The Tournament I Called Behind the Plate

“It is not your call to make anyway,” I said. “It is theirs.”

So we walked out to the field and Earl laid it out plain to both head coaches, Pete for the Bandits and a fellow named Reyes for the team from Crawfordsville.

Both of them knew me by then. Pete did not even blink. Reyes looked at me a second and said, “You the one been working the little kids all summer?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“My nephew’s on the eight-and-under,” Reyes said. “He says you’re fair.” He stuck out his hand. “Call it straight and we got no problem.”

“I will call it straight if it costs my own kid the game,” I said, and I meant it, and both of them could see I meant it.

They signed the lineup cards and they signed off on me, the two of them, in front of the scorekeeper, so it was all above board.

I went to my truck and got my gear.

My mother was already set up behind the backstop in her lawn chair. When she saw me come walking out buckling the chest protector, she did not even ask.

She just started clapping, right there, and called out, “That’s my boy, both of them, that’s my boy and my grandboy,” and the Bandit parents around her laughed and a couple of them clapped too.

Hayden was the leadoff hitter. Bats first every game, because he has the eye and the speed.

I crouched down behind the plate and I set my feet and I pulled the mask down, and my own son stepped into the chalked box not three feet in front of me.

“You ready, Blue?” the catcher asked me, a Crawfordsville boy.

“Play ball,” I said.

The Double

I have called a lot of pitches now, but I will remember that at-bat until I am my mother’s age.

The first pitch was high. “Ball,” I said, and I did not say it any different than I would for any other kid, and I think that is the thing I am proudest of in the whole summer.

I called my son’s at-bat like he was a stranger, because that is what fair means.

The second pitch caught the outside corner, a good pitch, and I came up out of my crouch and rang him. “Strike.”

Hayden stepped out and knocked his cleats and did not look back at me, and I loved him for that more than I can say.

The third pitch was a fastball a hair in, and he turned on it.

I heard it off the bat before I saw it, that sound a ball makes when a kid gets all of it, and it went screaming into the left-center gap and rolled to the fence.