Chapter 37

Given the new urgency, instead of walking Collette cranked up the Beemer instead, and they arrived at the field in what seemed like moments. As they approached the still empty parking lot closest to field, they could see an elderly campus policeman waggling his finger at them, and then waiving his arms to flag them down.

As they approached him, Collette turned to Bobby and said, "Let me do the talking." She then reached to her blouse and unfastened the top three buttons.

Bobby's couldn't help but stare when he observed through the deeper opening that she was wearing a half cup bra, with her nipples poking over the tops of the cups. He thought her nipples had been unusually prominent today. Seeing his surprised expression, she grinned unrepentantly.

"You should see my panties, too," she commented.

"Oh?" asked Bobby.

"Yeah. But you'd have to go to my house — I left them there."

"What?!"

"Well, if my man wanted a good luck fuck before the game, I wanted to be ready," she explained insouciantly.

She slowed and came to a stop next to the man.

"Hi!" Collette said cheerfully. "This is the player's parking lot, isn't it, dear?" She had taken on the exaggerated accent of a southern belle.

The guy's eyes nearly bugged out of his head, as standing above her he could see both of her nipples through the enlarged opening of her blouse.

"What?" he said, shaking his head to clear it.

Collette put both of her hands on the edge of the window opening. Her nipples receded slightly from view, but the luscious divide between her large, youthful breasts became almost impossibly long and deep.

"I was just... hoping..." she said slowly, drawing out each word, "that this could be where... the, you know... players... could park."

Bobby had never thought of 'players' as much of a sexual word before; he would now.

"Oh, well, uh, hell... sure, why not!?" her poor victim stammered. "Let me give you a pass to put on your dashboard. Okay, miss?"

"That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. Oh my, where are my manners? My name is Collette, and this ball player here is Bobby. What is your name, darlin'?"

"Uh, it's Larry, ma'am," he said politely. He scribbled the car's license plate number and the number of the parking lot on a pad of passes he was carrying. He tore off the pass and handed it to Collette with a flourish.

"Just put that on your dashboard when you park. Good luck in the game young man! And it was very nice to meet you, Collette," he said, doing his best to sound like a southern gentleman.

"Thank you ever so much, Lawrence. Perhaps we shall see you after the game? Bye bye now," she said, finishing with a brilliant smile.

As they drove on to park right next to the stadium entrance, Bobby looked at her admiringly.

"I just realized something... I never really had a chance, did I?"

Collette winked at him. "Sure you did," she said reassuringly, as she held the wheel straight with her knee while refastening the buttons on her blouse. "Do you know why?"

He shook his head.

"Because my love, you're the only guy that's ever made me look at him, like that guy just looked at me. I am putty in your hands..."

Then she smiled impishly before adding,

"Daaarlin'."

Bobby and Collette walked across the field to where the coaches were waiting in the team's third base dugout. Collette gave him a last kiss for luck, waived to the coaches, and headed for the section of the grandstand that was set aside for player's families.

The pitching coach looked at Bobby with something like awe.

"That was your girlfriend?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yup," Bobby replied with a smile.

"I hate you," the coach said, shaking his head.

The coach then led him off to the team's bullpen. Unlike practically every field Bobby had played on before, this stadium actually had a bullpen with a full sized pitching mound and regulation plate imbedded in the ground, 60 feet and 6 inches away.

Bobby was pleased to see Dave waiting for him, dressed in his catcher's gear. He actually hugged his friend in greeting.

"You're going to get me through this, right?" asked Bobby.

"Hey, it's like riding a bike... if you were a fish," Dave said with a grin.

"Don't fuck with me, man. I'm about to crap in my pants here."

"Don't worry. You'll be fine."

Dave and the coach then began giving him a crash refresher course on post Little League pitching. They kept it as simple as possible.

Fortunately, earlier in the season they had taught him all the rules for pitching with a full windup versus the stretch position. They reviewed the pick off movements that were allowed when pitching from the stretch with runners on base, and what the un-allowed balk moves were.

They covered Dave's signs for different pitches, and how they would disguise the signs if the other team had a runner on second base.

They showed him how in addition to the type of pitch, at this level Dave would also signal where he wanted it — inside, outside, high, or low. They reminded him that Dave would move to the desired position after Bobby had started his delivery motion, to prevent the batter from knowing ahead of time where in the strike zone to expect the pitch.

So unlike Little League, he couldn't get fixated on the catcher's glove from the beginning of his motion. Early in his motion, he had to think about the area in the strike zone Dave had signaled, and then target Dave's glove when he'd established his position.

They very briefly reviewed the other team's lineup and what various batter's strengths and weaknesses were. They didn't spend too much time on this, because Dave had already gone over it extensively with the coaches. Dave would call pitches for Bobby that he and the coaches thought would work best in various situations.

Bobby's job would just be to hit the mitt, in the place where Dave put it, with whatever pitch Dave called for. 'Should be simple, right? Suuuure, ' he thought nervously.

He threw easily to Dave for about 10 minutes, just to get the feel of things. He was thinking that the throwing motions of a pitcher were very different than the all out body wind up and lunging unload of an outfielder throwing hundreds of feet. But the use of coil and leverage were principles that held true regardless of his role. It didn't seem to take long for him to get fairly comfortable.

He noticed a batting cage adjacent to the bullpen. It was set up for batters to practice by hitting balls off a tee into a net. He thanked Dave again for his help, before retrieving his bat and heading to the cage take a few swings.

He slid a donut shaped weight onto the barrel of his bat, and began swinging it slowly to loosen up. As he worked on different drills, he couldn't keep his mind from drifting.

For the first time in what seemed like a long time, Bobby wished his dad could have been with him. He wanted him there to share the pride he felt in contributing to the success of his team. He missed his dad's practical baseball advice, that he had always valued so much.

Most of all, he missed the reassurance he had always felt from his dad, both on the field, and in his life.

The early part of the championship game turned out to be one of alternating offensive surges by the two teams. Bobby's team initially took a four to nothing lead through three innings, with both Dave and Bobby getting hits every time they came to the plate.

Then their own pitcher seemed to lose the control that was his strong suit, and in one disastrous inning allowed the visitors to take the lead, five to four after four innings.

If the team had its full compliment of pitchers, he would have been relieved before all the damage could be done. But with the coaches unsure how many innings they could reasonably expect Bobby to go, they felt they had no choice but to let him struggle, as they watched and chewed on their fingernails.

After some discussion of his mechanics with the coaches, their pitcher returned to form in the fifth and mowed down three batters in succession.

Bobby came to the plate in the bottom of the fifth with two men on base, and hit a monstrous home run to dead center field that left almost everyone in attendance in jaw dropping wonder.

Bobby looked for his rooting section as he rounded third, and couldn't help but smile at all his friends and family that were standing on their chairs screaming for him, Collette clearly visible at one edge of their seating area.

As he reached the plate, the other team's catcher glared at him.

"You think something's funny, asshole?" he snapped, as Bobby stepped on the plate.

Bobby looked at him calmly as he stooped to pick up his bat.

"I was smiling at my girlfriend," he replied.

The umpire then interceded. "Good for you," he said to Bobby. Then he slapped a new ball into the catcher's mitt. "Let's play ball, catcher."

The catcher spared Bobby another surly glance, before getting back to his duties.

The home team nursed their seven to four lead until the seventh inning. Their pitcher visibly tired, and they were fortunate to escape with yielding only one run before the third out.

When their pitcher reached the dugout, he told the coaches that he was pretty much out of gas, and it was decided to send Bobby out to try and hold the seven to five lead for the last two innings.

Bobby led off in the bottom of the seventh, and expected to see more breaking balls than fastballs. After his home run shot in his last at bat, the opposing pitcher would likely pitch carefully to him, and when he went for strikes, they would likely be slower breaking balls that would be harder to drive.

He faced the same pitcher that had started the game, who was a skilled 'control' type pitcher that was able to move the ball around in the strike zone. Bobby set up to look for breaking balls, working to pick up the release point as early as he could in the pitcher's motion.

The pitcher went into his wind-up, and from the release and direction, Bobby thought 'curve ball.'

He kept his left shoulder tucked inward to keep himself from stepping away from the plate as he began to stride forward. About the time his bat began to move forward, Bobby had a fraction of a second to realize it wasn't a breaking ball - it was a fastball coming straight for his head.

He snapped his head to the right to get as much of his helmet between him and the ball as he could, while trying to get his spikes out of the dirt fast enough to drop to the ground.

His reactions were much too late to get him below the ball, and it smacked into his helmet just above and behind his left ear, with a sickening crack that could be heard by everyone in the stadium. He fell on his side like a rock, then rolled slowly onto his back and lay motionless on the ground, as a hush fell over the crowd.

Barbara and Raul jumped to their feet at the impact, and Raul quickly had to hold Barbara up as she began to waiver.

Sammy wanted to run out on the field and kill the son of a bitch on the mound. She knew baseball, and the pitcher hadn't missed the plate by even half that distance the whole time he'd pitched since the start of the game. He'd done that on purpose!

Even in her rage, she saw Collette standing with her hands over her mouth, silently pleading for Bobby to get up. She went to her, and the two girls hung on to each other as they stared down at the field.

Dave came running out of the dugout, the coaches right behind him, as the silence in the stadium began to be broken by hushed words throughout the crowd, all expressing hope that the young man on the ground was all right.

Bobby lay dazed on the ground, his eyes open and blinking in exaggerated fashion as he worked to clear his head. He was telling himself to snap out of it, but his mind seemed to want to talk about other things first.

'How could you let that fucking ball hit you in the head? It's not going to make it any easier to pitch the next two innings, dumb-ass... '

'I gotta get up, Collette's probably freaking out..."

'I'd better get up... Mom's pregnant; too much stress isn't good for her or baby Gina... '

'Good thing dad always drilled us to turn away from a ball coming at you... '

'Gotta remember what Dad said about pitching backwards... God I miss Dad... '

'Except for that crazy best friend, first love, first lover, and wife thing he dropped on me... '

'I better get up, or they won't let me play the rest of the game... '

"What!?" he blurted out loud, startling the umpire that had moved to look down at him. That thought got through to him in a hurry!

He sat up easily, in time to see Dave come running up to him. A giant collective 'whoosh' seemed to come from everyone in the crowd when Bobby moved.

"What are you doing?" Bobby asked Dave in surprise.