Page 26 of Unwritten Rules
Eugenio turns, chewing his lip. “It helps, you know? Like if I do the same things in the same order, I get more or less the same result.”
In the game earlier, Gordon hit what would have been an infield single, if not for the funny hop the ball took off a rock or a patch of hard dirt on the otherwise manicured field, scooting past the other team’s center fielder and turning into the world’s messiest triple.
“So not like baseball?” Zach says.
“Yeah, exactly.” Eugenio is smiling. His eyes flick to Zach’s, like Zach might ask him to stay.
But there’s a loud, wall-mounted clock, one that announces that it’s late. Eugenio glances at it. “I should probably get going.”
“You good to drive?” Though Eugenio only had one beer and that more than an hour ago. “You can crash on the couch if you want.” For a second, Zach contemplates the possibility of it, Eugenio staying there, Zach getting up in the middle of the night to find him awake. Zach inviting him to sleep in his bed, because he sleeps better with someone next to him.
A fantasy, one as improbable as fielding the last out of the World Series. It vanishes when Eugenio says, “No, I’m good.” A disappointment, an inevitable one, made worse by the way Eugenio is looking at him, like he’s expecting something else in the way of a goodbye.
“Here, let me get the door,” Zach says.
Eugenio collects the bags he brought and Zach’s repeated thanks and goes. And Zach stands out on his porch for a long time after he’s left, well after the taillights of Eugenio’s truck have faded into the darkness.
Chapter Nine
It’s midmorning when D’Spara comes by the bullpen, chomping on Tums and frowning vaguely.
“Work with him on his tipping.” He nods to where Johnson is out on the tilted bullpen mound, preparing for their throwing session.
They get set up, Zach squatting, and Johnson going into his elaborate windup, still young enough that he has to contort his limbs in order to generate the power necessary to throw. Some baseball hack once wrote that Braxton, early in his career, had a delivery like casting a half-busted fishing reel. Johnson looks the same—both the contortions and the potential for greatness.
“You’re fluttering your glove,” Zach says, when Johnson is about to deliver his curveball. “The last two fingers in particular. You don’t on your fastball.”
Johnson goes into his windup and he does it again, his glove’s exaggerated leather fingers wiggling.
“Here.” Zach gets up, grabbing a pack of the neon stickers he wears on his fingernails so that pitchers can see his signs. He slaps two on Johnson’s glove. “Keep an eye on how those move.”
Johnson does, practically putting his nose in his glove.
“I didn’t say sniff ’em,” Zach says.
“It’s hard, keeping my hand steady.” Johnson’s next pitch goes wide of Zach, and Zach doesn’t bother to do anything other than watch it as it bounces. He throws another, and this one goes even wider than the first. And then another. Once is a coincidence, but three times is probably a pattern, and Zach unfolds himself from his crouch. “Try wiggling your glove on your fastball instead.”
Johnson does, wiggling his glove in an exaggerated movement. But he delivers his fastball where Zach had indicated he should, and that at least is progress.
“Feels weird,” Johnson says, after a while. “A little like I’m, I don’t know, lying somehow.”
“I think it’s called deception. I hear that’s important for pitchers.”
“Must be kind of hard, lying all the time.”
And that makes Zach stop, because clearly the kid has something to say and has been waiting for an opportunity to say it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He tries to keep his voice even, wondering if Johnson knows,howJohnson knows, like Zach doesn’t keep his phone locked, doesn’t clear his browser history daily, doesn’t delete his text threads and hide whatever apps in a folder called “utilities” that requires a passcode to access it. A hot wash of anxiety, one that begins in his stomach and elevates into his chest.
“Just that I heard some of the front office guys talking about how much they’re making. Like, their salaries. I shouldn’t say anything about it.” Johnson grabs a drink and gulps half of it down in one swallow. He doesn’t seem to notice that Zach’s heart rate spiked or that it settles now. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity to play. Some guys dream their whole lives of being here.”
It’s bullshit, the kind of bullshit that players spout at beat reporters and not their catch partners, and Johnson knows it, because he continues. “But we aren’t getting paid. And my bonus covers some stuff, but it’s not enough to send home. There’s this loan company that’ll give me an advance.”
“Donottake out a loan from those fucking sharks.”
“Yeah, Miss Morgan told me the same thing when I asked her. I’d play better if I wasn’t worried about it. If I didn’t have to go and work another couple hours every night. I said something to Coach—”
Zach winces.
