The Coach Who Cut a Grieving Boy

I saw it leave his hand and I knew what it was going to be.

Eli went down on both knees. The ball hit him square in the chest protector with a sound like a fist on a mattress, dropped, and rolled out in front of him. He had it in his bare hand before the runner who had broken from first got halfway to second, and the runner stopped dead and went back to the bag.

Nobody cheered. It was an ordinary play in an ordinary game, and the third-base side did what it always does, which is murmur, and clap a little.

But I looked down the bleachers, and Kent Mallory had taken his hand off his wife’s knee and put it flat against his own mouth.

And out on the mound, Hunter was looking at my son. He was ten years old and round in the face, and he had just bounced one that should have scored a run. He looked at Eli, and Eli stood up, brushed off his knees, held the ball up, and flipped it underhand, easy, back to the mound.

“Got you,” Eli said. Just that.

Hunter caught it. He pulled his cap down. Then he threw the next pitch for a strike.

Ernest Nance had his thermos lid halfway to his mouth. He put it down on the bench between his boots and left it there.

The next day the Rangers lost in the semifinal, 5 to 3, to a team from Kearney. The boys were sorry about it for about as long as it took to get to the car.

Curtis Ostrom came to that Sunday game with the orange slices and set the cooler down at the end of the bench. He never said a word about the phone call, and neither did I.

The Mid-Platte board met on Monday night, a week early. Tina called it herself. There were five board members and the folding chairs in the back room at the Legion hall, with the paneled walls and the coffee urn with a 1995 Husker championship sticker still on it. There were five board members, Tina among them, and four of us in the folding chairs: Doug, Wade, Kent and me.

I sat in the last row with my coat on. I had not meant to speak.

I didn’t have to. Doug read out the text, word for word, and then he read out Section Four, and a retired schoolteacher on the board named Lyle Prochaska said, “Well, that’s plain enough,” and asked Kent if he had anything to say before they voted.

Kent stood up. He did not take long.

“I wrote it and I sent it,” he said. “Nobody told me to. I was scared of losing, and I was taking it out on a kid.” He looked at his hands. “I’ll take what the board decides.”

They voted in about eight minutes.