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He had swung hard and missed two fast balls, his body twisting as his bat whirled through empty air. Taunts and chatter roused from the infielders. The pitcher, a big muscular Polish kid with thick brown hair combed across his forehead, was smiling like a predator. Mitchell kept his secret inside as he walked to the on-deck circle where Sweets had taken a knee with his bat propped under his arm. Sweets was tall and lean and hard from the streets, and so black his skin drank sunlight. Mitchell took a better grip on his bat and felt himself in perfect rhythm with the game. He gave Sweets a look, straight at him, but his teammate didn’t acknowledge it. Sweets understood, wouldn’t give it away. Mitchell had timed the pitches. Now his body was absorbing their speed, ready for the next fastball and knowing exactly when he would release his weight. He tightened the bat in his hands, screwing it into the certainty that had filled his body.
Sweets pretended casualness, he watched the Polish kid walk off the mound toward second base then walk back rubbing the ball in his hands with his glove under his arm. They were playing their parts in the tension and the egos. The other team was white and from the suburbs, playing for one of the insurance companies. Mitchell’s team was playing for the factory, all of them except Mitchell were Hispanic or Greek or from the Carribean. Good ballplayers. The animosity was apparent, the struggle was real. The teams disliked each other. Feared their different worlds. The insurance company’s players wore new uniforms and used new equipment. The factory teams’ gloves were worn and dark-stained from the oils they had worked into the leather, reminding Mitchell of the strength in the dirt and the grass. The other team was talkative and arrogant in the field. He held onto that as he walked back to home plate. He knew what would happen next and he sensed that the air itself could tell the Polish kid what he knew.
He swung the bat with his feet apart, turning his cleats into the dirt, grounding himself to the earth. Then he swung his bat out with his left hand and aimed it at the pitcher’s eyes, to challenge him head to head. The pitcher didn’t see it for what it was, that Mitchell was keeping the timing hidden. He hit the next pitch so hard the left-fielder didn’t move his feet, just stood with his hands on his hips and watched the ball in flight as casually as he would have watched a jet pass overhead.
Mitchell ran the bases thankful for the home-run and for the opponent’s silence. He knew it would change with the next pitch, the next play. Baseball. He had learned to keep his mouth shut, had learned to take the congratulations of his teammates as they crowded home plate to shake his hand, strengthening each other with every grip, firming their same resolve, win or lose.
Two weeks later he threw out a base runner from centerfield when the runner tagged second base then tried to steal third on the fly-out he had caught. The third baseman slapped the tag on so hard he had crushed the runner’s ear and knocked him unconscious. The game was called. An ambulance came. Mitchell had never hurt anyone before so he sat in the outfield until the ambulance had gone. When the crowd dispersed he hitched a ride to the hospital with Sweets. But first he walked to the infield to third base. Dried blood blackened the trampled dirt. The runner had made his slide head first but too soon, his hands had dug furrows four feet long and inches short of the bag. He was out...