My teammates all exchange glances.
Diego’s even dropped his phone like puppy prom and Waverly no longer matter.
That’s kinda huge.
Luca clears his throat. “Maybe you wanna start with a single?”
Darren grabs him around the neck and gives him a noogie. “If Cooper says he’s hitting a grand slam, we’re fucking setting him up to hit a grand slam.”
Luca’s flailing. “I’m just saying, maybe we start with baby steps.”
“What if you get on base, and I hit a grand slam?” Brooks says.
Fucker’s usually behind me in the batting order.
He’s right.
That’s more likely.
I surge to my feet. “I’m going to talk to Coach Addie.”
And now the entire clubhouse is sucking in a collective breath.
I flip them all off and head out of the clubhouse toward the coaches’ offices.
Coach Addie and I butted heads again last week when she caught me replacing the bats in the batting cages with bats painted like Thrusty, the Copper Valley Thrusters hockey team’s rocket-powered bratwurst mascot.Can’t improve your swing with that paint job, she said.
And she was unfortunately right.
Santiago, our head coach, gave me a long side-eye a few hours after the Lady Fireballs ambushed me in my hotel room when I missed curfew a couple weeks before that, and he benched me two games later after a piss-poor performance.
But the team won.
Without me.
Tripp Wilson keeps stopping by to check on me. We were friends before he and his wife became co-owners of the team, so while there are lines in our relationship that weren’t there two years ago, I still consider him to be my friend first.
Not really fond of the hints he’s started dropping.Only two years left on your contract. Do we need to talk about what’s coming next? You’ll always have a spot in the organization of course. Name where you want to be.
Translation: Dear Cooper, your best days are behind you. Wanna join the coaching staff so your old ass doesn’t drag the team down after we’ve worked this hard to build it up?
My agent will have some things to say about that, and I’ll let him, but since we’re not even close to negotiation time, I’m taking this as Tripp being my friend first and the Fireballs’ owner second.
I stop at the assistant coaches’ door and knock. It’s open, and all four of them inside look up at me.
Pretty sure Coach Dusty’s eyeball twitched, and not because I’ve apparently interrupted a round ofGo, Ash, Go, the card game that management commissioned to celebrate our new mascot last fall.
Coach Dusty’s our fielding coach. I’m giving him heartburn this year too. Still snagging the hard balls to catch, but I’ve let too many easy grounders go past me.
I lock eyes with Coach Addie. “I’m gonna hit a grand slam today.”
All four of them share glances.
Coach Dusty coughs.
“Big Ben’s pitching for Atlanta,” Coach Addie says.
Shit. Big Ben’s a legend. I’ve never hit a home run off him.Ever. He’s struck me out more than any other pitcher in baseball, matter of fact.
