Santiago, our head coach and team manager, strides out of the tunnel to the locker room. “You boys take it all in yet?” he asks.
“Getting there,” Max says.
“Good. Time to suit up for practice. Just another game. And we’re gonna crush it.”
Just another game.
This is notjust another game.
This is the first of the series of my life.
We win, our lives are changed forever.
We’ve done the impossible. We’ll be legends. The Fireballs will never go back. Copper Valley will never go back. And that next mountain Waverly was talking about?
I can see it.
It’s bigger. It’s better. It’s deeper in the community. It’s opportunities for the whole fuckingworldthat never would’ve existed without a team that proved how much failing was necessary to redefine winning.
It’s getting World Series trophies as a coach. It’s developing young players into superstars. It’s making the Fireballs Foundation bigger and stronger. It’s taking the benefits to Shipwreck.
And it’s all being on the go.
Fuck.Fuck fuck fuck.
We lose, and management starts talking about what went wrong. What we should do better next year. How much harder we have to work next year, as if we won’t work our asses off no matter what. Who should be traded and whose contracts shouldn’t be renewed.
These guys?
They really are one of my families, and the off-season fuckingsuckswhen trades happen.
I want to trust that they’ll all be here when we show up for spring training. That they’ll be the guys eating Grady’s donuts on the one day that he sends us banana pudding donuts down in Florida for luck. That they’ll all be there to do the annual de-cursing ritual that doesn’t really happen because if you talk about it, you curse the de-cursing.
“We aren’t cursed,” I say as I stare out at the baseball diamond.
My teammates look at me.
“We’re fuckingawesome. Let’s go kick some practice ass and have a goddamn good time playing some ball.”
Whoops and cheers go up around me.
Next thing I know, we’re rushing the locker room.
This is gonna be the game of our lives.
And what good is the game of our lives if we don’t enjoy the hell out of it?
Morning warm-ups are perfect. We all bitch a little—it’s tradition—we laugh a lot, we get stretched out and ready for our turns in the batting cages. And about four hours before the game, I cruise into the locker room, ready to switch into my interview jersey because I’m up with the social media team to talk about what it means to me to be here and hopefully not get too choked up on camera, when Diego makes eye contact with me.
He’s not smiling.
He’shorrified.
Every drop of blood in my veins turns to ice, and then I’m in motion.
I can solve this.
I can talk him down, and he’s gonna have the series of his fucking young life.
