The Coach Who Would Not Bench Him

That prayer is the only rule I have ever really had. Every boy bats. Every boy plays. And every boy gets seen.

Which brings me to Cricket.

His birth certificate says something else. Nobody has used it since T-ball, when he ran the bases like a bug on a hot skillet and a coach laughed and named him. He is eleven, small for it, with glasses held on by a band and ears that stick out under his cap, and he has the fastest hands I have ever seen on a boy. He plays shortstop. He was hitting .410 that season and did not know it was a number worth knowing.

His mother is Dena. She works nights in the laundry at the nursing home in the next county, and she gets home a little before the boy gets on the school bus. His father left when Cricket was in first grade and took nothing with him but the good truck. Cricket’s glove was a hand-me-down from a cousin. His cleats were a size too big, stuffed at the toe with a sock. All season he never once asked for a drink from the cooler. He brought his own water in a jar.

Here is what you need to know about the Cardinals and money. The league fee for a boy is a hundred and twenty dollars. For most families it is a Saturday’s groceries. For four of mine it was the difference between a boy playing ball and a boy sitting on a porch, and I had never let any of them know I knew that. Tobias’s check had always covered those four. No names, no paperwork. The boys just showed up on the roster in April and played. Hold on to that, because Tuesday is where it starts.

It was our last practice before the final. We had gone 11 and 1 and won two playoff games to get to the championship, set for Saturday at ten against the Eastside Eagles, who had beaten us by a run in the one game we lost. It was about five in the afternoon, bright and hot, with half the parents on the bleachers and a few more at the fence with their coffee.

A white pickup rolled in off Mill Street and parked on the grass behind the dugout, which no one does. Tobias got out. He had his grandson with him, a boy named Mason, eleven years old, round in the cheeks, good-natured, not much of a ballplayer. Mason had been on my roster since April, playing right field, batting ninth, and he had never complained once. He was the kind of boy who would have been fine on any team in the world, and the only trouble was that he was Tobias’s grandson, and Tobias had a different idea.

“Dell,” he said, in his usual friendly voice. “Got a minute?”

I told the boys to take a lap and walked over to the fence with him, with eleven parents’ worth of ears pretending to be somewhere else.

He kept his voice down for about one sentence. “I want Mason at shortstop Saturday,” he said. “The whole game.”

I looked at him. I laughed a little, I am ashamed to say, because I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

“Tobias,” I said, “Mason’s never played short in his life. He’s played right. He’s a fine right fielder. He’ll play right, and he’ll play first in the sixth, same as I’ve had on the card since Monday. Every boy gets his three innings.”