The Gift

CHAPTER 2

That night Tommy lay awake in bed, thinking about his crumbling baseball career. He considered it amazing that he was playing professionally at all.

Back in high school, he never pitched regularly until his senior year. He was erratic on the mound, often losing the strike zone.

But midway through his senior year, the convergence of growth and fortune helped map out an unlikely future. A growth spurt pushed him up to an imposing height of six-foot-three, and his arm grew stronger. He started to throw strikes and found more bite on his curveball. All of a sudden he had considerable upside as a baseball player.

One day, an old man attended one of his Newnan High games. That man was known as a “bird dog,” a part-time scout who works for an area scout. Bird dogs hope to spot a hidden gem, or someone with potential, and alert the area scout. They often beat the bushes at high-school games and summer leagues, mainly because they love watching baseball.

The bird dog invited Tommy to an open tryout in Rome, Georgia, telling him there would be scouts from the Braves in attendance. Hundreds of hopefuls sometimes showed up at open tryouts, but only a few were considered serious prospects. Tommy was allowed to pitch to three batters and struck out the side. He wasn’t considered a prospect yet, but he was on their radar.

Then he pitched well in the state playoffs as a senior, grabbing a little more attention. In one game he struck out fourteen in a two-hit shutout. Tommy couldn’t throw ninety miles per hour, but there was potential.

When the Braves drafted him, they sent him directly to Single-A instructional league. Even though he was starting at rock bottom, he couldn’t wait for his first professional uniform.

After finally falling asleep in the wee hours, Tommy woke up late the following morning, staring at the ceiling from his old mattress lying on the floor. He called his nine-by-ten-foot room “the broom closet.” Yet as cramped as it was, he preferred having his own place, rather than living with five other guys, like many of his teammates did. It was a place of his own, and he could take a girl back there if he ever got the opportunity. The room rented for only $300 a month.

He fumbled through his clothes that were scattered to the left of the mattress, and found his cell phone under his pants. No new calls or messages. He called Regency Hospital, but Eduardo had already been released.

Eduardo must have been okay, so he went back to worrying about his sagging baseball career. Time to take care of Number One again.

He tried to shake off the cobwebs from his evening at Champs and rode his bicycle to the ballpark early, even though he wasn’t scheduled to pitch that night. He had to see Skeeter Jones, the Peaches’ pitching coach. Skeeter was sitting in the dugout three hours before the game, going over some pitching charts. Tommy sat down next to him.

“Skeeter, did you notice anything wrong with my delivery last night? See any mechanical errors I can correct?”

Jones glanced up at Tommy and pulled off his black-framed reading glasses. He hesitated for a minute. Tommy squirmed during the silence.

“Tommy, Tom Seaver once said there are three components to pitching: velocity, location, and movement. Right now, you don’t have any of the three.”

He slapped Tommy on the back and erupted into a hearty laugh, but Tommy failed to see the humor in the situation.

“Now, Seaver used to say velocity might be the least important of the three, but we clocked you at eighty-four miles per hour on the radar gun last night. That ain’t gonna get the job done, even in the minors.”

Tommy lowered his head and looked away.

“I don’t want to discourage you, son, but maybe you just don’t have a major-league arm.”

The pitcher was silent. He was watching his dream get stomped on right before his eyes.

“This is a tough business,” Skeeter added. “Only about one out of every ten ballplayers drafted ever makes it to the big leagues.”

“I knew that when I signed. But I know I can pitch better than last night.”

“You know what? Billy the batboy might be able to pitch better than you did last night,” Skeeter said, lowering his laugh to a chuckle this time. Tommy felt like getting up and leaving, but the coach quickly made an effort to comfort him, patting him softly on the knee.

“Y’all need to keep working at it. I can’t help you today; I’ve got to go meet with Harrison, our starter tonight. But I can see you tomorrow and we’ll go over some things in practice.”

Tommy nodded. He just hoped he’d still be on the Macon Peaches roster when Thursday arrived. Skeeter wasn’t exactly reassuring. At a time when he desperately needed a confidence boost, he was being treated like a joke.

“Make sure you get your throwing in today,” Skeeter called out as they parted ways. “Just light tossing.”

Tommy waved back from shallow left field. He took that as a morsel of encouragement.