Baseball Great Read Free

don’t we, buddy?”
    Josh nodded enthusiastically.
    â€œNo, Gary,” Dallas said. “I’m sorry. It’s over.”
    â€œWhat’s over?” his father said, standing tall and clenching his fists.
    â€œThey agreed to let me keep you through next week,” Dallas said, “to play out the home series with Pawtucket. They’re letting me have a retirement ceremony during the seventh-inning stretch. Saturday’s bat day. There should be a crowd.”
    Josh’s father did something Josh had never seenbefore, ever. He let his enormous shoulders sag. His chin dipped toward his chest, and one of his big hands swept over his face.
    â€œI—” he said to Dallas, then stopped.
    Josh thought he heard his father whisper that he was the MVP.
    Outside Dallas’s window the sun sparkled on the lake, and an army of puffy clouds marched across the sky. Josh’s father brushed past him and flung open the office door. Dallas called to him, but Josh’s father stood punching the elevator button, and Josh followed him. Dallas’s secretary didn’t look up from her typing as they waited for the elevator to come, and Dallas stopped calling so that when it did arrive, the ding of its bell sounded like the end of a prizefight.
    Back in the car, Josh waited until they pulled into their own driveway before he asked, “Dad, what happens now?”

CHAPTER SIX
    THE NEXT DAY, JOSH stuffed his baseball mitt, cleats, and hat into his gym locker. He felt someone tap his shoulder and he turned around.
    â€œYou see this, dude?” Benji asked, shoving the school newspaper into his face. Benji’s straight brown hair fell across his face, his dark eyes glittering up at Josh. His plump cheeks tugged at a mischievous smile. Benji was average height but stout and tough, a good athlete who was quick to laugh himself but even quicker when it came to making other people laugh.
    Josh felt his cheeks heat up. “Yeah, I saw it.”
    He pushed past Benji and out into the crowded hallway, making for the stairs and his book locker on the second floor before the first bell rang.
    â€œDude, this girl loves you,” Benji said, following close.
    â€œWhat girl?” Josh asked, turning around when he reached his locker, his mind on Sheila, the tenth grader’s girlfriend.
    â€œ This girl,” Benji said, stabbing his finger at the byline of the newspaper article about Josh. Benji closed his eyes, puckered his lips, and made kissing noises at Josh.
    â€œCut it out.”
    â€œShe does.”
    â€œI got other things to worry about,” Josh said, spinning the dial on his locker and choosing to tell Benji the next worst thing to his dad getting cut from the Chiefs. “Bart Wilson showed up at my bus stop yesterday after school wanting to fight me, because, he says, I’m after Sheila Conway and she’s his girlfriend.”
    â€œAre you?” Benji asked.
    Josh gave him a dirty look. “She sat next to me at lunch. You saw it. She’s an eighth grader. What am I supposed to do?”
    â€œNot keep smiling at her,” Benji said.
    â€œBelieve me, I won’t,” Josh said, stuffing his backpack into the locker and removing the books he needed for the first two periods. “That’s what you get for being nice.”
    â€œAnyway, you’ve got a new girlfriend now,” Benji said, holding up the paper.
    â€œCut it out,” Josh said, closing his locker and heading for homeroom.
    â€œYou do.”
    â€œI’ll see you at lunch.”
    Â 
    At lunch, Josh bought four milks, then found an empty table near the glass wall that looked out over the hallway. He took four sandwiches out of his bag and lined them up with an apple and some pretzels. They only got twenty-two minutes to eat, and it took all of that for Josh to put down everything he needed to stay fueled up. Benji, who wasn’t small but who was nowhere near