Page 51 of Breakout Year

An innocuous question, at least on its surface.

The weather was good, Eitan’s move had treated him okay.

Innocuous, unless Hairston had seen anything Eitan had done since he’d gone to New York—including who’d been spending his time with outside the ballpark.

Eitan couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Yeah, New York’s been really good.”

The game that night started at 7:10 PM. By 7:09, Eitan’s heart was hammering against his ribs.

The stadium was moderately full—bad for a Cosmos game, extraordinary for a Crooks one.

Which meant either people started caring about relatively meaningless late September baseball or some of them were here to see him.

Returning players were often treated as heroes: scoreboard tributes, a pause before their at-bat so the crowd could toss adulation like roses.

The most Eitan had done was check into buying the Crooks breakfast as a thank you, only to be told in no uncertain terms that the team wasn’t interested.

He’d brought gifts, though the best gift one could get most stadium workers was cash.

So he’d spent a while that afternoon distributing envelopes and greeting ushers and clubhouse attendants. At least they seemed happy to see him.

It was unclear whether the crowd felt the same way.

He’d stood in the dugout for the anthem, hat over his heart, and thought of all the times he’d stood and listened to some local talent navigate the anthem’s verses.

His parents were here. They’d texted him a picture from their usual row, the two of them together next to an empty seat Eitan had also paid for.

Akiva still hadn’t texted him back. Maybe that was his way of beginning their inevitable goodbye to one another.

Eitan wouldn’t think about that. Not when he also was due up to hit third.

He got his bat from the rack, stood on the dugout steps and watched the Cosmos’ first plate appearance.

Aguila was the prototypical leadoff guy: his job was to get on base.

Barring that, his job was to work the count so the Cosmos could get a good idea of what the opposing pitcher was throwing.

He went down swinging on three strikes.

Which meant Eitan needed to move out of the dugout and onto the field to ready himself to hit third. He went to the on-deck circle as Aguila walked by. “Look fastball up,” Aguila said.

Different from what the scouting report on Dvorak, the Crooks pitcher, had said, and what Eitan’s years in Cleveland told him.

Still, Eitan nodded his thanks and busied his hands rubbing the neck of his bat with pine tar.

A few people in the stands right next to the dugout called his name.

Normally he’d acknowledge them, make eye contact just to give them a story about how they went to a ballgame and wasn’t that big leaguer just so nice?

Now he felt like he’d been hit with an egg between his shoulder blades, an unpleasant sensation that he couldn’t shake.

He rubbed the tar stick on his bat a few more times than was strictly necessary, then slid a weighted ring around the end of the bat and took a few practice swings.

At the plate, Bishop was faring no better against the Crooks pitcher than Aguila had. He was down in the count, one ball and two strikes. On the next pitch, he made contact—and flied out harmlessly to left field.

Eitan dropped the weighted ring from his bat. He didn’t feel much lighter as he walked toward the batter’s box. The crowd was into it now—some cheers of his name, some decidedly non-cheers. Worst of all, many people stayed seated, arms crossed, as if Eitan wasn’t even worth their boos.

The scoreboard was showing his stats. So, no tribute then.

He wouldn’t be disappointed. Sometimes you leave a place and all you’ve done is left.

Then the camera operator cut to people in the stands, zoomed in on his parents, his mother holding the old Rivkin #1 sign she’d made for his draft day, the two of them up and cheering. Their row still had a few empty seats.

Only the seat next to them wasn’t so empty anymore.

Akiva was there. Akiva was there , wearing his sweatshirt and an old Cosmos ballcap that Eitan didn’t know that he owned. Amid Eitan’s mom’s frantic waving, he raised a cautious hand at the camera.

Eitan turned, about to wave back, when the home plate umpire—a guy with a pitcher’s strike zone, which is to say wide as a billboard—whistled for him to get moving. Eitan walked to home plate, greeted the umpire.

“Can I have a moment?” he asked. For a second, it looked like the ump might refuse him, but then he stepped back to let Eitan lift his batting helmet to the crowd. More boos rained down, but more cheers too, and if he got nothing else, at least he got that.

Eitan stepped into the box, readied his bat on his shoulder.

Dvorak and he had mostly gotten along fine: two guys who happened to wear the same uniform who hung out occasionally and never got into it over cards.

Eitan didn’t know if that was still what they were.

He couldn’t know and even having taken a blow to the ankle, the not knowing was somehow worse.

Was this how Akiva had felt right before he quit: roiled with uncertainty, flinching at shadows? Some part of Eitan—a part he’d felt since he saw that headline years ago announcing that Akiva was leaving the game—had always protested that he’d never quit baseball, no matter what.

Now, though…now he wasn’t sure of much beyond the grip of the bat in his hands, the windup of the pitcher as he coiled his limbs, ready to throw.

It was impossible to read Dvorak’s expression from a distance of sixty feet.

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. So Eitan lifted the bat from his shoulder, ready for whatever came his way.