Page 21

CHARLIE

This feels completely different.

Just a few yards away from the action and, for a bunch of kids out there, the dream is still very much alive and close enough for them to touch it. Teams generally send their best prospects to the Arizona Fall League and most of these kids have a real shot at making it to the Bigs.

The first pitch is high and tight, sending Davis sprawling backward into the dirt as he just barely avoids taking one to the head.

Standing up, the kid replaces the batting helmet that went flying to the ground when he took cover.

The sparse crowd gasps and some even boo.

“Control your stuff or get off the mound,” Frankie mutters from beside me.

“Restraining yourself?” I ask. I can feel her vibrating beside me, like she wants to leap to her feet and shout at the kid out on the field instead of composing herself.

“I’m a professional,” she grinds out.

“Are you?”

“Barely. There’s a reason I watch most of the games from my office. No one can hear me losing it,” she says, as she carefully marks a ball into the little box for Davis’s at bat on her score sheet.

“I didn’t know that. You ever get this heated for me?”

Fuck. Her talent for innuendo is apparently contagious.

She just snorts, though, her attention still mostly on the game in front of her. “All the time.”

“Really?”

“I know you thought I hated you, but you were one of my guys. All I wanted was for you to succeed.”

I want to respond, but I have no idea what to say to that.

Thankfully she doesn’t seem to need a response.

“C’mon, Davis,” she says, only a little bit louder than her heckling.

I join her. “Let’s go, kid. Get one to drive.” I clap a bit, like I would if I were standing in the dugout right now and I’d penciled him into the cleanup spot myself.

The next pitch is pure heat like the last, but instead of at Davis’s ear, it’s belt high on the inner half.

With what seems like just a quick shift of his weight and a snap of his wrists, the bat glides through the strike zone and barrel meets ball.

And then the ball whistles in a low rising drive what has to be four hundred and fifty feet to dead centerfield.

My eyes flash to the scoreboard to see the pitch speed. 101mph. I don’t even want to hazard a guess at its exit velocity.

Fuck.

The kid can hit.

I can almost feel it in my hands, the sheer power of that moment when a round ball hits a round bat squarely, the hardest thing to do in professional sports.

It happened in my very last at bat. We were already down 9-0 in the bottom of the 9 th inning and there wasn’t anyone on base.

A meaningless home run that made the score 9-1 when the Yankees won the World Series.

Five minutes later the game was over, the season was over and my career was over.

But for Cole Davis, it’s all just beginning.

Hell, he probably wasn’t even out of diapers during my rookie season.

He rounds third and heads for home and, just as he crosses home plate, he turns toward us, looks me dead in the eye and points.

The little fuck.

Yeah, I want to manage this kid.

I lean toward Frankie and say, “He reminds me of me.”

“Yeah, except he’s a switch hitter.”

“Show off.”

She laughs and her shoulder bumps into mine as the next batter makes the final out of the inning and she finishes up her scoring.

“What do you think so far?”

“Can’t tell a lot in one half inning.”

“You know a lot of kids that can take 101 to dead center from the left side?”

“Fair point.”

“Anyway, the homer was impressive, but I think his work behind the plate is even more valuable. Look at his framing, it’s so subtle,” she says, her chin brushing against the top of my shoulder as she does, nodding out to the field where Esposito is set to pitch.

“He can turn a ball into a strike with just the slightest movement of his wrist. Fools the umpire almost every time.”

“Yeah,” I say, holding a hand out in front of me like I’m about to catch a ball, demonstrating the twist of my wrist in a motion that mimics how I used to create the visual illusion for the umpire that a borderline pitch was actually a strike, giving my pitcher the advantage.

It’s a dying art, one that will probably go away entirely once they have cameras calling balls and strikes instead.

“When I got to college, I had a coach that insisted that just yanking it back into the strike zone was better,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I literally had to do a video presentation to show him.”

“Don’t even get me started on that bullshit. Are the umpires fooled by it? Sometimes, but if you’re consistently framing it right, the amount of calls you’ll get the benefit of the doubt on are so much higher.”

Davis receives another pitch from Esposito framing it, but it’s a little too obvious. Ball four and the batter can take first. I click my tongue. “That wasn’t bad, but he’d do better to just gently lift with the wrist. Once they see your elbow is moving, you’re toast.”

She mimics me, left hand out, “Show me?”

I reach for it, covering it with my own.

My hand fully encases hers, guiding her wrist in the subtle turn that served me well behind the plate, but when my thumb brushes against the inside of her wrist and her breathing hitches, a soft little gasp that draws my gaze from our hands to her face, searching there for what she might be thinking.

Last night she said no and I respect that, even if I slipped a bit earlier by calling her beautiful, but she asked me to touch her just now and now all I can envision is sitting back against my headboard, Frankie resting against my chest, my body curved around her, my hand guiding hers down between her legs before begging her to show me exactly how she likes to be touched, snaking an arm around her waist to hold her to me while I watch her get herself off.

Crack!

The unmistakable sound of ball hitting bat jolts us both back to reality and I’m a little stunned at just how close we’d gotten, her nose brushing mine as she pulls away and my gaze follows hers out to the outfield, where a ball bounces off the wall in center.

One of the kids we’re here to look at, Xander Greene, fields it cleanly and fires it back in toward the infield.

“He can throw,” I mutter, standing with the rest of the crowd as the ball comes in to home, Esposito, the pitcher ,backing up the plate, but Davis receives it, shifts his weight and tags the runner smoothly.

He’s out, but the play doesn’t stop there; the guy who hit it is trying to motor into second base, but Davis doesn’t hesitate, sending a missile to second to nail the runner there.

Inning over in impressive as all fuck fashion.

“Just the way you drew it up,” Frankie says with a laugh, clapping at their efforts as Davis and Esposito wait for Greene to come in from the outfield and high five him before they all disappear back into the dugout. She quickly updates her scorebook, biting her lip to tamp down her smile.

“You might be right about these kids.”

Her head lifts and her face lights up so thoroughly at that, I’m confused.

Tell her she’s the most beautiful woman in any room she walks into and I get a simple thank you.

Tell her she’s right about three minor leaguers’ potential to break into the big leagues next season and her smile is brighter than the shine on any World Series ring.

It’s confusing as hell. Not that I don’t approve of her priorities.

It’s just normally, if I can’t get a woman out of my head, I make a move, but that isn’t an option here.

“It’ll be a learning curve, but I think this plan of yours, it might actually work. Should we tell them the good news?”

“We’ll take them to dinner after the game,” she says. “We’ll let them know they’re going to have an opportunity this spring, no guarantees.”

The Desert Dogs are up by a run going into the late innings of the game and Esposito is cruising along.

“This kid’s stuff is fire.”

Frankie clicks her tongue. “It is, but they should pull him.”

“What? Why?”

She shows me her phone where real time game analytics are being spit out onto her screen. It feels just like it used to back when I was playing, my instincts screaming one thing at me while her data said something else.

“Spin rate is down on his slider – it’s a sign of fatigue. I don’t have access to our biometric data in the stands, but I bet his shoulder is dropping down just a little too.”

“They still aren’t making hard contact and—” I start to say that Esposito’s making the other team look silly when . . .

Crack!

The next pitch is launched deep to centerfield. Greene gets a great read on it and makes the catch, nearly crashing into the wall as he does.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“Yeah, I know, it’s really annoying,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice as she says it, “how I’m always right.”

“Incredibly annoying, but I know when I’m beat. We’ll do it your way, Sullivan.”

“I appreciate that, but make sure you keep pushing back, okay?”

“What ,do you like fighting with me or something?” I ask, turning to look down at her just in time to see a flush spreading across her cheeks.

“The human element is important too. There are things numbers can’t tell you and, if I’m going to trust anyone’s instincts, I guess yours are pretty good.”

“High praise,” I quip, fighting down the urge to say it with my lips brushing her ear before trailing the kiss down to the underside of her jaw to see if I can make that soft blush deepen.

I snap myself out of it just in time to focus my gaze back onto the field when she turns toward me.

“Don’t get used to it,” she mutters, but that smile is definitely still there.

The Desert Dogs end up losing the game, but it doesn’t matter, not really. It’s an exhibition league, at its best, but looking at the three young men we’re here to see, you’d have no idea that the game didn’t even count.