Jayson said.
“What’s good?” Scout asked him.
Jayson shook his head. “Nothing, just that it’s good Greg is trusting you with this assignment.”
“Uh, duh, it’s sort of my job.”
“Right.” Jayson smiled.
They watched the team gather around a man in the middle of the field. Scout assumed it was the team’s coach. There was some laughing and guffawing and then finally the man emerged from the pile of teenagers.
“Fine, but I’m only doing this to humor you all,” they heard the coach say with a smile.
Curious what his team was asking him to do, Scout watched while the man picked up a bat and then got into the batter’s box. The catcher didn’t bother to set up behind him. The kids then circled the mechanical pitcher.
“How fast do you want it, coach?”
It was obvious the team had done this before. Obvious the coach knew what they wanted him to say.
“Bring the heat,” he told them.
“Ninety-five!”
“Ninety-five,” Jayson muttered.
“Yeah, wow. That’s as fast as that machine will throw. That guy doesn’t have a shot.”
The first ball out of the machine got knocked over the fence in the outfield. And so did the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jayson asked her.
Scout was seeing it. She was hearing it, too. Pure contact, hit after hit. The man had a flawless swing. “How old do you think he is?”
“Maybe a few years younger than us. Maybe not.”
Eventually the coach’s hitting display was over and the other team arrived. Scout took her notebook out and started doing her job on the kid. He was definitely a solid prospect, but she didn’t think he warranted a high enough draft position to sway him from going to college.
Given his evident frustration at the loss of the game, which resulted in him knocking over the Gatorade cooler, Scout thought college might help a kid like this mature. Baseball wasn’t always just about physical abilities. A lot of it had to do with what was between the ears. Especially when it came to pitchers.
They descended the bleachers and made their way over to the dugout. The coach came out to greet them.
“Here to see Ronny?” he asked.
“How did you guess?” Scout said.
“It’s a small town. I know all the parents. When I spot strangers, I assume they’re from the MLBSB.”
The scouting bureau was a secondary source of scouting information a lot of the clubs used. Sometimes it was hard for one team of scouts to cover the country. The bureau hired scouts simply to track players and log data for any team to access.
“We’re from the Rebels,” Scout said, not bothering to mention that Jayson was really just along for the ride. Not to mention that sometimes when the coaches or fathers realized she was the scout, and obviously a woman, they immediately discounted her. It never bothered her, considering the coach or father wasn’t the one she was coming to see.
“He’s definitely got stuff,” the coach said.
“He does.” Scout agreed but didn’t go into too much detail. It was her opinion that a coach would always try to sell their kid hard, regardless of what they truly thought.
“So we were watching you hit before. That machine really throw ninety-five?”
The man smiled and it made Scout think he was even younger than she guessed. “It does. I can hit a mean fastball.”
“Ever play pro ball?”
“Nope. I was a football player in college. Just not big enough to make it in the pros as a tight end, so I fell back on what I went to school for, which was teaching. The school needed a baseball coach, so I learned everything I could about the game and here I am. Never knew I could hit a serious fastball until I started taking batting practice.”
He laughed through this story as if it was a joke. Some oddball discovery of a talent he never knew he had. What Scout heard, however, was that the guy was a football player who had had pro-level athleticism. It wouldn’t be the weirdest baseball discovery story she’d ever heard.
“How old are you?” Scout asked bluntly.
He squinted at her.
“Twenty-seven,” he said finally. “Why?”
Scout looked at Jayson. She probably shouldn’t have. This was her call, her job. But when they had been working together she and Jayson had always seemed to share a brain. He always knew where she was going, so it wasn’t as if she ever had to explain herself. Then he could provide his feedback without her having to ask.
Four years hadn’t changed anything. “It’s insane,” he told her.
Scout agreed. But why not?
“What’s your name?”
“Evan Tanner. And you are looking at me really weird right now.”
Scout smiled. “Evan, what would you think about coming to a weeklong baseball camp we’re hosting and trying out for the New England Rebels?”
“I would think what he said is right. That it’s insane.”
“Insane.” Scout nodded, feeling some odd sense of purpose. “Well, that’s sort of how I roll now. So give it a shot anyway.”
Scout put out her hand and after a second, as if he was still processing what he’d just been told, Evan Tanner shook it with a definitive yes.
“YOU’RE REALLY CONSIDERING HIM,” Jayson said as he quickly glanced at Scout before turning his eyes back to the road. They were still about an hour away from Minotaur Falls and the ban on talking didn’t seem so much like a purposeful thing this time but a result of Scout being lost in thought. The look on her face told Jayson she was still thinking about Evan and his sweet swing.
“You mean Evan? Hell, yes. It’s a tryout camp. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Jayson shrugged. “Yeah, but isn’t it kind of getting the guy’s hopes up? Bringing him to a tryout. He won’t make it through the first day.”
“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit. You saw that swing, heard that contact, same as I did.”
Jayson snorted. “Scout, we’re talking about a twenty-seven-year-old former football player. I don’t care if he hits it out of the park every time and makes it through all five days of camp. Are you seriously going to recommend him to the New England Rebels as a prospect for the draft?”
He could feel her eyes on him. He didn’t need to look at her to know she was glaring at him. The glare was basically Scout’s go-to look. It would be a huge improvement from the blank expression she’d been wearing for months.
There were times during Duff’s illness he wondered if he would ever see anything in those green eyes again, or if they would remain lifeless forever...like Duff.
Saw some life in her today. Knew baseball would save her. Knew you would, too.
Jayson shook the voice out of his head. That was not Duff. Duff was not talking to him. Duff was dead. Jayson was just imagining what Duff might have said if he had seen Scout today.
Although Jayson had thought the same thing. The way her body tightened when she watched Evan swing. The way it