The Little Team Nobody Would Take

Tyler

The second week of June, Tyler walked over himself.

It was a Tuesday evening, warm, the sun still well up over the grain elevator.

His practice had let out at seven, and his boys had come across as usual, and Tyler came across behind them with his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.

He stood at the end of the backstop until Bob finished tying a shoe. Then he cleared his throat. “Coach,” he said. “Bob. You got a minute.”

Bob stood up, slow, one hand on his knee. Abel was there, and I saw him take a half step closer, the way a man does. Bob waved him off. “I’ve got a minute,” he said.

“I don’t know what I’m doing over there,” Tyler said. He said it plain, no fuss, and I liked him better for it right away. “I told Craig I could handle it and I can’t. The boys don’t listen to me. I’ve got a tournament in Coldwater on the twenty-seventh and I don’t know if I’ll have nine.”

Bob looked at him a long time. Then he looked out at the twelves, his old boys, scattered around the small diamond playing catch with five-year-olds.

“Bring your pitchers over Thursday,” Bob said. “Isaac’s dropping his elbow. I’ll show you what to look for. Then you show him. He’s got to hear it from his own coach.”

Tyler’s face just came apart a little bit, the way a man’s does when he expected to be told off and gets helped instead. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Thursday,” Bob said, and got back down on his knee, because Claire’s shoe had come loose.

Tyler walked back across the grass to the big diamond. Craig was standing at the fence over there. I saw Tyler stop and talk to him.

I could not hear it, but I saw Craig look down at the dirt for a long time, and then up at us.