The Batboy Read Online Free PDF Page B

run in the seventh, never moving off first.
    And now, with the Sting up to bat for last licks, the lineup had worked itself around to him.
    Kenny had walked with two outs. Then Andrew Clark, their catcher, managed to squeeze a ground-ball single between the first and second basemen. The Rockies’ right fielder charged the ball like a champ, holding Kenny to second. But still:
    Tying run on second, winning run on first, game on Brian’s bat if he could hit one hard someplace.
    Game on him , in the first big weekend of travel ball.
    He didn’t expect it to happen this way very often. Brian knew he wasn’t one of the real stars on this team, and he almost wished it was Kenny or Kyle who had this chance to win the game. They were the ones who were supposed to be up with the game on the line.
    Yet it was Brian up at bat. Against the Rockies’ closer, the biggest kid in the game, a real load, but one who could throw just as hard as Kenny could.
    He dug in and locked eyes on Kenny’s as Kenny took his short lead off second. And Kenny must have been thinking right along with him, because he pointed at Brian now with the index fingers of both hands and mouthed these words as he did:
    Be the man.
    Brian nodded, got himself set, and then proceeded to swing right through strike one. Stepped out, rubbed some dirt on his hands, took a deep breath, stepped back in, set his bat.
    And looked even worse swinging through strike two.
    The man? Brian felt like a little boy. But then he caught a break. The Rockies’ closer tried way too hard to strike him out on the next two pitches, like he was Brad Morley of the Tigers trying to amp up the radar gun to 100 mph. He missed wild and high both times. Only a great reach by the Rockies’ catcher on the second one kept Kenny from advancing to third.
    There were no stats for Brian to fall back on now, no matchup numbers. All those decimal points inside his head were totally useless. The only numbers that mattered were these: 2-2. The only thing that mattered was finding a way to do something all hitters tried to do in moments like this:
    Figure out a way to catch up with the other guy’s fastball.
    Brian guessed that the next pitch would come right down the middle. One of those hit-me-if-you-can pitches.
    Brian did.
    He kept his head on the ball, made sure not to pull off it, kept his hands back when the impulse was to rush them through.
    And when he did bring his hands through, he gave the ball a ride.
    For one split second he thought this was finally the one, thought he had hit it hard enough to clear the left-field fence. Not just get a real jack finally, but a walk-off jack at that. But as much of a rope as it was, the ball didn’t have the elevation. What it did have was enough smash to split the left fielder and center fielder and roll all the way to the wall, scoring Andrew with the run that gave the Sting an 8-7 win.
    Brian wasn’t sure how to act at first.
    By the time he got to second, it was as if he’d forgotten all the rules of baseball, which he knew as well as he knew all his numbers. So he put on the brakes and stopped right there, afraid to leave the bag, even after Andrew had crossed.
    And it was there, at second base, where Kenny Griffin got his arms around him and his momentum sent them both tumbling onto the outfield grass at West Hills.
    Before the rest of the Sting got there, Kenny yelled, “Bro, you know what you are today, right?”
    “Get off me, you lunatic,” Brian said, enjoying the moment even as Kenny crushed him.
    “Bro,” Kenny said, “you’re the Bishop of Bloomfield!”
    Bishop. As in Hank Bishop. It was a name Brian didn’t mind one bit.

CHAPTER 6
    B rian had come early his first day of work at Comerica, had his mom drop him off at two in the afternoon for a seven o’clock game, and even then he’d seen that manager Davey Schofield was already there, all his coaches were already there, and so were most of the players.
    The players didn’t have