Page 7 of Diamond Ring
Four innings into their first start together, Alex’s confidence—and nerves—are fraying. He adjusts his chest protector again, pulling it out from where it’s sweat-stuck to his jersey, then puts down a series of signs to avoid giving the pitch type away to the runner standing on second. His signs culminate in a finger pointed toward the dirt to indicate a fastball. Sixty feet away on the mound, Jake shakes his head. Again. It’s been like this all game. Jake, accommodating, media-trained,likableJake, shaking him off.
Fine, if Jake wants to throw a changeup, Alex’ll call for one. See if he cares. Alex puts down another sign sequence, waving three fingers, tapping them against his thighs to show pitch location. Except Jake shakes his head again.
Alex can’t call time, can’t jog out to the mound, not when he’s already gone out there twice. Can’t annoy an already annoyed umpire because an annoyed umpire isn’t a strike-calling umpire, and Alex needs him to call strikes. This might be Jake’s first start, but the team will allow him his mistakes.Rookies just have to figure stuff out.Ignoring, of course, that Alex is a rookie too.
Alex goes through the sequence again, sandwiching the real sign, a flash of one irritated finger, between a few decoys. Even the batter must hear his frustrated grunt because he glances back.
Yeah, fuck you too. Alex readies his mitt to catch a fastball.
Or would.
If Jake threw one. Instead, the pitch comes in a changeup, slower than a fastball and with a late dive to it that skids by Alex, rolling toward the backstop. Alex scrambles, managing to get his mitt around it, but not before the runner on second advances to third.
To make things worse, the official scorer deems it a passed ball not a wild pitch. So officially Alex’s fault. Fantastic.
He calls time, giving the umpire aPitchers, you know?look that probably just looks pissed off. Which he is.
When he gets out to the mound, Jake’s already got his glove by his mouth. An apology at the ready. “Sorry.” He sounds like a teenager being caught after curfew, probably something neither of them ever did—Jake because he wouldn’t and Alex because he didn’t have one.
Alex was in the minors for four years. He’s handled pitchers who were hardheaded and those who were pushovers. Never one who was both at the same time. “You gonna throw what I call?”
He expects withering agreement. Stepped-up defiance. Certainly not a shrug of Jake’s beam-wide shoulders. “If you call for the right thing.”
“Which is what?”
“A curveball.”
“This guy eats curveballs for breakfast.”
“Yeah, well”—Jake tilts his head unaccommodatingly—“he hasn’t seenmycurveball yet.”
Alex almost wants to laugh. Because the persona Jake shows the rest of the world is clearly a put-on. If Alex wasn’t so frustrated by it, it might make him like Jake more. As it is they have a game to play.
“Next pitch curveball.” Alex waits two beats to see if Jake will argue, before he jogs toward home plate and whatever the game has in store for them.
“I got this round.” Jake has his wallet out before Alex can offer to pay. Not like Jake doesn’t owe him for the grief of the first few innings. It was, if not smooth sailing after that, at least less choppy waters, all culminating in awin. Alex might have finished the game wrung out and sweat-soaked, but he’s been floating ever since, through their postgame media scrum, through scrubbing ballpark dirt off in the shower, through accepting Jake’s invitation togoout, like Alex could be contained by the four walls of his hotel room.
Jake picked a place that’s veryJake. Bad music blasts over the sound system. The beer tastes like a frat house. Alex can’t bring himself to complain, especially not when the bartender gives Jake the eye as if checking him out—which Jake preens at—then asks to see his ID.
He goes a terrific shade of red. If Alex wasn’t already having one of the best nights of his life, that might put it over the top.
They get beers and drink. Alex tries to radiate the kind of straight-guy energy that also dissuades women from thinking he’s interested in them. Standing in Jake’s literal shadow helps. For a while, the night is a swirl of people who recognize Jake and who make vague’sup dudenoises at Alex.
A few things get shoved Jake’s way to sign. He pulls a Sharpie from his pants pocket—because of course he carries one—and scrawls his signature on a cocktail napkin. He recaps the Sharpie, then taps it insistently against Alex’s knuckles where they’re curled around his glass.
“What?” Alex says.
“You’re not going to sign too?” Jake raps him again like he’s making a point.
Alex does, a scrawling, indecipherableAngelidesnext to the practiced, curving loops of Jake’s signature.
“You think that’ll be worth something someday?” Jake asks when the autograph hunters leave, when he procures two barstools seated under a TV that’s playing highlights of their game.
“It’s got your name on it. So probably.”
Jake makes a disapproving noise. “You’re here too, you know.”
The TV switches from their game to their postgame interviews. A reporter wearing a fusty jacket with actual elbow patches aims a question at Jake.How’d it feel to get your first big-league win?A few seconds later the feed cuts to Alex.How’d it feel to help Fischer notch his first big-league win?
