Center Field Read Free

own cell phone ring. Put me in, coach.
    The Yankees were heading back from spring training for opening day at the Stadium. The daily Billyblog was all about how excited Billy was to start the new season. Mike clicked past the links to donate to Billy’s charitable foundation for poor kids; to order Billy’s book, IMs to a Young Baller ; to buy T-shirts, jerseys, wristbands, batting gloves, posters, street signs, the wastebasket, the bobble-head doll, the bumper sticker that read WHAT WOULD BILLY BUDD DO ? and came with a booklet of twenty-five moral situations and how Billy would deal with them.
    Over the years, mostly through birthdays and Christmases, he had gotten everything Billy. He had read the “What Would Billy Budd Do?” booklet a dozen times. It covered everything from injuries to designated driving, but he couldn’t remember anything about how to act if some new kid is going to take your position. C’mon, Mike, you’re being paranoid. For all you know, Coach was just trying to shake everybody up. He likes to keep us from getting complacent. Andy was talking out of his butt, as usual.
    He looked up at the Billy Budd posters on his wall. His favorite was Billy looking straight at him, his mouth slightlyopen as if he were ready to say something. Every so often he imagined a conversation with Billy, but he didn’t feel like having one right now.
    He clicked past the Buddline, where you could send Billy a personal question and get a personal answer. He had never sent Billy a question. His questions had always seemed too trivial to bother Billy. And sometimes he thought how bad he would feel if Billy never answered him.
    He clicked onto his favorite link, the Billyball instructionals. For the hundredth time he watched Billy position himself to throw home after catching a sacrifice fly.
    But he watched it without seeing it and he finished the sandwiches and milk without tasting them. Usually when he felt down, the Buddsite could lift him back up, but it wasn’t working today. He felt jostled out of his zone. The new kid. The girl in the locker room. Forget ’em, Mike. As Billy always says, Keep your eyes on the prize and never quit, young ballers, never quit.
    Center field is the prize. But Mike had a bad feeling that keeping his eyes on it and never quitting wasn’t going to be enough.
    He had realized how much he loved center field during the last football season. Playing safety was a little like playing center field. The similarities had made him more impatient for the baseball season. In both sports you’re a lone rider inyour own territory and the game is spread out in front of you. You start moving the moment the action begins. You follow the ball knowing you are the last line of defense. Everything is in your hands. Everyone is depending on you.
    But in a football game there are too many variables—enemy jerseys coming to take you out, your own guys getting to the ball carrier first or getting in your way.
    Baseball is simpler, purer. Baseball isn’t really that much of a team sport. As much as you might be down with the guys and support each other, everybody has his own job and pretty much does it alone. When that little white pill comes off the bat and over the infield, it’s all yours. Track it, time its drop, pick it out of a bright, dark, patchy, blue gray sky. Feel it settle into your glove, close your hand around it and then, if there are men on base, maybe someone tagging up to score, turn into position for the long throw home.
    He felt better thinking about the fundamentals.
    Just before he logged off the Buddsite, a blinking alert popped up. The site was announcing an A Day With Billy contest. He read the rules: The contest was open to any male or female high school varsity baseball or softball player in the metro area. The winner of the best two-minute video essay about what baseball means to him or her would get to spend an entire day with