Evan knew exactly how fast CJ could cut off a ball in the gap because once upon a time, he’d caught him during warm-ups every day and teased him about overreaching. He knew the small crease that formed between CJ’s brows when he was locked in, the one TV cameras never caught but Evan could see from a hundred feet away. He knew too well what it felt like to have CJ’s grin aimed only at him, warm and reckless in the dark when there wasn’t a stadium or a spotlight in sight.
That was ancient history. He’d buried it, locked it away, thrown the key in the bay.
The idea of CJ on the trade block, the idea of him ending up in San Diego? That thought was sharp enough to cut through the armor he’d spent seven years building. He shoved it down, tried to smother it under the noise of the game and the buzz of the group chat, but it lingered anyway. Quiet. Persistent. Impossible.
He grabbed his salad, eating around the tomatoes and leaving the black olives for some imaginary future version of himself that might like them. When the broadcast cut to replay packages between innings, he grabbed a breadstick and tore it in half in the dark, butter slicking his fingertips. He licked them clean and told himself that he wasn’t pathetic for watching the game alone instead of with his teammates.
At least watching alone meant he didn’t have to pretend it didn’t mean anything when his chest flickered every time the camera found right field.
The camera found it often.
Not because the production booth had a favorite but because CJ made himself relevant by force of will. He could read balls off the bat the way a catcher reads their pitcher, with their subtle shifts and tiny tells.
The trouble started in the fourth inning the way it always did, with small things stacking up into one big problem. The first batter walked on four pitches. Followed by a grounder that should have been a double play, but the shortstop read the ball wrong, leaving everyone safe. It was the kind of inning that made managers throw their hats in the dirt and turn red with rage. By the time the ball was cracked into right field, Evan already knew what was going to happen.
CJ charged hard, set his feet, and uncorked the ball home, all clean mechanics and too much confidence. The ball skid-hopped on the dirt just in front of the plate and kissed the catcher’s mitt at the wrong angle. The tag was too late and the runner was safe.The crowd roared anyway because it was CJ and they’d decided that even his misses deserved applause.
Evan leaned forward as the camera found CJ. On the screen, he crouched with his hands on his thighs, chest heaving once, eyes narrowed, with just the smallest flicker of frustration crossing his face. CJ stood and punched his mitt once, his jaw locked.
It was a familiar look, one Evan knew too well. He knew the stubborn set of CJ’s jaw and that he was forcing his body to relax so it didn’t show he was rattled. He’d seen it back in college, in cramped fields under bad lights, when CJ would rocket a ball five feet off target and then crack his knuckles, daring anyone to call it a failure. Later, in the quiet, he would admit his error only to Evan, sometimes with a laugh and sometimes with his head bowed in regret, needing someone to tell him that the error didn’t erase the player.
The analysts on TV praised CJ’s “effort” and “intent,” trying to soften the future narrative. Evan leaned back on the couch, lips pressed thin. CJ didn’t need cushioning. He would bounce back the way he always did.
He was good at that.
By the sixth inning, the score was tied two to two, the kind of tight score that made people in bars start bargaining with God and themselves—“If we win, I’ll stop drinking on weekdays.” “If we win, I’ll call my mother.”
Evan didn’t bargain. He wasn’t that kind of believer. He watched the catcher set up just off the plate and flexed his fingers around the phantom ache he knew came from catching ninety-five-mile-per-hour pitches for two and a half hours.
The seventh inning gave them a lead on a home run that carried forever before landing somewhere in the parking lot behind center field. The camera panned to Chicago’s dugout, and Evan found CJ immediately, watching him hop up anddown with his teammates as the runner rounded the bases. CJ grinned with his whole face, eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth wide enough to show the chipped incisor that had charmed and infuriated Evan in equal measure years ago.
Evan stretched his legs out on the coffee table and immediately pulled them back, the echo of his grandmother’s scolding in his ears. There was a smudge of pasta sauce on the edge of the table and he wiped it off with his thumb and sucked it clean. His apartment smelled like Italian food and the ocean outside his open window. A seagull cried with musical self-importance and, on the TV, Boston’s relief pitcher shook off two signs before nodding at a third. The catcher set his feet and framed the strike like he’d been born knowing how.
Chicago almost lost it in the eighth. A bloop. A walk. Then a clean single to the right that made the crowd swell in a way you could feel in your ribs even through speakers barely above a hush. CJ charged forward, set his feet, and fired the ball to third, the throw low and angry. The runner slid into the tag, already howling his protest and arguing his case. The third baseman was so calm he almost looked bored as he showed the ball to the ump like a magic trick. The ump punched the air to signal the out and the broadcast booth lost its collective mind about “Hartman’s cannon.”
“Cannon,” Evan scoffed. He leaned his elbows on his knees, shaking his head. It was a good throw, maybe even a perfect one, but hearing all of the praise for CJ set his teeth on edge. The words were said every time, as if they were gospel. Evan knew better. Skill mattered, but sometimes the game was luck and timing, and tonight, CJ had both.
Top of the ninth, Chicago was up two. Three outs to write a city’s memory.
It was the kind of lead that looked safe on paper, but Evan had caught too many ninth innings to know better. Two runswere a heartbeat. One mistake pitch, one bad bounce, and the whole thing could unravel before anyone had time to blink.
The first out came on a lazy pop-up that barely left the infield. The next batter went down on three pitches, hacking himself into knots, then walking back to the dugout, shaking his head and throwing his bat like it had betrayed him.
That left one.
The ballpark had gone quiet in that way a crowd of forty thousand people on the edge of a moment does. There were still pockets of noise, shouts and chants and the beat of a drum in the bleachers. But under it all was the collective hush of an entire stadium inhaling and refusing to let go. Coaches leaned against dugout rails, fielders crouched with their gloves low, and through the screen, it felt like the stadium itself was waiting to see what came next.
Evan watched the ball leave the pitcher’s hand in a clean white blur, and time stood still. In that split second between release and contact, nobody moved, nobody breathed. An entire season, entire careers and futures, hung in the sliver of air where fate had yet to decide how the pitch would end.
The crack of the bat was sharp and mean. The kind of sound you didn’t mistake if you’d ever played the game, that made your gut twist before you could even track the ball. Evan sat forward on instinct, watching the ball arc high and deep toward the far corner of right field.
And, of course, there was CJ.
He didn’t look like he was sprinting, but then he never did. Graceful to the point that it looked like the field tilted to carry him where he needed to go. Three long strides onto the warning track, a leap at the wall, glove stretching high into the night. Leather snapped shut around white, just before the ball could punish the crowd for believing, and CJ came down with it, glove closed tight, knees bending on impact.
Out three. Game over.
Evan sat back slowly, spine sinking into the couch again like a return to gravity.
