Out of His League Read online

He had his own problems to worry about.

  The rumblings on sports radio increased with each passing day. Jon hadn’t been mentioned by name, but a few of the guys on the pitching staff had texted him about the stuff the media people were dredging up. Most of it was garbage—they were misreading the situation, spinning it in the search for people to blame. But still, it was out there, and nobody on the Captains staff seemed to know what to do about it.

  Jon was monitoring Twitter, just to see if team management was coming out with statements. They sent out one or two platitudes, but to Jon’s mind, the responses were feeble. All it was doing was fanning the flames on the airwaves.

  He felt he was in a holding pattern, waiting for a hammer to drop on him, crushing him into oblivion.

  And there was still no talk of a contract for next year.

  Meanwhile, Martinez’s team was in the next round of playoffs. Jon watched the games at night as a distraction, while he spent his days working out, making snail-paced progress toward conquering the changeup pitch.

  Coach Duffy had lost faith in Jon when he’d been late for their first meeting. He’d stopped talking to him, and the ramification was that Jon was now on his own. Jon wasn’t giving up, though. He figured that until he proved himself to be committed by showing up every day on time and running endless “poles” (wind sprints from foul pole to foul pole on the baseball field), as well as working the machines in the weight room and doing whatever conditioning and throwing exercises he could manage without use of his right hand, he wouldn’t get his old coach’s respect back. Proving himself was slow going and painful so far. But all Jon could do was take it day by day and hope that he’d break through sooner rather than later.

  Brooke called that night. Jon sat alone in his apartment, staring mindlessly at the game on TV while icing his elbow.

  “Do you want to cut your hair for charity this weekend?” Brooke asked him. “I can set up a media event to get cameras on you for a special news segment.”

  All that would do was fan the flames further. Didn’t she have the instincts to see this? Jon put down the ice bucket and walked over to his living room penthouse window, the phone tucked against his ear, and gazed at the mind-boggling night view of Boston Harbor, all lit up. “No,” he said to her. “Don’t do it.”

  “But you’ve been telling people all season that you’re going to cut your hair.”

  “Yes, followed by the sentence ‘when the team makes the playoffs.’ And since we didn’t make the playoffs, Brooke, don’t you think that will only draw attention to the scandal we’re hoping will go away?”

  Brooke sighed. “I concede your point. But you have to agree to something—something that would get you good press, and put you back in Vivian’s good books. I can’t help you otherwise.”

  “Fine,” Jon muttered into the phone, not feeling up to this conversation. “Come up with something not the haircut.”

  “Do you promise not to torpedo my next idea?” she asked, a pout in her voice. “Because I’m working on getting you into something special that’s part of the month-end fund-raising event. It’s a charity bachelor auction.”

  Jon’s blood ran cold. “A what?”

  “Bidding should run high on you. You’re good-looking, you’re eligible, you’re upbeat and easygoing. Women love being around you.”

  “Forget it.” He went back and found his ice bucket. He didn’t feel particularly upbeat and easygoing tonight. Maybe he was turning into Lizzy. “I want to do something meaningful that’s about being more than a Captains player. How about a television pledge drive, something that will also educate people on the disease? That will help the kids.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Jon. But the bachelor auction is going to happen. Vivian wants it. And you could raise lots of money, more than any other player if I do some behind-the-scenes work to get women into a bidding war.”

  The only person Jon wanted bidding on him was Lizzy, and that was an unlikely scenario. Just picturing her coming out from behind her curtain and pursuing anyone publicly like that made him choke out a laugh.

  “Relax, Jon,” Brooke said. “I’ll make sure you don’t get stuck with anyone distasteful. I’ll have a plant in the crowd to make the final winning bid on you.”

  “Not interested, because I’d still have to go out on a date with the plant, right?”

  Brooke made a tight, high-pitched giggle. “I’m the plant, Jon.”

  He blinked and held out his phone for a minute. This was surreal. He could never be entirely sure of Brooke’s motives with him. Exactly why he wanted Max back as his full-time agent. “How is Max?” he asked her.

  “He’s recuperating. He just needs time to heal.”

  “Is he in the hospital?”

  Brooke sighed. “I’ve said too much already. Let’s talk about you. Here’s another idea—how about if we create an event—filmed for the evening news, of course—where you go into the children’s cancer clinic—the Sunshine Club, I think Vivian calls it—and sign some T-shirts for the kids?”

  The kids who were sick with cancer? The kids who were in a life-and-death battle with the disease? Jon shuddered. The last thing those kids or their families needed or wanted was to see him—or anybody else—signing T-shirts for the TV cameras. If he were in their shoes, he would hate it.

  “Jon, what do you think?”

  That my options keep getting worse.

  He wasn’t sure how to explain it to her, because unless a person had gone through a cancer death, how could they understand?

  Lizzy would understand.

  He could talk to her about this.

  “Jon?”

  “Let’s table the discussion for now,” he said, rubbing his head, which was starting to ache. “Tomorrow I have to head over to the hospital and get my stitches out.”

  With any luck he would bump into Lizzy. Just for a casual conversation, just to find out how Brandon was doing. He didn’t even know if the kid had been cleared of his tests to see if he was cancer-free.

  “All right,” Brooke said, “but you’re going to have to choose one of those options, because they’re all we have. And my father agrees.” She paused. “By the way, how is your part of the plan coming? Are you working on your changeup pitch?”

  Jon gripped at the ice bucket in his lap. Inhaled the scent of menthol from the muscle ointment he’d rubbed on his quads. He was exhausted. Physically and mentally. But it was all good, because it was helping him not think during the day—of Lizzy and Brandon and how they were doing together, and of his predicament with the media.

  “I’ll be throwing more pitches after the splint comes off,” he said.

  “Good. Call me tomorrow when you’re back from the hospital and ready to talk some more.”

  The next afternoon, Jon strode into the hospital complex. He rode up the elevators, feeling queasy as he retraced the route he’d made a week ago, prior to the rumblings in the media.

  A foreboding settled in his gut. Maybe Jon wouldn’t see the enthusiasm for his presence that he’d seen the last time he’d been in the hospital. Maybe the continuous, building hum of the background noise from the media assault on the pitching staff was doing its damage.

  But once in the doctor’s office, the staff greeted him warmly. Dr. Morgan himself removed Jon’s stitches. A few of the aides and nurses and resident doctors who’d worked on him during the original surgery gathered and gave him a mini-celebration. Jon was deemed healed and given the green light to wear a glove and throw “bullpens,” although he was supposed to stop if the affected finger bothered him.

  He didn’t bother to tell them he’d been pretty much working out all along. He also was biting his tongue to keep from asking where Dr. LaValley was?

  And he’d been doing so well. Just be serious, he told himself. Stay on track with the agenda.

  But on the way back to his SUV, two things happened. First, he had a long wait for the elevator to the garage. Second, this gave him time to
look around.

  Hanging on the wall in the brightly lit corridor was a huge poster for the Sunshine Club, the children’s cancer clinic at Wellness Hospital sponsored by the New England Captains baseball team. Jon stared at the poster showing the smiling face of a beautiful young child clutching a teddy bear. He brought his hand up to touch the Captains team logo on the bottom corner of the glossy paper.

  The bell for the elevator rang, and the doors opened. Jon’s hand still on the poster, he glanced into the elevator and saw a boy, about two or three years old, slumped in his mother’s arms. The boy showed the ravages of the chemotherapy that Jon remembered all too well. The bald head. The gray pallor to the skin. The look of general misery.

  Jon closed his eyes. The poster on the wall was the whitewash. The kid on the elevator was the truth. He gripped his car keys, suddenly feeling as if he was in chemotherapy.

  The elevator came and went, and Jon didn’t go with it.

  Instead, he walked over to the hospital directory posted by the elevator doors. The Sunshine Club was located just a few floors up from where he stood.

  He was debating his options—either putting himself in the charity bachelor auction like a piece of meat, all body and sex appeal and very little soul, or taking a visit, just a short visit to the Sunshine Club to see if there was anything he could do there—something real and authentic. Something that could benefit the cause of helping kids and their families, without making it a platitude.

  Max would tell him what to do. He would tell Jon to get on the damn elevator and go up.

  The elevator dinged, the doors opened and...Brandon walked out.

  Despite himself, Jon felt himself break into a grin. “Hey, buddy!” he said to the kid.

  “Jon!” Brandon’s moon-shaped face with the gap in his teeth where he was missing an incisor lit up at seeing Jon. His gaze went immediately to Jon’s right hand. “Your splint is off!”

  A tearing went through Jon’s heart. After all the kid had gone through—his cancer remission tests, his mom going into rehab, his moving in with his aunt—Brandon’s first thoughts were on somebody else.

  Jon picked up Brandon’s Captains cap, askew on his head, and settled it on properly. “The season is over for us, slugger. Don’t you think it’s time to move on to football?”

  “Nope,” Brandon insisted. “I’m a four-season baseball guy, just like you.”

  Jon smiled wistfully. How’s your aunt? he wanted to ask. “How’s school?” he asked instead.

  “Is it true what they’re saying about the Captains on sports talk radio?” Brandon blurted. The kid looked distraught.

  “Don’t listen to that stuff, okay? It takes away your focus.”

  “Did you drink beer in the clubhouse with those guys during games?” Brandon asked.

  Whoa. Is that what the media was saying now? Brooke hadn’t told him that. Damn. Jon looked into that little boy’s face, that little boy who had a mom with alcohol problems, and he could feel his heart squeezing. “No,” he said firmly.

  Brandon’s relief was visible. “That’s what I thought.”

  Jon knelt so he was eye level with the boy. “Let me give you a baseball tip, something that took me a long time to learn. Baseball is the great American game. If you’re a ballplayer, people want a piece of you. But you can’t listen to distractions. You have to focus on your own thing.”

  “I know,” Brandon said. “Noah Devers told everybody in school that my mom is in alcohol rehab. But I told him to shut up and mind his own business, and then everybody was mad at him. Auntie went in and talked to the teachers. Then we all had a meeting.” Brandon scratched his ear. “Oh, and you know what—I’m going to be in baseball tryouts this November. It’s real pitching, not T-ball or coach-pitching. Can you show me some batting tips?”

  Jon just knelt there, gaping. Lizzy. Oh, Lizzy. What he would have given to have been a fly on the wall in that school meeting.

  “Ah...I don’t work on batting anymore, slugger, sorry.”

  “How about pitching?” Brandon asked.

  “Sorry, but your aunt doesn’t really want me around, buddy.” The thought depressed him.

  Brandon cocked his head. “Didn’t you get her voice mail?”

  “What voice mail?” Jon drew his phone from his pocket. He flicked it on and stared at the rows of apps on the screen. One of these must be for voice mail—he didn’t normally use it. In his line of work, people either texted him or if they called him and hung up, it showed as a “missed call,” and then he would call them back.

  Brandon sighed and took the phone from him. “Auntie stinks at using her phone, too. I had to go into her call log and get your phone number for her. She thought you deleted it, but you only deleted the call I made, not the one from the day before. Here.” He looked up at Jon. “What’s your password? I’ll open the voice mail for you.”

  Jon took the phone back. Scram, kid, he wanted to say. He was damned if he would listen to Lizzy’s message in front of her nephew. He had some pride left. “What are you doing in the hospital, anyway? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  “No.” Brandon shrugged. “It’s a teacher training day at school, and my babysitter couldn’t be at Auntie’s house for me, so I came to work with Auntie this morning. She’s busy now. But I know my way all over this hospital.” He swept his arms in a circle. “I’ve been coming here since I was like, three.” He rolled his eyes. Then he brightened. “Where are you going? I can help you find your way.”

  “Brandon.” Jon gave him a warning look. “Didn’t we just have a talk last week about the dangers of you wandering off without telling anybody?”

  “But I’m not wandering! The lady in the day care lets me visit my old nurses from the cancer clinic! That’s where I was! Come upstairs with me and see!”

  Jon clearly felt the force of his pulse in his neck. “You go into the cancer clinic? The Sunshine Club?” After what you’ve been through?

  “Yep!” Brandon nodded vigorously. “The Sunshine Club.” He took Jon’s hand, the one that had just been desplinted, and he pulled, dragging Jon forward.

  Jon stepped into the elevator, not at all sure about this. But if Lizzy was facing up to her fears, attending school meetings and leaving him a voice message, then maybe he could face his, too.

  Inside the elevator was another poster for the Sunshine Club. Jon’s forehead felt tight. Not only didn’t he want to go there, he wasn’t sure he wanted witnesses when he did, either. “Just get me to the right floor, okay?” He pointed to the poster. “Then you can go back down to day care.”

  “They like me in the Sunshine Club,” Brandon said, jabbing a button on the wall. “What are you going to do, just walk in without knowing anybody?”

  Ah, good point.

  The elevator doors closed. Thankfully, it was empty inside except for him and Brandon. The small space smelled like Chinese food from a take-out lunch someone must have brought in. It was that time of day. “Your aunt isn’t going to get mad about you being with me, is she?” Jon asked.

  Brandon picked at a mosquito bite on his arm. “Nah. She’s pretty busy. Yesterday, she had to help sew back on a guy’s toe that got cut off.”

  Jon couldn’t help wincing. He wiggled his own toes. He could have done without that visual.

  Funny, but Lizzy was the one woman he knew who was so immersed in her work—important work, too—that she was able to keep her focus fully on her own business. Like he should be doing at the moment. She followed the advice that he had trouble following.

  “Has she, uh, been reading the newspapers?” he asked Brandon casually. “Specifically, the sports pages?”

  Brandon shook his head. “She only reads hospital kind of newspapers.” He picked again at his mosquito bite. It was starting to bleed. “She likes National Archaeology magazine, too.”

  The kid wasn’t putting him on. Jon did remember seeing that reading material on her coffee table the one time he was in her apartment. “That’s
interesting.”

  “Yeah. She likes ancient worlds where people used to live, but then a volcano exploded and it ran down into everybody’s houses, and, like, they all died. It happened a hundred years ago or something.” Brandon decided to stop studying the blood on his arm and glanced up at Jon instead. “She read it to me at bedtime last night. I liked the pictures. This one guy, he was like, dying when the lava came and ran him over. He was a baker, I think. It was so cool.”

  Jon stared. “She showed you that at bedtime?” Lizzy, he thought, You need help. Desperately.

  “Yup,” Brandon said. “We read some books that Sharma sent over, too. But Aunt Lisbeth thought they were too optim...”

  “Optimistic.” The laugh caught in his throat. If she thought that way, she wouldn’t disapprove of her nephew being exposed again to the cancer ward, that was for certain.

  The elevator rang, and they came to their stop. Jon stepped out. The gleaming white floors squeaked beneath his sneakers. He felt underdressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Maybe it would have been better if he’d worn a team jersey. Then again, he wasn’t an official representative of the team, not today.

  This was just a...scouting expedition.

  Jon paused in the long white hallway. Nobody had recognized him. Brandon stood patiently beside him, his hand in his. Trusting him.

  “This is where I used to come,” Brandon said nonchalantly, as only kids could.

  “Weren’t you scared?” he found himself asking.

  “I was too little to be scared.”

  Jon didn’t want to be here, at all. But he held Brandon’s hand and remained calm. The world didn’t need to know he was too much of a softie to be able to handle seeing little kids with no hair and painful expressions, coming out of chemo with their upset parents.

  “Come on,” Brandon said, tugging at him. “I’ll show you around. This is the community room.” He dragged Jon through a doorway and into an open area with a television and grouped seating areas. Nobody was present except for him and Brandon.

  “There’s a TV and lots of toys here,” Brandon said. “I used to like the puzzles.”

  “You can remember that far back?” Jon asked.