With this being the slow part of the year for baseball and with the lack of topics, I thought it might be fun to give everyone something different to read.

What I'm posting is a short story I wrote about 5 years ago while I was still getting my BA and was taking a creative writing workshop for my minor (creative writing, of course).  Luckily, I had two excellent editors to help me mold this into what I, and they, thought was a pretty good story.  One was my professor, who is at least a casual baseball fan and an expert on the writing side of the situation.  The other was a fellow student in the workshop who incidentally also worked as a high school umpire, which helped tremendously, since I had some issues with rules and with interactions between players and umps that were unrealistic on the high school level that he helped me with.

In Microsoft Word, the story is 29 pages, double-spaced, so I'll post about the story basically as a serialization over the next week or so probably.

Anyway, I'd like to think the story is pretty good.  At least as far as prose goes, it's the thing I ever managed to write.  Despite my opinions of it though, if anyone has critiques of the story, I'm always open to listening to what other people think of it. 

So without further discussion, below is approximately the first 6-7 pages of "Curveballs"

            As the ball came down into the webbing of Nick Cooper’s glove in center field, he made it look so easy, as though the ball’s natural habitat was to be immersed in the oil tanned glove that extended from his left hand. 

            “Two hands, Nick.  Two hands.”

            “Yeah sure, coach.”  Nick replied, rolling his eyes as he fired the ball back in, past the cut-off man and directly to the man giving him the critique.

            “And stop trying to show off.  Hit the damn cut-off man.”  Johnny knew he had his hands full this year.  There was a great deal of talent on the squad, but also too much ego, and none of the egos could surpass that of Nick Cooper.  Nick ignored the old man as he turned back and got himself in position in center field. 

            Johnny threw in another 60 mile per hour fastball over the heart of the plate to Adam Murphy, the team’s slugging catcher who batted cleanup and led the team in RBIs the previous year.  The bat crushed the ball deep into center field, where Nick began to run back towards the fence before stopping to watch as the ball sailed overhead by about another 15 feet beyond the fence.

            “Nice hit Murph.”  The somewhat distant voice came in from the outfield.  There was other chatter going on among the players in the field and waiting to take their turn to bat, but Johnny’s ears tuned in to the singular voice that came in from center field.

            “Alright, next batter.  Good job Murphy.” Johnny looked around at his fielders to see where they were all playing at the time.  Nick stood incredibly shallow in center field, over halfway in from the wall towards 2nd base.  Anything hit to deep center would be at least a double if he played there during a game.  He had a look of impatience in his mannerism, as if he was growing tired of standing there waiting for Johnny to throw the next pitch.

            “What the hell are you doing, Nick?  How many times have I told you?  You don’t play shallow unless I specifically tell you to.”

            “C’mon, this is about where Jim Edmonds plays, and he’s a gold glover,” Nick replied, knowing the exact things to say to irritate the coach.

            Johnny pulled the ball cap off his head, exasperated.  He looked down at the mound he stood on and rubbed the sweat off his forehead as he gathered his thoughts and tried to decide where to begin.  He broke his momentary silence, yelling without even raising his eyes to look out to center, “Nick, get over here.  Now.”

            “Christ, what the hell is wrong now,” came the reply from Nick as he started to jog in towards the mound.

            Johnny called over one of the assistants to take over the job of pitching batting practice as he began to stride off to the 3rd base side of the field.  Nick caught up to him just as he began to enter foul territory on the torn up practice field.  Nick remained quiet and looked back towards his teammates, who all snickered at the imminent discipline that was about to be handed down to him.

            “First off, we don’t use the name of the Lord in vain, you got that?”  Johnny began, turning around sharply to be face to face with Nick.

            “Yes, fa..” Nick began before Johnny interrupted again.

            “Do I look like I’m done, boy?  You’re no gold glover and until you are, you will use two hands to make catches and you will play where I tell you to.  And knock off the showboating.  Let’s see how much showboating you do when you’re running five laps around the field.”  Johnny continued, irate at the obvious disrespect.  Nick just looked at him for a moment, and Johnny burst out again, “Well, get to it!  Five laps, and don’t be jogging.”

            “Yes, father.”  Nick said, with obvious disdain for the ruling handed to him, as he tossed the glove onto the bench and began running along the outside of the fence.  

Coach Johnny Cooper had a look of weary frustration throughout his body as he unlocked the door to his office.  His top assistant, Stephen Hardwick, followed him into the office crowded with bookshelves full of game tapes and classic novels.  Johnny’s office was arranged so that his desk formed a barrier between himself and any students that would come in to talk to him about more playing time or any coaches coming to ask for a larger slice of the athletic department’s funds.

 The desk itself was in a state of organized chaos.  Next to the “John Cooper, Athletic Director” nameplate rested a picture of Johnny and his wife Susan, who had died nearly a decade before, and a pencil holder that held only about two to four pens or pencils at any given time while the rest of his writing utensils lay strewn about amidst papers he needed to grade from the two American Literature classes he still taught—despite the promotion to Athletic Director—and any number of sports-related forms he either needed to fill out or file in his mostly empty file cabinet.  Yet, whenever he needed to find a particular student’s paper or a particular form he needed to get in to the Illinois High School Association, he could always find it without too much shuffling of papers.

            “What’re ya gonna do about your boy?” Hardwick asked, as he began to sit down in the chair placed on the far side of the desk.

            “Shit, I don’t know.  Maybe one of these days he’ll realize that he only has to run laps as often as he runs his mouth.”  Johnny replied, sitting back in his chair, an old, slightly padded chair on wheels designed before the word ‘ergonomic’ became a household word.

            “Yeah, but he’s a good kid.  And his arm isn’t too bad either.” Hardwick continued, scratching at the now graying mustache he had sprouted long before Johnny had met him.

            “Nick’s still got to learn he isn’t gonna always get his way though.  Hell, there are plenty of D-1 college pitchers that throw just as hard and they all listen to their coaches.” 

            “Oh, I’m sure plenty of them ignore their coaches too,” Hardwick said, a smile crossing his face as he did so.  Seeing Johnny wasn’t as amused, he continued on, “The rest of the team looks pretty good this year.  Anything big you think we need to work on in practice tomorrow to get ready for the opener?”

            “A few of the boys are opening up too soon on their swing, but I’ll work with them.  I’ll probably have you pitching batting practice to the rest of them.”

            “Sounds good.  Man, I just got a feeling this year’s gonna be a good one.  Who knows, maybe 94 good,” the smile crossed Hardwick’s lips again as the words came out of his mouth.

            Johnny noticed as a few voices began coming down the hallway approaching the office.  Three of his players walked by, including Nick.  Spotting him, Johnny called to him, “Nick, could you come in here for a moment?”

            Nick let out a sigh, loud enough to be audible to his father in the office, turned back from the other two guys he was talking with, and came to the office door.  “Yeah dad, what?”

            “I just wanted to tell you I’m probably not gonna make it home until nine or so. I want to try to get some of this grading done.”

            “I’m going out with Murph and some of the other guys for awhile.”  Nick declared to his father, despite the request.

            “Not tonight, Nick.  I expect you home when I get there.”  Johnny reasserted himself more forcefully.

            “Dad, come on,” he pleaded, while the two boys in the hall waited for him.

            “Nick, Mrs. Saban told me you’re behind in English and I know about the Trig quiz you have tomorrow.  You’re not going anywhere until you have those taken care of.”  Johnny looked Nick straight in the eye and continued on, trying to keep his cool, “Now, go home and get your work done.”

            “Fine, whatever.”  Nick’s disapproval was nothing new to Johnny, he was used to having to put his foot down whenever Nick wanted to go out to a movie or a party when his school work was suffering.  He could hear Nick’s voice down the hallway saying, “Yeah, I can’t go tonight,” and after some response Johnny couldn’t hear, Nick’s voice continued on again, “I don’t know, he’s just being an asshole.”

            Johnny shook his head and picked up the top part of his stack of papers and began to place them on the desk before letting out a sigh and putting them on his lap while he made room for the stack of papers he was intending to grade.

            “You have fun with those. I’m gonna take off, get myself home, shower and get some supper in me.”  Hardwick began to get out of the chair, when Johnny interjected.

            “Am I being too rough on him?”

            “Johnny, you have to do what you have to do.  I’m not gonna spout my opinions one way or the other,” came Hardwick’s response.  It shouldn’t have surprised Johnny to get such an answer, as Hardwick always let the kids off the hook too easily, whether it was basketball season, where he was head coach, or baseball or football, where he assisted.  Hardwick had a great understanding of all three sports and desire to teach them, but Johnny and the other coaches always had to deal with the discipline issues that were bound to occur every year.

            “Alright.  Have a good night Steve, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Johnny said, distracted with the thought about whether he was too rough on Nick.  He began to read over the first essay he had to grade, trailing the pen along each line of text as he read it, but kept thinking about hearing Nick’s voice from down the hall echoing the word ‘asshole’ over and over.

            “I don’t know, he’s just being an asshole.”

            He knew he had been called an asshole plenty of times before, but this time it was his own son, and within earshot of his office.  He thought back to playing catch with Nick when he was in little league and they would just throw the ball back and forth and Johnny would give Nick little tips, like not to “let that front end fly open,” or when he would tell him to save the curveball ideas for high school so he didn’t tear up his arm.

            His pen still moving along lines of text, Johnny realized he had reached the end of the essay without reading a single line.  Getting up from his chair, he walked over to the coffee maker that sat on the mostly empty file cabinet and started a fresh pot of coffee.  He began to think nine o’ clock would arrive sooner than the bottom essay on the stack.