Chapter 11

I got permission to go home for lunch on Monday. I called Sally’s house, hoping her mom would pick up and she did.

“Hey, Mrs. Hinkleman.”

“Hello, Jack. Sally’s not here. It’s a school day. Are you out today?”

“No, ma’am. I was hoping to talk to you. Spring break is coming up and I’d like to drive to Nashville and visit Sally for a couple of days. Do you think that would be okay? Is it a good idea?”

“I’m certain Sally would think so. We don’t have plans but I’d like to talk with her father before I said to come.”

“That would be great. I’d kind of like to surprise her but I don’t want to surprise you and Mr. Hinkleman.”

“I appreciate that. I don’t think it will be a problem but I’ll just make sure.”

We talked for a few minutes, I wolfed down a sandwich and drove back to school. I still wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Tuesday was one of those days that seemed to go on forever. It wasn’t bad. It was simply endless. I picked up Kim early so we could run five miles at the track. She knocked a full minute off her previous time but somehow, she thought she should have been even faster since she tried so hard. We had a pop quiz in Shakespeare and a unit exam in history. In biology, I wrote the outline for a paper on the endocrine system and Mrs. Nichols made a couple of suggestions and approved it. I was really enjoying the independent study and I said so. She told me that if I liked that, I would enjoy post-graduate work. She promised to explain that in detail later.

At lunch, the It’s Academic team sat together and Lani gave us her thoughts on how we should prepare, what to wear, and all that. I told her I’d watched it on TV and it seemed like the audience was really small. She agreed but said the important audience was admissions departments at colleges around the country. She said if we won, it would be a great thing to add to our college applications. Winners competed a second time. If you won four times in a row, you retired undefeated. She said the show producers told her team members who had retired undefeated could practically pick their college.

I’d already picked my college. During keyboarding, I met with Mrs. Augustine, in guidance. She said that with my grade point average and SAT scores, I wouldn’t have any problem getting into Georgia Tech, or almost anywhere else. She told me that MIT had an acceptance rate of five percent. I didn’t want to go to MIT but the discussion was interesting. I said that Porter-Gaud students scored three hundred points above the national average and I had one of the top SAT scores at the school. She already knew that and laughed.

“Honey, a fifteen hundred SAT score and a four-point oh GPA is average for MIT applicants and with that, they still had a five percent acceptance rate.”

“I don’t suppose swimming would help much,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t.

“Hardly. Georgia Tech has a fifteen percent acceptance rate. You’ll get in. You do know that Emory has a lower acceptance rate.” I didn’t know that. “Kim will want to have a three-point eight or better and a fifteen hundred SAT score. She’s close but she needs to bump her SAT score up a bit and she needs a very solid senior year.”

I hadn’t even thought about the possibility that Kim would have any problems getting into Emory. We needed to talk. I was thinking about scholarships and Mrs. Augustine was talking about whether or not Kim could get in. Whoops. I wasn’t sure but I thought Kim’s GPA was right on the edge or maybe a little below what she needed. We were scheduled to take the SAT in a couple of weeks. Kim and I needed to do some prep work.

That afternoon we had a home game against Wando High School. It was a non-conference game against a much bigger school with reportedly great pitching. Coach said it would be a good test for us. I thought that was code for get-ready-to-get-your-butts-kicked. Coach Hamilton moved me back to the third position in the line-up saying he didn’t want to waste my power on the leadoff spot.

In the first inning, Wando knocked the crap out of Rusty’s pitching but two of them were hard line drives straight to Zip at shortstop. The third batter hit one deep to center. I had to jump to catch it before it went over the fence. Three up and three down but the way they hit the ball wasn’t good. At least I didn’t think so. Still, the Cyclones celebrated the inning. Huh.

Wando’s pitcher was Adrian Pierce. I knew we weren’t related since Pierce was my adopted name but it was interesting. He could pitch. When I came up to bat, he’d thrown nine pitches and struck out our first two batters. I didn’t think his pitches were that fast but he had a pretty good curveball and the umpire had given him a pretty generous strike zone.

After watching him warm up, and then pitch, I hadn’t spotted any tipoffs. Until the ball came out of his hand, I wouldn’t know what to expect. I went through my mental checklist before stepping into the box. I held my bat up in front of my face, looked at the label, then the right foul pole in the distance, then back at the label. That simple focusing exercise helped me track the ball better. I did it again, then stepped into the box.

As Adrian Pierce went into his motion, I prepared to focus on his release point, turning my head to see it squarely with both eyes. The first pitch looked like it would be low and outside but this umpire had been calling close pitches, strikes. I swung and tipped it foul. Good enough. He did it again, and I tipped it foul again. That second pitch was a little further outside.

This guy’s good, I thought. He’s trying to see how far outside I’d swing. I let the next one go by for a called ball. That’s how far, Adrian. That’s how far. His fourth pitch was high and inside and I had to step back to keep from getting hit. That was the kind of pitch that used to piss me off. Not anymore. It was just part of the game. Two balls and two strikes. He went back to the low and outside pitch with a wicked curve on it, carrying well outside the strike zone. Full count.

I stepped out of the batter’s box. Gizmo was on deck. “I love this, Gizmo,” I said and he laughed. I don’t think the catcher thought it was funny. I tipped two more pitches foul. He’d thrown two strikes in a row and he needed another one to retire the side. The next pitch was a fastball across the center of the plate, right at my knees. I got all of it. I don’t think I’d ever hit a ball so solidly.

I took off for first base at a sprint, got the signal to keep going and rounded first for second. I looked up to see their center fielder watching the ball leave the park. The West Ashley Greenway is a walking trail, twenty or thirty feet beyond the outfield fence. I saw my ball hit the paved trail and bounce off toward Albemarle Road. I kept up my sprint. When I stepped on home plate, I turned to Gizmo and said, “I love this, Gizmo.” He laughed again. Sweet.

Back in the dugout, I walked the length of it, getting back slaps and high-fives all the way. When I got to the end, Coach Hamilton said, “Nice, Aquaman. Pierce has pitched twenty innings this season and that’s the first hit he’s given up. I guess we’ll see how he deals with that.”

“I don’t see any clues to what he’s going to throw, Coach. He doesn’t give anything away.”

“I don’t see one either but it’s there. Just have to figure it out.”

Gizmo hit a blooper into right field and made it safely to first. Zip nailed a line drive into left, putting men on first and second. Three hits in a row. Two-hop was up sixth. Three hits in a row and bases loaded. I wanted to be up again, right then. Thumper hit five or six foul balls, then sent one over the left field wall, clearing the bases. We were up five zip against a team that was really supposed to test us. Wando’s coach walked out to the mound where he had an animated conversation with the pitcher.

“He’s got to make a choice here, Aquaman. It’s tough,” Coach Hamilton said to me quietly. “If he leaves him in and our bats stay hot, we’ll get a mercy rule win. That’s tough for a pitcher to take. But if he pulls him, he’s not showing confidence.”

“What would you do if it were Rusty or Randy?”

“I’d try to get a feel for how my pitcher felt. If he said something like, ‘I’m just not on, today’ or ‘I’m not feeling it’ I’d pull him. But if he said, ‘I’ve got this coach. They just got a couple of lucky hits,’ I might leave him in. I’d remind him that he hadn’t given up a hit in the first four games of the season and he’s just given up four in a row. Either way, you hate to pull a pitcher in the first inning. Here we go,” Coach said as their coach returned to the dugout.

Stretch was up. Coach and I talked about what we should expect. With the bases empty and two outs, he really needed to get Stretch out and end their nightmare. Stretch, obviously, didn’t want it to end. Adrian Pierce walked him in four pitches. “He’d rather walk us than see us hit him,” Coach said.” I enjoyed sitting next to the coach, getting his commentary on what was going on. I definitely learned a lot by doing that.

Stretch got a ridiculous lead-off. Pierce threw to first three times. “Stretch can’t steal second and every time they throw to first, they risk letting a run score on an errant throw. He needs to pitch.”

“On the first pitch, Lefty hit a line drive just over their first baseman’s head. Stretch was off to the races. When their right fielder finally caught up with the ball, Stretch was rounding the corner from third. The ball went to the cutoff man who had to decide between throwing home or trying to get Lefty out at third. He threw home. Stretch beat the throw by a mile and Lefty had his first triple.

Their coach put in a new pitcher named Sanderson. I watched his delivery to see if I could figure him out. He had a mediocre fastball, a well-disguised change-up, and a pretty fair curveball. What I couldn’t tell from the dugout was what kind of control he had. I did spot a pretty good clue for his curveball but he’d really worked on disguising his change-up. “Hey, Coach, watch Sanderson’s left shoulder.” It was too late to let our next batter know and Sanderson got him to ground out to third.

We managed to score three runs in the second inning and another two in the fourth, one on a double I hit with a crappy swing. At the end of five, it was eleven, zip and we’d shut out Wando to win by mercy rule. We lined up to thank them for the game. Adrian Pierce found me and asked what I’d seen.

“We don’t play again and I’m a senior. Throw me a bone, Pierce. That sounds so weird. What did you see that got your team going?”

“Honestly? Nothing. Sanderson dips his left shoulder before he starts his motion for a curve but you didn’t give anything away.”

“I know my pitches are good, so how did you hit me, Pierce?”

“You’re predictable, Pierce. You’ve got great control and you use it. I figured where you would pitch. First, you tried to see how big the strike zone was. Then, you tried to smoke one past me. I didn’t appreciate the brush back, by the way, but I pretty much expected it. After I got a hit, you sort of folded up shop.”

“Yeah. Led our conference in ERA last year and I think I sort of took you guys for granted. Glad you’re in a different conference.”

“Thanks, I think. Rusty’s a junior. He’s our number two pitcher.”

“Holy shit. Well, good luck, Pierce. Do you even have any competition?”

“I guess we’ll find out. Shake it off, Pierce,” I said and we both laughed.

“Yeah. That’s probably the best advice I’ll get today. I have no idea what Coach is going to tell us on the bus.”

“He’s going to tell you not to take anybody for granted.”

We shook hands and my namesake walked over to his teammates for what would be a long thirty-minute drive home. Coach Hamilton called us in. He told us what we’d done right and what we needed to work on. He told us we were good, but so was Wando. He said their biggest problem was believing their own press releases. Every team has good days and bad. I reminded him that I was iffy for our game on Thursday as I had It’s Academic in the morning.

“Where are you filming?” he asked.

“Someplace in Columbia. Not sure, really. If we win the first round, we stay for the second, and so forth.”

“Our game is in Orangeburg. If you can make it, great, but don’t lose a round to play baseball or I’ll never hear the end of it.” We laughed at that. Orangeburg was ninety minutes away and Columbia was a half hour further inland. I thought I’d probably be able to do both, even if we did win more than one round.

He congratulated us again and dismissed us. I told Rusty he’d done an amazing job to shut out Wando. He was certainly happy about it. I saw Kim in the bleachers and jogged over to her.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

“Hey, yourself. You guys beat Wando! Very nice.”

“Yeah, we’re all pretty happy with it.”

“I just saw the end of the game. How did you do?”

“I hit a homer and a double, walked, and caught a couple of fly balls. Just a routine day at the office.”

“You’re enjoying this a lot more than you thought, aren’t you?”

“Winning is fun.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

We walked out to my car and I told her a little about the game and a lot about my talk with Mrs. Augustine. I told her I wanted to work together to prepare for the SAT test and see if we could both improve. I’d had the third highest SAT score in the school the previous year and Mrs. Augustine said it wasn’t unusual for scores to go up by seventy to one hundred points from one year to the next. It’s probably the first time we really realized our plans weren’t quite so automatic.

It was too late to work out. I dropped Kim off at her house, telling her that I’d go to the library after dinner and see if I could find an SAT preparation book. After a late dinner and a change of clothes, I picked up Franklin and we went to kung fu lessons, arriving just in time. We worked on a bunch of unusual strikes and learned what targets they were appropriate for.

Afterward, I had to rush to get Franklin home, then make it to the library in time. I found a couple of SAT preparation books and they each had practice tests. I went through a batch of dimes making copies of the tests and checked out two of the books. Back home, I skimmed through them and thought it would be better to buy them so we could mark them up. Considering they might play an important part of our future; eight dollars didn’t seem like a lot of money.

Mom found me in the library, studying the Guinness Book of World Records, trying to figure out what areas I should try to commit to memory. She asked how my day was. I’d learned long ago that ‘fine’ wouldn’t suffice and gave her a rundown. When I finished, she said she was exhausted just hearing about it. She was right. It was a really long day. It didn’t take much for Mom to convince me to hit the sack.

After an easy Wednesday, Thursday looked like it would be another marathon day. I drove Mom and Cherry Davis to Columbia for It’s Academic. Cherry was our back-up team member, which probably meant he would be an audience member. After filming, we planned to go to Orangeburg for our baseball game. Mom had decided to be my cheerleader for the day and quizzed us from the Guinness Book of World Records on the drive.

We were recording on the USC campus, on a small stage in their drama department. Cherry and I found our team’s area in the men’s dressing room, stashed our stuff, and went back out to the stage area. Lani, Marci, and Alice greeted us and Alice pretended she was feeling ill. Cherry laughed and found a seat next to Mom. When all three teams were seated, our host, Wanda Trent, explained the show format. Of course, we already knew it, since Lani had done it before.

I checked out our competition. The team from Pell Prep were all guys and none of them knew how to tie a tie. One of them didn’t know how to comb his hair, either. The Dutch Fork team had three girls and one boy, just like our team. I wondered if Pell Prep was an all-male school. Cherry and I were by far the tallest people on any of the teams.

We started with what Wanda called ‘overhead questions’ meaning any team member could hit their buzzer and have first chance at the question. We took an early lead and just when I felt we were getting into an unstoppable groove, Wanda stopped to talk with the team from Pell, then asked questions specifically for them. They got four out of five of their questions correct and she moved on to Dutch Fork.

When she came to us, we answered her questions differently. We each told what year we were in, what we wanted to do in college, and one thing we thought a recruiter might find interesting. I had no idea that Marci liked to do renaissance fairs and dress the part.

When it was my turn, I said, “I’m a junior with plans to attend Georgia Tech and major in biomedical engineering. I’m on both the swim team and play baseball.”

“I see that you’ve made a name for yourself swimming. Tell us about that.” She had picked out one focus area for each person and that was mine.

“I competed at the State Championships and did pretty well.”

“My notes say you won four titles. How many titles are there? Is that a lot?”

“There are eight events, so I did pretty well.”

“I’d say winning half the events qualifies as pretty well. Congratulations on that.”

She asked us our questions and we had the chance to confer on our answers. Alice answered three of them and Marci got the other two. We were way out in front by then, and they took a break to advertise their sponsor, which was a company that partnered with college science departments for their research.

We resumed with overhead questions. Lani was really fast on the buzzer and probably answered as many questions as the other three of us combined. You lost points if you got an answer wrong. I thought it was pretty cool that we didn’t lose any points and ended up with almost double the score of Pell Prep with Dutch Fork pretty far behind. I was disappointed that she didn’t ask for the name of an ancient malt beer brewed in Egypt. That would have been an easy ten points. Who else would know what Zythum was?

Wanda announced that time was up and the team from Porter-Gaud was the winner. She congratulated the other teams and wished them well. We took a fifteen-minute break before meeting the next two teams.

At the break, Lani said, “Don’t do anything differently. We kicked ass.”

“You kicked ass, Lani. We’re just here to get out of class,” Marci said and she wasn’t far off.

She seemed a little self-conscious about that and I said, “You don’t change anything, either, Lani. Keep hitting the buzzer.”

We did that three more times, retiring undefeated, although it was close on our last game. Lexington Prep had a good team and we came from behind to beat them by ten points. On our third game, we had dueled with Rock Hill for the first half before pulling away to win by forty points. During the interview portions, Wanda asked how I chose Georgia Tech, joked about my Aquaman nickname, and in the last interview, I said that I was engaged to Kim McTighe. At the break, she asked me about that and did some head shaking. I was used to that.

When the last show finished, she told us when we could see the shows and reminded us that we’d signed release forms so they could give our information to colleges. The other teams got the home version of the game, which was probably a lot like Trivial Pursuit. We got a three-thousand-dollar grant for Porter-Gaud. That seemed like a strange amount until she explained that it was five hundred per win and another thousand for retiring undefeated. She also said the Porter-Gaud should expect a bunch of new applications after the shows aired. I hadn’t even thought of that.

We agreed on a nearby Chinese buffet for lunch. Marci’s dad and Alice’s mom joined us. Lani’s entire family had gone last time. We laughed about some of the questions and I complained about having memorized the Book of Records when we didn’t get a single question from it. We were all in a good mood but Marci seemed to be in a particularly good mood.

“What are you grinning about, Marci?” I asked.

“I feel better about myself.” We all stopped and waited for more. “I don’t feel nearly as awkward or nerdy as when we got there. What a bunch of geeks. Did you see the one guy from Dellings that had his shirt buttoned wrong?”

That started a conversation about how nerdy the other teams were. We kept it up until Alice asked, “Wait. Are we nerdy and just don’t know it?”

“You’re not a nerd,” Marci’s dad said. If Marci’s not, then you certainly aren’t.”

“Hey!”

“I’m really proud of you all,” Mom said. “I thought you handled yourselves with poise and confidence, then demonstrated good sportsmanship by congratulating the other teams on their effort. I’m sure your performance won’t hurt your scholarship opportunities, that’s for sure.”

“The five of you were recognized by Porter-Gaud, then beat teams from, what was it, eight other schools and only one of them was close. That very definitely belongs on a college application. You, too, Cherry. You were part of the team,” Marci’s dad said.

“I didn’t do anything. I watched.”

“You were part of the team,” Lani said, and the rest of us agreed.

We laughed as much as we talked for another half hour. Then Cherry and I decided it was time to play baseball. We found our way to the home of the Gators and parked near the field. Our bus hadn’t pulled in yet and we decided to wait in the car. Mom asked and Cherry told her about the team and how we’d done. He might have embellished a little but I wasn’t going to stop him. We’d done pretty well so far.

When the bus pulled up, everyone got off, already dressed and ready to go. Bull had been there before so he led Cherry and me to their locker room. Back out on the field, we warmed up. Randy was set to pitch and it looked like he was going to bring heat. The Gators came out and warmed up, the umpires showed, collected the lineups and we were ready to go.

I had watched their pitcher warm up but I couldn’t figure him out. He looked awkward and it was disconcerting. Our first batter struck out and our second hit a pop up that didn’t get out of the infield. My turn. I asked the catcher his name. I liked to keep track. Severance Durner was pitching. I’d never known anyone named Severance and I’d never seen anyone with more eccentric mannerisms than him.

He rubbed the ball, then his knees. He adjusted his hat and hitched up his pants. When the catcher signaled a pitch, he shook it off but he didn’t shake off two pitches the same way. His first pitch looked like a fastball but I swung over the top of it as it dropped away.

“Holy crap,” I said to no one in particular but the catcher heard it.

“Ayup.”

If he was going to throw stuff that broke like that, I’d crowd toward the front of the box and hopefully hit it before it did. His pitching motion for the second pitch looked completely different and the ball was outside and low. It was also really slow.

“What was that? That was about fifty miles an hour, if that,” I said.

“Ayup.” The catcher was used to seeing frustrated batters.

His next pitch looked like it was going to sink and I swung beneath it. I swung beneath it and way ahead of it. I couldn’t figure him out. He was throwing crazy stuff. His next pitch looked like it was going to hit me and I started to back away. I thought it was going to curve over the plate so I stuck out my bat and ticked it foul. That was his fifth pitch and the first one I’d even made contact with. I fouled the next two off but I didn’t get a good swing at either. His next pitch actually dropped so much it bounced off the plate. I stepped out of the box and took a deep breath. His next pitch was too slow to be called a changeup. There had to be another name for it. I hit it hard but I swung so early, I knocked it foul over the third base dugout. The next pitch must have been close to ninety and right down the middle. I swung so late it was laughable and he’d retired the side.