Page 27 of Catching Dreams

He took his stance and gave me a cocky smile as he released the ball. It landed square in my glove with a whack! I fell backward from the momentum of the throw, not expecting it.

“Holy cow, Coop!” I cried out as I sat back up. “Where did that come from?”

“Snyder and I have been working on faster rotation of my shoulder, along with extra arm conditioning, and it’s been helping a lot. I can only do that with my fastball, but the guys clocked it at 97, which is my fastest time so far. I want to hit triple digits.”

“Bro, that’s amazing!” I said. “Let’s do that again when I’m more prepared for your heat.”

“Hold up! Let me get the radar gun! I want to see how fast it is!” Ian said as he ran into the locker room. He soon came back on the field and positioned himself behind me.

Cooper nodded, took his wind-up stance, and threw the fastball straight into my glove. It stung my hand, but I couldn’t help but grin. It was fast and accurate, not an easy thing to do.

“That was super, Cooper!” Ivan said while walking over to him.

“You guys aren’t going to believe this!” Ian exclaimed. “99 miles per hour, man!”

“Super Cooper!” I said, and we all rushed the mound to congratulate him. “That’s a nickname that is going to stick!”

“I love it!” Hayden agreed.

“I love it, too!” Cooper said with a huge grin on his face.

We had Cooper pitch several more times, and I couldn’t believe it. He was consistently at 93-99 miles per hour. I knew with more conditioning and practice; he would consistently hit 100 plus miles per hour. He could make it to the bigs before any of the rest of us. A closer that could pitch that fast and with accuracy was rare.

“What time is it?” I asked. I was already itching to see Molly again. I wondered if she was okay going through the debris of her bakery and home. As I thought about her, my phone rang, and I pulled it out of my back pocket.

“Hello?” I asked, not recognizing the phone number..

“Ty, it’s Pen. If you can, you might want to get here quickly. Molly needs you.”

“I’m on my way! What happened?” I asked as I quickly shed the catcher gear. The guys quickly came over to where I was standing and were ready to go back with me. Ian told me he’d put everything back in the locker room. I nodded my thanks to him.

“I don’t know. One of your teammates came over with a chair and umbrella and started talking to her. They went on a walk to talk about something and said they’d be back soon. She came back alone and is a mess. She is going through the piles of stuff that was salvageable but won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“They went on a walk? What for? Tell her I’m on my way.” I took off on a run and was grateful that the stadium was so close to where her bakery had been. I knew my guys were close behind me.

I stopped abruptly when I got to where Molly was and saw her visibly shaking as she rummaged through items. I went over to her, got down on my knees, and pulled her close to me in a tight embrace.

“Baby, what happened? What’s wrong?”

Molly just shook her head and wiped her eyes as if to keep the tears from falling. “I need to go through all this stuff. All these volunteers are working to help find things that I might be able to keep. I need to see what can be saved.” She tried to wriggle out of my embrace, but I held on to her tightly.

“Molly, stop!” I said, a little firmer than I would have liked. “Something happened. Talk to me.”

“Tyler, if I talk about it right now, I’m going to lose my cool. I need to go through this stuff, and then I’ll talk. I also need to process some things in my head. And trust me when I say it’s a lot to process.” Molly gave a heavy sigh, and I released her from my hold. She got up and went over to a dresser that had been recovered and appeared to still be in decent shape.

I walked over to her and kissed the top of her head. “OK. I’ll let you process things for yourself, but you have to tell me if he hurt you at all. Pen said you guys went for a walk, and you were upset when you came back.”

“He didn’t hurt me at all,” Molly said and reached up to wrap her arms around my neck. I hugged her back and sighed with relief. If he had hurt her, I’d have to go find him.

“Well, ok. Let me help you go through this stuff. We’ll work for a couple of hours, but then we need to go get some lunch. You and our babies need to eat.”

“I just had water, string cheese, and crackers on the walk. We sat and talked at the park. Luckily, the tornado missed the park.”

“Well, that’s good, but you’re still going to eat lunch in two hours. Deal?”

My wife looked up at me and nodded, “Deal. Thanks for understanding, Ty.”

“I don’t understand anything, but as long as he didn’t hurt you, I can be a patient man.”

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