A Season of Daring Greatly

  And she would smile, and nod, and be impeccably polite—and pretty much ignore every word of it.

  Today, waiting outside the diamond, along with the usual group of parents, as well as a bunch of people from the high school, there were—as was almost always the case—a few little girls, who would stare at her with complete, utter, and somewhat unsettling awe. And yeah, the usual collection of baseball people was even bigger than usual. She recognized quite a few of them, and suspected that the skinny guy with glasses and a notebook might be from Sports Illustrated, because apparently, they were planning to do a big pre-draft story on her. There were several other reporters, but they were mostly local. She also noticed an unfamiliar tall man in a dark green polo shirt, who carried himself like an aging athlete. He was standing with the scouts, and she’d seen him with a radar gun between innings at one point, so he was probably from one of the teams, and she had just never met him before. But, she definitely saw people from the Orioles, the White Sox, the Mariners, the Rockies, the Mets, the Astros, and the Brewers—and even though she was used to having them show up, it was still pretty cool.

  Could he be from the Red Sox? No, she’d met the Red Sox area scout plenty of times, and they had even worked her out with a bunch of other Rhode Island high school and college players up at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, although she was almost positive that they didn’t have much interest in drafting her.

  “Hey, Number Twenty-eight!” a male voice yelled from somewhere up near the top of the bleachers. “You suck!”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone was a critic.

  “You wicked suck!” he said, and the guys sitting near him—most of whom were on the football team—laughed.

  She made a quick gesture towards her mother, who was making her way through the crowd.

  “Right,” the guy said. “You stink, Number Twenty-eight!”

  Better.

  “With friends like that,” her mother said wryly.

  Best friends, even. One of her best friends, anyway. She’d known Greg since kindergarten, and luckily, he had never gone through that “girls are icky and have cooties and I can’t be seen with one” phase, so they had been able to sail right through junior high and high school with no strife whatsoever. It also helped that he was the school’s top quarterback, and that they had always spent hours doing things like long toss and running together.

  “How was your book?” Jill asked.

  Her mother flushed a little. “You were on deck. I don’t have to pay attention when you’re on deck.”

  As a rule, her mother would read or grade papers during games, except when Jill was actually pitching or hitting. “What if I have complicated rituals? And tics?” Jill asked. “You might miss seeing them.”

  Her mother nodded. “Yes, that would be awful.”

  Such enthusiasm. “You really should be capturing every minute on video, so we can watch the games over and over at night, and on weekends, and just, you know, revel in it all,” Jill said.

  Her mother looked considerably less than captivated by that idea.

  “Hey, Number Twenty-eight, you gorgeous creature!” Greg shouted, and threw a Twinkie at her.

  Oh, excellent, she was starving. She caught it, and started to open the wrapper—but she would look like an idiot if she were gulping down junk food in front of the scouts. So, she stuck it into the elbow part of her ice wrap, instead.

  “Where’s Theo?” she asked. Her big brother, who she had seen leaning against the right field fence, staring at his phone for the first couple of innings, before he wandered off.

  “Off writing a poem, or some such, I expect,” her mother said.

  Jill grinned. Theo was a sophomore at MIT—and suddenly madly in love with a fellow aeronautics and astronautics major, who was his first serious girlfriend. She was from Seattle, but had gone away to spend the summer with her grandparents in South Korea. So, Theo had been moping—and texting and emailing and Facebook messaging—constantly, ever since he’d come home at the end of the semester.

  “‘Filthy’ is good, right?” her mother said in a low voice.

  With the presumption that she meant that in a baseball context. Jill nodded. “Yeah. Who said it?”

  “The one in the green shirt,” her mother said. “He described your curve as ‘positively filthy.’”

  Well, that sounded pretty damn encouraging.

  People were starting to swarm around now, but she saw that a little girl, maybe eight years old, had ventured to within about fifteen feet, but didn’t seem to have the nerve to come any closer.

  Maybe it wasn’t a good sign when one’s very presence frightened small children.

  Jill walked over. “Hi,” she said.

  All she got back was a shy half-smile, and the girl glanced at a man—presumably her father—who gave her an encouraging nod.

  “Did you enjoy the game?” Jill asked.

  A much more vigorous nod this time.

  “Well, I’m glad you could come,” Jill said. “Do you play baseball?”

  The little girl shook her head.

  Sprout had left her gear on the bottom row of the bleachers, and she opened up the bag, looking for a ball that was in decent shape. “Here,” she said, and handed it to the girl. “I’ll bet you can get someone in your family, or a friend, to play catch with you.”

  “I don’t know how,” the girl said, her voice so quiet that Jill had to lean down to hear her.

  “No problem,” Jill said. “You’ll learn.” She took the ball back to demonstrate. “Hold it this way when you throw, and you’ll be in good shape.”

  The girl beamed, and tried it for herself.

  “That’s right,” Jill said, and adjusted her thumb slightly. “It’s perfect, just like that. Have fun, okay?”

  “Thank you,” the girl said, and then hurried off, holding up the baseball to show her father, already practicing her new grip.

  Mr. Friedman, the generally harried school athletic director, was waving her over, and Jill shrugged apologetically at her mother and headed in that direction. She would rather go sit with her friends for a while, but it was nice of him to run interference for her—which was taking a lot more of his time this year than it had in the past, since post-game informal press conferences had become the norm. There were always at least two local police officers at all of her games now, too, and usually several more. People from her father’s National Guard unit would also show up, and while some of them probably only came to see her play, she was pretty sure that others wanted to act as an extra level of security, against the occasional loons who would arrive at games with protest signs or scream “You’re ruining baseball, you bitch!” and other sorts of invective at her.

  She nodded at the people in the crowd she already knew, and let Mr. Friedman introduce her to everyone else. Some of the other players—from both teams—were lurking around wistfully, and she felt a little guilty that it was so very clear that the scouts and coaches and agents and media people were only there to see her.

  “Anything going on with your arm?” the guy from the Astros asked—and everyone’s attention noticeably sharpened.

  Yeah, the ice packs probably looked ominous. Jill shook her head. “No, I’m fine, thanks. But, I got it for Christmas”—from her baseball-loving Uncle Bob—“and it’s nifty, so I like to wear it after games.”

  Funny, how their postures all instantly seemed to relax.

  “How do you feel about losing the no-hitter?” a woman from the Narragansett Times asked.

  Cheated. Bitter. Enraged.

  Or maybe just—irked.

  Besides, what bunt? She’d already forgotten about the damn thing.

  Completely.

  “All that matters is that we won,” Jill said. “The guys played great defense behind me, Leonard called a really good game, and Francisco got the big hit today. So, you should really be talking to those guys, not to me.”

  Which did not result in a stampede to go interview any
of them, unfortunately.

  So, she spent the next twenty minutes or so exchanging pleasantries, introducing her mother to various people, cordially rebuffing the agents and managers who offered, as always, “to serve in a purely advisory capacity during this complicated time in your life,” telling the college coaches that yes, as things currently stood, she still planned to honor her verbal commitment to Stanford, and so on. The scout from the Orioles asked if she were open to the idea of going down to Baltimore for a last-minute pitching session, and the one from the Brewers wanted to know if it would be possible to set up a workout at the URI baseball complex. She said yes to the latter, as long as it was on her regular bullpen day, and suggested that the guy from the Orioles come, too, if he wanted.

  NCAA amateur status rules, and pre-draft protocol, were so damn complicated, that if she accepted every offer she had gotten to go to Camden Yards or wherever—and perform like a little show pony in front of a group of frowning front office people and high-level scouts—it would have cost her mother a lot of money. Travel teams, and showcases, and private lessons were also incredibly expensive, which was another reason she had mostly avoided doing any of that. And it had always made her feel sad to watch guys with minimal talent who wanted to play so much, and worked incredibly hard, day after day, all year long, and spent thousands of dollars—and would be lucky if they even ended up walking on at an obscure DII college someday.

  For some reason, the African-American guy in the dark green polo shirt seemed to be hanging back, quietly observing. As far as she could tell, the other scouts were treating him with a certain amount of deference—which was intriguing.

  Once everyone else had pretty much drifted off—although a few of the agents and reporters were still lingering nearby—the man approached her, holding out his hand.

  “Hi, I’m Bill Norcross,” he said, with a slight Texas accent. “Cincinnati Reds.”

  She had met the Reds’ regional scout before—a guy named Jerry—and filled out the usual team questionnaire, and took a fairly long written psychological test, in addition to the universal one the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau had already had her do at one point. Most of the other area scouts had asked her to complete similar paperwork, including medical information and the results of her most recent eye exam.

  “Hello, sir.” She shook his hand. “I’m Jill Cafferty.”

  He didn’t do a double take—but he definitely blinked, and glanced down at her hand. Which people always did, and she had to force herself not to hide her hands self-consciously. Because, okay, they were large.

  “It’s hereditary,” she said, making a concerted effort not to blush. “In fact, um, historically, many of the Bryant”—her mother’s maiden name—“women play the harp.”

  “We’ve had some wonderful pianists, too,” her mother said, from somewhere behind her.

  Her mother’s hands were pretty big, but not as big as hers were. It was embarrassing, when people noticed and stared—but awesome, when it came to things like being able to throw a serious curveball, and just generally getting a lot of extra movement on her pitches.

  Mr. Norcross stepped forward. “Dr. Cafferty, I’m Bill Norcross, with the Cincinnati Reds.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Norcross,” her mother said. “And I certainly appreciate your coming to watch my daughter pitch.”

  “I’m glad I got a chance to see her. You can read reports and look at film all day long, but seeing a player in person is a whole different thing.” Mr. Norcross grinned. “They weren’t exaggerating, either. Perfect mechanics, repeatable delivery, command of all three pitches—” He shook his head. “Hell—I mean, uh, shoot, you’ve even got some pop in your bat.”

  She had been hit by a pitch, but she’d also had a double to the gap in left-center, and a line drive right down the first baseline—a clean single, which she had stretched into another double. After which, she stole third, and scored on a sacrifice fly. “Are you an area scout, sir?” she asked.

  He smiled slightly, and shook his head.

  That meant that he must be a cross checker. No MLB team went to the trouble of sending a national cross checker, unless they were genuinely serious about drafting someone. She felt her heart speeding up—and hoped that he couldn’t tell.

  “I’m actually the director of amateur scouting,” he said.

  Here? In Rhode Island? At this crummy little late season makeup game that didn’t even matter, because her school hadn’t made the playoffs this year—much to her frustration?

  Wow.

  Or, more accurately, double wow.

  The best bet was to refocus, and she gestured towards the radar gun one of the other scouts was packing into a laptop bag. “Where was I today, sir?” she asked.

  “Pretty consistently sitting between eighty-nine and ninety-one, but I had you at ninety-three at least twice,” Mr. Norcross said.

  She must have had some extra adrenaline going, because ninety-two was generally where she topped out. “How about the change?” she asked.

  “Mostly about eighty-five,” he said, “but I saw you as low as seventy-six.”

  That was really good, but not as much consistent separation as she wanted.

  “How often were you holding back, because the kid catcher couldn’t handle the pitches?” he asked.

  Too often. Teams had gotten more baserunners on third-strike passed balls than actual hits against her this season, which had privately been very frustrating, because every time she had to adjust for him, she was hurting her own prospects. “He tries really hard,” she said.

  “But, you have to throw at maybe seventy-five percent more often than you want,” Mr. Norcross said.

  She nodded.

  “Out of curiosity, what did you do wrong today?” he asked.

  With scouts, it was safe to assume that every question was a test of some kind. When they had first started showing up, early in her junior year, she had always been really nervous and not sure what to say. Now, though, she just told the truth. “I think I balked on the second pick-off throw, and I tipped a couple of the curveballs, but I don’t know if they figured it out,” she said. In fact, she was pretty sure that no one other than the scouts had noticed. “And I probably should have buzzed someone, after they plunked me in the third.”

  That got her mother’s attention. “Would you have, if I hadn’t been at the game?” she asked.

  Yes. “Probably, yeah,” Jill said. “But, only from the midsection down.”

  Her mother frowned at her.

  For Christ’s sakes, the other pitcher had blatantly thrown at her, probably because she had driven in two runs during the previous at bat. “They really shouldn’t throw at me,” she said, mildly. “I don’t care for it at all.”

  Her mother was still frowning, but Mr. Norcross looked amused.

  She had decided against hitting the guy, but had taken very great pleasure in utterly buckling his knees with a couple of curves, and striking him out three times.

  Her mother focused on Mr. Norcross. “I assume you know that she has a scholarship to Stanford?”

  Actually, what she had was a guaranteed freshman year, with a possibility that the scholarship might be renewed each year after that. But, it wasn’t an argument worth having—again—especially since her mother was a professor and knew perfectly damn well how it worked.

  Mr. Norcross nodded. “Yes. And your daughter could develop very well there. But, given their current roster and their coaching philosophy, she isn’t likely to get much playing time until at least her junior year, and that could put her at a disadvantage.”

  “My primary concern is that she gets the best possible education,” her mother said. “And I feel quite strongly about this.”

  Talk about an understatement. Jill resisted the urge to sigh. Yes, she wanted to go to college—but, no, she didn’t want to roll the dice and hope to be drafted four years from now. Too many things could go wrong, and she might not ever hav
e a chance to—

  “And if her baseball scholarship isn’t renewed for some reason, the women’s basketball coach has already pointed out that her office is right down the hall,” her mother said.

  Yeah. And she liked basketball, a lot. She was even very good at basketball.

  But, it wasn’t baseball. Had never come close, for her.

  “Obviously, this is something only you and your family can decide together,” Mr. Norcross said. “But, I can’t stress enough how impressed we are by her potential, and—” He stopped, let out his breath, and then looked directly at her mother. “This is something very special, Dr. Cafferty. Your daughter has a chance to make history, and—well, quite frankly, I really hope that the Cincinnati Reds can be part of that.”

  Her mother looked right back at him. “Do you have children, Mr. Norcross?”

  He nodded. “I do. Two little girls.”

  “Knowing the incredible scrutiny and pressure and expectations they were going to face, and how burdensome and difficult it was almost certainly going to be, would you want one of them to be the person to make this particular bit of history?” her mother asked, not sounding terribly friendly.

  That was a pretty interesting question, all things considered.

  “No,” Mr. Norcross said, without hesitating. “I don’t think I would.”

  Wait, he had actually just said something to further discourage her mother? Seriously? Jill wanted to point out that maybe her opinion mattered more than anyone else’s in this situation, and that it was her life—but, she would probably sound peevish, which wouldn’t exactly improve the situation.

  At least he hadn’t made the mistake of saying—incorrectly—that it was “what her father would have wanted,” which more than one scout and coach had earnestly told her mother over the years. Unsurprisingly, that never went over well.

  “But,” he went on, “I can also tell you that when my ten-year-old found out where I was going to be today, she started sobbing hysterically, because my wife and I wouldn’t let her miss school to come on the trip and meet Jill in person.”