AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
WhoknewcoachingT-ballwould be so much fun?Jeff clapped his hands to encourage the next batter up at the plate.
“Batter, batter, swing batter!” a little voice yelled from the dugout. The batter turned and scowled at his teammate, then lined himself up at the plate, swung the bat and missed. The boy’s shoulders slumped.
Jeff walked up to the plate, crouched beside five-year-old Jeremy. “Keep your eye on the ball,” he told the young player. “For right now, I just want you to ignore the pitcher and only focus on the ball. That’s what you’re aiming for. It doesn’t matter what’s happening on the mound. It doesn’t matter what the players in the dugout are saying.” He looked right at Jeremy, who seemed like he was ready to cry.Oh boy. “Nothing matters except keeping your eye on the ball.”
Jeremy’s lips tightened, and he stared at the tee. He looked back at Jeff and nodded.
“You got this.” Jeff clapped the little boy on the back and stepped away.
Jeremy lined up and swung the bat. The ball bobbled off the tee, barely clearing the dirt.
“Run!” Jeff yelled.
Jeremy threw the bat and took off. Not the prettiest way to get on base, but it was a start.
Max walked out of the dugout and picked up the bat. He smiled as he walked up to the plate.
“Hey, Max. Couple things,” Jeff said. “One, you normally don’t want to heckle your own teammates.”
Max’s little face scrunched up in confusion. “What’s heckle?”
“Like tease them or try to throw them off their game.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, yelling ‘batter, batter, swing’ at Jeremy. Normally you’d reserve that kind of thing for the other team, not your own.”
Max’s head cocked to the side, and he chewed his cheek. He looked at Jeremy, who now stood on first base. “But he’s on base, so it worked.”
Jeff bit back a smile. “True, but not because you were yelling at him. Your cheer made him nervous, and he had a hard time hitting it because you were calling out to him.”
“That’s dumb. I was telling him to swing cuz he was just standing there doing nothin’.”
Jeff pretended to cough to mask his amusement. The kid wasn’t wrong. “Okay, but maybe for your own teammates, you want to shout something more encouraging, like ‘let’s go, you got this,’ something like that. You know, the kind of thing you’d like someone to yell when you’re at bat.”
Max pursed his lips. “That’s what I did. He didn’t look like he knew what to do.”
Covering his laugh again, he dragged his hand over his mouth. “Okay, but still, maybe we could be more encouraging. That cheer you were doing, while a good one, is normally used when you’re playing in the field and your pitcher is throwing the ball. It’s not normally used in T-ball.”
The little boy shrugged. “Okay, Smitty. If you say so, but I think it’s a good one.”
“I think it’s best we table that cheer for this season. Deal?” He shook the boy’s hand to seal the deal.
“Deal,” Max said as he shook. “But I could yell it at the other team if I came and watched you play, right?”
Jeff grinned. “Absolutely. It would definitely rattle the other team.”
“Cool.” Max nodded. “Batter up,” he called as he walked up to the plate.
This kid cracked him up. When the Hawks had partnered with a local San Diego youth center to run programs for underprivileged children to play sports, he’d thought it was a great idea. He’d never imagined he’d enjoy it as much as he did. Jeff had been coaching the kids twice a week for the past month, and he looked forward to it, especially the T-ball. Introducing these kids to the best sport in the world and watching them fall in love with the game, like he had at their age, was unreal. And kids like Max made it even better.
A woman wandered toward the outfield fence. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she leaned her arms on the railing. Her long brown hair blew in the breeze and she reached out to try to tame it. His gaze lingered on the tattoos on her forearm. Moms sure didn’t look like that when he was a kid. But then again, he’d never seen her before, so maybe she was just a babysitter or something. That would be better, for sure, a whole lot less creepy than ogling the mom of one of his players.
He shifted his gaze from her to check his watch. “Alright everybody. Last batter.”
Groans rang out from the field and the dugout. Not that he could blame them. There was something magical about playing ball.
