Batting Ninth Read Free Page B

a squeaker. I was 0 for 3, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t strike out either.
    “Game-winning RBI!” Mom exclaimed, as Jose and I climbed into the minivan.
    From the tone of her voice, I knew that meant one thing: pizza!

Chapter Four

Foul Territory
    W hen I got home from school Thursday, I found Dad sitting at the computer in the living room. I interrupted him as I walked in the house.
    “Front door?” he asked. “You never come in that way.”
    “A hitter like me shouldn’t have to sneak in the back way,” I said, sticking my chest out a little.
    Dad leaned back in his chair.
    “Is that right? What has made you into such a fine hitter all of a sudden?”
    “Form,” I said. “Some of us got it. Some of us don’t. I guess you heard my form paid off with a game-winning RBI last night.”
    “Yes, I did,” Dad said, turning back to the computer. “I’m glad to see that the two-hundred dollar bat is paying off.”
    Mom, sitting on the couch with a magazine, loudly cleared her throat.
    Dad relaxed in his chair and swiveled around to face me. “Maybe I need to take a day off and watch a practice. Just where did you pick up this new ‘form’?”
    “Mark,” I said. “He’s helping us out while he’s working his way back to the majors.”
    “Mark?” Dad asked. “Mark who?”
    “Wilcox.”
    Dad stared blankly.
    “White Sox?” I primed him.
    “Yeah, I know who he is. Mark Wilcox is playing in Brightsport?” Dad asked, before sighing and nodding his head.
    Mom put down her magazine.
    “Run upstairs and change out of your school clothes,” she said.
    I held out my shirttail. Unless I had a game, jeans and a polo shirt were the extent of my wardrobe.
    “Mom. I don’t have school clothes. I always wear the same thing,” I said, puzzled.
    “Well, go do something. I need to talk to your father … alone.”
    I climbed the stairway to my room and closed my door loudly enough to make them think I was inside. Then I tiptoed back and sat at the top of the stairs. I’d been doing it since I was four, and I was pretty sure they hadn’t caught on yet.
    Dad started sternly. “Mark Wilcox is not coaching Chad.”
    “Oh, Matt, come—”
    “No. He ruined my career, and I don’t want him to do the same with Chad,” Dad interrupted.
    Mom sighed. “First of all, he isn’t going to ruin Chad’s
career
! Second, he didn’t ruin
your
career, either. It was an accident.”
    “Accident? Cutting his cleats into my knee on a slide in a minor-league all-star game. It wasn’t even a real game!” Dad exploded.
    “He apologized to you that day, and he apologized again when you retired. He hardly intended to do it!”
    My mind raced as they talked. Dad played against Mark Wilcox? Funny he’d never mentioned it before. Mark was one of the best players in the majors, and we’d watched him on TV a dozen times. Dad knew guys like Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Vladimir Guerrero, but he had never mentioned Mark Wilcox.
    “Well, you can keep believing that,” Dad said. “All I know is that if not for him, we wouldn’t be living in Brightsport, and I wouldn’t be in the insurance business. I don’t want him near Chad. If I have to, I’ll move him to another team.”
    A second later, the front door slammed shut. I walked downstairs and sat by Mom on the couch.
    “I knew that Dad hurt his knee, but I didn’t know how,” I said.
    Mom looked at me sternly for a second then ran her fingers through my hair.
    “It was just an accident. It’s happened to a thousand other players. It’ll happen to a thousand more,” Mom said.
    “Is he really going to take me off the Rangers?” I asked.
    “Well, not if he doesn’t do it tonight. He’s leaving tomorrow, and he will be gone for two weeks,” Mom said, a hint of anger in her voice.
    “But he said he was going to take a day off.”
    “It’s the cost of a new job, Sweetie,” she said. “By the way, next time you shut your bedroom door, you