Page 6 of The Problem with Players

“You’re right.” He moved over to me, placed his hands against my shoulders, and kissed me. “I’m wrong.” He kissed me again. “I’m sorry.”Kiss.“Forgive me.”

I grumbled but kissed him back. “Fine. But only if you watch the replays from the game tonight.”

“Deal. But tell me… What did you think of my friends?”

I liked Lance and Patrick. They were funny and down-to-earth in a way that I appreciated. But Drew? Yeah, screw her. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, though, because that seemed mean, and I was almost certain he’d just chalk it up to me being insecure. Nothing drove me crazier than the idea of a man thinking I was insecure due to him.

Still, I didn’t want to lie because that seemed wrong, too. So I told him the only thing I could think to say. “They’re smart,” I complimented them. “Very, very smart.”

He smiled as a burst of pride shot through his system. “I know, right?”

2

AVERY

After the Super Bowl, I went straight into my favorite season: baseball. I was head of the physical education department at our town’s high school, and for the past five years, I’d been the assistant coach for our baseball team. That was until this year, when Head Coach Erikson stepped down, giving me a real shot at running the team. Over the past few years, my sisters considered me the head coach even though it wasn’t an official title. Coach Erikson made sure to keep me beneath him, making it hard for me to help the team.

He had a lot of old-school coaching thoughts. He was in his late sixties, and he and I butted heads often. I was looking forward to proving that the Honey Creek Hornets weren’t a bad team—they simply had bad leadership behind them.

The first weeks of February were our preseason, and I was thrilled to get started again. I took pride in the sport more than anything even though our team wasn’t the best. Still, we had some pretty impressive players I thought could make it to the big leagues. I believed in those boys and knew they could do amazing things on the field if given the right direction.

Cameron Fisher was one of those players. At least he had been until he went through a big personal loss last semester. I could see it in his game that losing his mother did quite a number on him. I was still trying to figure out how best to help the kid, seeing how he was a junior now and scouts were highly interested in his game. That was until recently.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…

Oh balls. The kid was going to cry.

Cameron stood at the plate, biting his bottom lip to push down the tears cooking in the back of his eyes. He was already two strikes down, and based on his lip-biting and elbow-trembling, he was about to get his third out.

Lately, Cameron has had stage fright. He was easily the best player on the team. That boy could hit a home run with his eyes closed during baseball practice, yet when it came to playing against another team, he froze up like a TV dinner left in the back of a freezer for over a year.

I sat in the dugout with my hands clenched together, silently chanting the same thing I chanted every time Cameron was up to bat.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…

He stepped into his batting stance and held his bat in the perfect position. His fellow teammates cheered him on, clapping from the dugout. They knew exactly what I knew was about to happen, but they still cheered him on because that meant being a good teammate.

I glanced at the scouts in the stands. What an awful game to come see Cameron play. He was better than this, but all they were seeing was the opposite of that fact. It wasn’t fair, but the kid was living too much in his head and not enough in his heart as of late. I didn’t blame him. After I lost my mother, I moved through life as if in quicksand, getting nowhere at all. Still, I hated that it was happening to Cameron at such a defining moment of his baseball career.

The scouts were early anyway. We were still in preseason, and these games didn’t count for much.

Cameron took a deep breath as I held mine.

The pitch was released, Cameron swung, and he missed.

A swing and a miss.

Damn.

The crowd from the opposite team erupted with cheers while our small handful of fans booed. The loudest boos came from Cameron’s own father, Adam Fisher, who stood in the stands, probably drunk.

“What was that, Cam? Dammit!” Adam shouted, gesturing as if the greatest tragedy had just taken place. “Come on!”

The look on the scouts’ faces told me everything I needed to know as they packed up their stuff and left the stands. They’d seen enough, which upset me because they didn’t see anywhere near enough of that kid. He was so much more talented than his current grief-stricken state.

I found my father in the stands, too. Daddy had attended every home game since I started five years ago. He gave me a small smile and shrugged. I could hear his comments without him even speaking: “You win some, you lose some, but no matter what, you keep playing the game.”

Matthew Kingsley was the father of the century. He got me into the sport, and his quiet support kept me going throughout the season. I only wish Adam Fisher had taken a note out of my father’s handbook of supportive parenting.

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