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Chapter Thirty-One
Emmy sat next to Mike, the pitching coach, with the new back-up catcher, Pablo, on her other side. She tried to watch the game with idle, professional interest, but was failing hard. She was going through sunflower seeds at an alarming rate, the little pile of shells at her feet growing larger with each passing inning.
“That little move he does, pulling his arm back,” Mike said, jabbing her with his elbow. “He never used to do that, and I didn’t teach it to him.”
Emmy nodded, spitting another shell on the ground. “He was favoring it too heavily after the surgery, relying more on his wrist instead of using the power in his arm. That’s why he was using the knuckleball. It relies on the hand.” She demonstrated by flicking her fingers out to mirror the pushing movement of a traditional knuckleball. “But with his new elbow there was no reason for him to avoid his upper arm.”
“Right.”
“So I told him to suck it up and stop throwing like a gimpy old man. Otherwise his surgery would have been for nothing.”
Slapping his knee, Mike gave a hearty chuckle, his round belly jiggling under the taut fabric of his uniform. “Damn, girl. Where have you been hiding from us all these years?”
“Chicago,” she answered.
“Well, if we can’t get any decent players from them, I’m mighty glad we managed to get something useful from their club.” He slapped her hard on the back, jolting her forward.
Emmy kicked her legs out in front of her, stretching them out and crossing them at the ankle to mirror the gesture most of the other men in the dugout preferred. Spitting her seed shells to the side to avoid depositing them on her lap, she returned her attention to Tucker, who was in his seventh inning. He was well on his way towards making good on his promise to Miles, that he’d complete a full game.
She kept her face impassive, watching his mechanics instead of checking out his ass, but he wasn’t making it easy on her. He wore the tightest pants on the damn team.
But the trainer in her was bursting with pride over how well he was doing. He’d taken her suggestions to heart and was proving to be an even better player than he’d been for years. The season was winding down, but she was hearing whispers in the media. They were saying Cy Young.
Tucker had won the award twice before, but that had been years ago, in his prime. It wasn’t unheard of for aging pitchers to get the prize, but it certainly wasn’t common. And no one had won it with such a large gap of years in between. He’d be a first.
She wasn’t sure how closely Tucker followed the MLB rumor mill—Emmy had the bad practice of keeping a few blogs in her browser’s RSS feed—but he had to know his improvement of skills hadn’t been overlooked by the general public. He was becoming something great again, and she’d played a part. She didn’t want to give herself too much credit, but she had helped him. And he was continuing to use her advice, which meant he respected her opinion as a trainer.
It meant a lot to her that he cared about her as a coworker and advisor and not just as a woman he’d wanted to sleep with. Had he only been listening to her to get in her pants, he could have stopped after the first few games. But here they were, months later, and he’d now successfully gotten into her pants and continued to take her professional advice.
She spit more seeds on the floor and repressed a grin.
One of the power hitters from the Indians was batting fourth—the cleanup man—and when he got to the plate, all the guys in the dugout leaned forward simultaneously. The guy was a mountain, pushing six-four and easily two hundred and eighty pounds. Modern audiences tended to underestimate the big guys because they couldn’t run fast and didn’t look like athletes. But Babe Ruth didn’t look like an athlete either, and he was so good he had become a legend.
She didn’t think the big batter for the Indians was likely to make it to legendary status—not many players would—but she knew he was a force to be reckoned with in the here and now. Already he’d scored a one-run homer off Tucker in the third inning, so the pitcher would be out to prove something.
It didn’t matter how many times a pitcher struck a man out, it would always be the hits he remembered and fought to improve on. That’s what made a pitcher great, but it also made them irritating, mule-headed buffoons sometimes.
Emmy cupped her chin and propped her elbow on her knee, watching to see what would come of this matchup. In this, the third meet-up between the two, all eyes were waiting to see if the batter would break the one-one tie, or if Tucker would keep it balanced.
With the regular season winding down, the Felons had a tenuous hold on the number-one spot in their division, and a loss to the Indians wouldn’t be any help.
The Indians were third in their own division, and barring any miracles, they wouldn’t be making it to the postseason. Emmy wasn’t even sure what kind of miracle would be required to bring the flagging team into a winning position.
But they were out to prove they could win. Starting with the Felons. Starting with this game.
They were playing like they were already in the damn playoffs and the Felons defense was trying to keep up. They’d gone in assuming it was going to be an easy win, but the Indians weren’t going down without a fight.
The Cleveland crowd was going apeshit, cheering like it was the bottom of the ninth and they were praying for a walk off. Emmy hadn’t realized her knee was bouncing nervously until Mike gave her a friendly paternal pat and said, “Simmer down.”
She tried to keep still and managed admirably through the first two pitches—a ball and a strike—then Tucker wound up for the third and unleashed a perfect curveball. The batter swung, and the entire crowd fell silent when the crack of the bat echoed through the stadium.
The ball didn’t pop up like it should have, and instead flew straight back from home plate, directly to the pitching mound. For a second Emmy couldn’t process what had happened. The ball stopped at Tucker, and she wasn’t sure if he’d caught it. Then the collective audience all gasped, and overhead was a smattering of oh my God.
Tucker staggered, and his hat slipped off the back of his head. At home plate Alex was standing, his mask up, watching Tucker with the same wary expression Emmy must have had on her face. When Tucker stooped to one knee, that was the moment she really understood what had happened.
Tucker had taken a line drive to the head.
Emmy was on her feet in an instant, shells crunching beneath her as she bolted from the dugout onto the field. She ran to the pitcher’s mound with Jasper at her heels and Alex making a dash from home plate.
