Thomas.
    Unlike Ryan, who’d worked his butt off to get where he was, baseball came easy to Jake. His father, Antowain Thomas, had been a star running back in high school and college, and Jake had inherited a perfect athlete’s body. He never had to work out or do anything extra to improve his game. While Ryan was living and breathing baseball as a kid, Jake played other sports, and after school and on weekends he spent his time doing things that other kids did, like playing video games and going to movies and chasing girls. Jake played in Ryan’s Little League, and, although Jake never showed up for practice and didn’t seem to care very much about the games, the coach always put him in the cleanup spot in the order, and every time he came to the plate he seemed to hit monstrous home runs or screaming line drives.
    During their sophomore year of high school, the
Canarsie Courier
did an article about Jake and Ryan, calling them ‘The Dynamic Duo,’ and the nickname stuck throughout their high school careers. Additional articles in the
Courier
and other local papers made a big deal about how Jake and Ryan had grown up on the same block, had played Little League baseball together, and were a sure thing to make the majors. Even
Sports Illustrated
did a small article about them, calling the two Brooklyn kids ‘hugely talented,’ and ‘can’t-miss prospects.’
    Although the press made out as though Jake and Ryan had been best friends all their