A couple of them glance at me, smirking.
“Hey, superstar,” one of them calls.
I shake my head. “Relax.”
“Nice little home run yesterday,” another adds. “Heard you called your shot.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, heading toward my locker.
“Wade.”
I look up and see Coach Riley standing in the doorway of his office.
“Got a second?”
“What’s up?”
“Come on into my office.”
I do. The door shuts behind me, drowning out the sounds from the locker room.
He leans back against his desk, arms crossed, a grin tugging at his mouth.
“Well,” he says. “Congratulations.”
I frown. “For what?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Really?”
I just stare at him. He exhales a small laugh.
“You’ve been traded.”
The words don’t land right away. They just kind of hang there.
“Oh.”
“To Florida,” he continues. “You’re going to the big leagues, my friend. No more Triple-A for you.”
A beat passes as it sets in what he’s saying. I have to take a minute to process.
“Florida,” I repeat.
“I know,” he adds with a smirk, “you were just loving Iowa. Cornfields and such.”
He says it like it’s a joke, and I should be thrilled to be out.
I don’t say anything.
“You can thank that viral post,” he goes on. “I don’t know if you actually called your shot or not, but—hell—it played great. GM from Florida saw it. Made him go, ‘who’s that?’ He started digging into your tapes and your stats, and, well, he liked what he saw. Guess they’re in need of a third baseman after someone on their team went down with an injury.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
I still give him nothing from me. I just lean back in the chair, processing.
He studies me for a second.
