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“Boys, boys, boys.” Tucker pushed his plate away, unable to stomach the too-sweet fruit. “All this homoeroticism is delightful, but we have a shuttle to catch.”
It was a perfect day for baseball.
The sun was bright, the clouds hanging like cotton balls tossed carelessly into an otherwise flawless blue sky. Tucker lived for the half hour leading up to the first day of spring training. All the nervousness of the morning had faded away, replaced with a bubbling excitement reminiscent of his early years.
Alex and Ramon were trading barbs, but the prattling was drowned out by the whir of the shuttle bus’s wheels against the pavement and the general clubhouse chatter of fifteen other men quietly discussing what they’d done over the off-season or what they thought of a late announcement about a new second-baseman slugger who’d be joining the team.
Tucker was toying with a Felons stress ball in the shape of a baseball, absentmindedly squeezing and releasing the ball, occasionally tossing it up and bouncing it off his forearm, before catching it again on the pop-up. He could do the same trick with a real baseball, but the snap back tended to leave bruises if he wasn’t careful. This year he’d have to be extra careful with his arm.
They rolled into a parking lot filled with a few assorted sports cars, kicking up dust and coating the pristine exteriors of the expensive automobiles. The bus came to a shuddering stop, and the door swung open, wafting the overly warm interior with a fresh breeze.
“E’rybody off,” bellowed the driver, as if he were addressing a school bus full of hormonal adolescents instead of some of the highest paid athletes in the game. The portly man sat back, chewing on something—either gum or tobacco—and eyed them all like they might be up to no good.
Outside, they collected their duffel bags and made their way across the lush emerald-green grass towards the freshly laid infield, its white lines more blinding than Ramon’s capped teeth. It was too early in the year for the bugs to be bad, but a few lazy black flies darted by, giving the air the illusion of being a living, moving thing.
Off from the field proper was a mowed track and an extended makeshift bullpen. That was where Tucker, Miles and the rest of the huge pitching roster would loosen up their winter-rusted arms and find out who had what it took to make one of the five starting spots, who would be relegated to a relief position, and who would be fretting over the lingering threat of a dropped contract or a trade.
Tucker rolled his head in a loose circle, rotating his shoulders to shake off the knot between his scapulae that had a tendency to form whenever the word trade came up. He’d had a lucky career so far, drafted to the Felons farm league fresh out of college. They’d been the only club he’d played for in fourteen years. It wasn’t unheard of for someone with his stats to stay with the same team for most of their major league run, but he wasn’t the same player he’d been at twenty-two.
Sometimes, the call came through and there wasn’t a damn thing a player could do to change their fate. You could get traded, you could get dropped or sometimes you were just forgotten.
And Tucker didn’t want any of that. He bled Felons gray-and-orange. His home and his life were in San Francisco—unlike most other players who lived out of state in the off-season—and the last thing he ever wanted was to be forgotten. Maybe there was something to the adage of it being better to burn out than to fade away. He wasn’t sure if he was on the verge of fading away, but he knew he wanted to set fire to the coming season.
The Felons ha
dn’t won the World Series in twelve years. They’d made it to the finals only three times since then, but hadn’t won. In the last four years they hadn’t made it past the division semi-finals. They weren’t a bad team, always first or second in their division, but they seemed to lose all their focus the closer they got to the end of the season. It was as if the Felons had a consistent fear of success.
This year would be different. Tucker had it in his head he was going to step up and be the leader the guys needed. Someone to help them take those last few steps and become the champions he knew they could be. If this was going to be one of his last years, he wanted to make it count. He wanted another championship ring. He wanted a shitty orange T-shirt that said San Francisco Felons—2013 World Series Champions.
Fuck yeah, he did.
And nothing was going to distract him from making that dream a reality. It had to be his single-minded purpose. It had been the thing driving him on through the tough months of physio, when he thought his arm would never be back in throwing condition.
Dropping their bags in the dugout, the players rallied near the center of the field where the coaching staff had come together. Tucker joined his teammates in preparation for Chuck’s big pep talk. If this one was anything like the talks their coach had given over the last decade, he’d reprimand them for being triumphant fuckups the year before, and then remind them this was a new season. Full of new opportunities to fuck up. At that point he’d threaten to end their lives if they ruined another season.
Chuck Calvin would have made a hell of a war general.
True to form he launched into his big managerial spiel while the batting, pitching and base coaches watched on with expressions somewhere between amusement and pain. When Chuck sarcastically applauded their previous season’s “fuckups-to-wins” ratio, the first-base coach handed a ten-dollar bill to the pitching coach with a resigned headshake.
Behind the coaching staff the trainers were unloading their own gear, preparing for the first war wounds of the season, ready to offer healing and advice—whatever the situation dictated. Tucker cast an uninterested glance their way, then froze. His heart hammered so loudly all he could hear was his pulse.
In the midst of last season’s familiar old trainers and a few fresh-faced new recruits stood the woman who’d almost run him and Alex over that morning. She was smiling as she gave directions to the trainers, pointing out where things should be laid out. Her long, gold-streaked hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she wore simple black yoga pants with an orange Felons polo T-shirt. In spite of her wardrobe change, he had no doubt it was the same woman.
“All right,” barked Chuck. “I want to introduce you boys to our newest staff member.” He spun on his heel and gave a sharp whistle. The woman looked up, a momentary frown passing over her lips at being beckoned like a dog, but she crossed the field at a slow jog.
Once she’d arrived, Chuck put an arm around her slender shoulders, and she pushed her mirrored aviators off her face. Tucker’s mouth went dry when she smiled.
“Boys, I’d like you to meet our new head athletic trainer. This is Mrs. Emmy Kasper.”
“Miss,” she corrected immediately, meeting Tucker’s rapt gaze for the first time. She gave him a meek, almost apologetic smile and offered a half wave.
Calvin was saying something about her credentials, and Tucker was sure it was all very fascinating, but he had a bigger concern on his mind.
He was supposed to be a man on a mission this season. Single-minded focus and all that jazz.
There was no way in hell he was going to be able to focus if the woman he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about all morning was going to be the same one icing his wounds and spending every damn day with him. The added bonus of coming off Tommy John surgery was all sorts of extra time and attention from the head A.T.
She was his new A.T.
