Safe at Home by Mike Lupica

Author:Mike Lupica [Lupica, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101653548
Publisher: Penguin Group US

NINE

The keys didn’t help for long.

By the next day, Nick was back to pushing the ball toward second and third, when guys began stealing on him all over again.

He wasn’t as wild as he’d been the first couple of days of practice, wasn’t bouncing as many or sending as many throws to the outfield. But as soon as he was back on the field with his teammates, it was as if he got scared of his arm all over again. Before long, he was taking way too much time to release the ball and had given up on trying to use all his arm, throw with everything he had the way he used to. He just wanted to make sure to at least hit the glove he was aiming at.

He was throwing like a baby, pretty much.

Over the last three practices before they got to the weekend, Coach Williams kept trying to give him pep talks, tell him he could see improvement, and every once in a while, when the rest of the Tigers weren’t watching, he’d jangle those keys in his pocket.

Both Nick and his coach knew better.

They knew Nick wasn’t nearly the catcher this coach had thought he was getting, and he wasn’t nearly ready for his first varsity baseball game the following Tuesday.

The first Captain Marvel comic book Nick ever read explained that the magic word Shazam came from the first letters of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. Billy Batson, when he turned into Captain Marvel, was supposed to have gotten wisdom from Solomon, strength from Hercules, stamina from Atlas, power from Zeus, courage from Achilles and speed from Mercury.

Nick was coming up short in all those areas right now. Especially courage and speed. Even if it was only arm speed.

The weird thing was, he was starting to hit a little better, getting at least one solid hit a day. On Friday, Nick’s last time up, he had doubled off Gary Watson, the best knock he’d gotten yet, driving home a couple of runs and making it into second base standing up.

The hit seemed to make Gary Watson even more annoyed with Nick than usual.

The next guy up against him was Joey Johnson. And even though Nick wasn’t taking any kind of lead, Gary wheeled before his first pitch to Joey and tried to pick Nick off. Nick dove back to the bag, because the last thing he was going to let happen after his first big hit as a varsity player—even if it was only in practice—was to get himself picked off second base because he’d let Jack Elmore sneak in behind him.

Gary’s throw hit him right in the back.

Hard.

Nick was sure he’d done it on purpose. Gary hadn’t tried to pick anybody off second all day, and he wasn’t that wild. In the big leagues, you knew when a pitcher wanted to hit a batter. Nick was sure this was just as intentional, even if Gary was throwing toward second instead of to the plate.

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