Plunked (7 page)

I'm up fifth and don't really think I'll get to the plate in the first inning against that big ol' horse they have pitching. I figure maybe someone will get on base ahead of me, and I'll end up leading off the second.

Turns out Tebow is kind of wild today. He walks Manny and then strikes out Andy on a full count. Andy kind of gets overpowered by a fastball on strike three and rolls his eyes at me on the way back to the bench.

“Good cut!” I say to him when he gets back. “Way to stay aggressive.”

“Should've taken it,” he says.

“Yeah,” I admit. “Looked high.”

Andy looks back over his shoulder at the pitcher. “This guy's all over the place today. I did him a favor swinging.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Still a good cut.”

Andy sits down and I do some stretches to loosen up. I think about what he said: “all over the place.” It seems like such a good thing.

Tebow grooves one to Jackson, trying to get ahead in the count, just like J.P. had grooved one to Tebow. But Jackson doesn't miss. He slaps a single into shallow left, and just like that, we have runners on first and third with one out.

Dustin is batting cleanup. I watch his at-bat from the on-deck circle. Unless he hits into a double play, I'll be up this inning. And unless he hits a homer, I'll be up with runners on.

I take some practice swings and try to time Tebow's pitches. Dustin takes a strike and then swings through one. Pitch number three is in the dirt. Their catcher makes a good play to keep it in front of him and maybe save a run. All three pitches are really fast.

Dustin swings through the next one to strike out, and it seems like maybe Tebow is settling down. I take a deep breath and head to the plate with two out and two on. Runners on base: ducks on the pond … I always liked that saying.

I'm a little nervous, sure. But I'm also sort of comfortable. I've done this so many times before: batting cages, batting practice, and game after game, all the way up the
Little League ladder. This guy is really bringing it, I know that, and maybe he's a little wild. J.P. is on deck, and Katie is in the hole, and it's my job to keep the inning going.

I step to the plate like I always do, and I go through my routine. I'm not sure how much time the ump will give me, so I get right to it.

First, I sort of dig my front foot in. I twist the toes into the dirt at the front of the batter's box a few times. Then I settle my weight onto my back foot.

The ump still hasn't said anything, so I begin my mini swings: two fast and two slow.

“All right,” the ump says behind me, but I'm already done.

I cock my bat back and look up. I squint out at the mound. Tebow goes into his windup and my eyes are laser-focused. I need to pick up the ball as soon as it leaves his hand.

His arm comes up and forward, and the ball is out and headed toward the plate. But something is wrong. The pitch is high and bearing in. I should just take this one, get ahead in the count, ball one, but it just keeps bearing in on me. It's a fastball, and suddenly I know: I'm going to get hit. I'm going to get hit in the head.

All I have time to do is flinch. And then it's like an explosion, so much sound and power. It's like when a thunderstorm is right on top of you, when the lightning
and the thunder come at the same time. I'm knocked off my feet at the same instant I hear the crack.

I think it hit my helmet, right on the earpiece, but I don't know anything for sure. That crack could have been my skull. All I know is that I'm on the ground, looking up. Their catcher is standing over me, looking down, and then the ump is, too, and then more people. Everything looks twisted and fractured, and that's how I realize there are tears in my eyes.

I honestly don't realize how bad it is until I see Coach. He says a lot of things, but the words I hear are these:

“Pinch-runner.”

There's something I would like to say, like, officially: Ooooooooooowwwww!

I'm lying there at home plate, looking up at all the people standing over me in a circle. Their catcher has his mask pushed up on top of his head. The ump's mask is totally off, and he has this weird look on his face, like he's about to start laughing or crying. Then there's Coach and someone I don't know. And they're all still talking. I know it's about me, but I'm not catching most of it.

I'm looking up at the sky, and it feels like the whole world is vibrating. I have that feeling you get after you drop something, like you need to bend down and pick it up. Except I'm already down, and the thing I want to pick up might be my head.

They take turns kneeling down and asking me things. Coach leans close and says, “You all right there, Mogens?”

“I got hit!” I say.

Like he wouldn't know that. I really need to shake this off. I wipe my arm across my face then turn my head to the left and spot my batting helmet lying on the ground. That's what I wanted to pick up.

“I get to go to first base,” I say.

I try to get up, but Coach puts his hand on my shoulder. That sort of annoys me. I want to get up now: pinch-runner, my big red monkey-butt!

Coach turns and says something to Dustin. And then I see the others, in a semicircle just outside the first group. There's Andy, Jackson, and the big pitcher who hit me, Tebow. Jackson sort of shoulders past him, maybe rougher than he needs to, but the pitcher doesn't seem to notice.

Someone asks me if I can get up. “I'm trying!” I say. “Coach won't let me!”

But then it occurs to me that it might have been Coach who asked, and what he means is should I.

And then I can hear my mom coming from about twenty feet away. She's saying, “Let me through,” and “That's my son,” and her voice is louder and higher than the others, like a siren. All I can do is pray she doesn't call me sugar bear or honey bunchkin or any of those other things she does sometimes at home. Oh, man: I bet she will.

Finally, she and Dad make it through the other parents. Once they arrive, everyone else relaxes a little. Not
that it changes anything, but it sort of lets the others off the hook a little. It sort of makes me think of the lawsuit drill.

Anyway, Coach takes his hand away, and I get up without too much trouble. Mom tries to help, but I hurry so I can do it on my own. I look at her, trying to make my eyes say: “no honey bunchkin.” Luckily, she's too busy asking me questions to say anything else.

They start walking me over to the bleachers. I don't want to come out of the game, but I guess I don't have a choice. This thought pops into my head: Little League is like a magic spell. It's kids only, like Peter Pan or something, and once a parent touches you, it's over. The spell is broken. I guess that's a weird thought, but whatever: I was just drilled in the
cranium
. I'm just glad my brain is still in the thought-producing business.

I head toward the gap in the fence that leads to the bleachers, but I sort of drag my feet a little to let them know I'm not happy about it. And then I sit there. I try to watch the game and not listen to what people are saying around me, but the game still hasn't started again. That seems weird, too.

Dad leaves and comes back with an ice pack. It's one of those chemical ones, where you just twist it and snap open some pouch inside and it gets really cold. So then, of course, coldest day in weeks, and they put the thing right on my head.

“Can you hold this here?” Dad says, pushing the thing into the left side of my head.

“Of course!” I say, because I'd just been insisting that I should still be in the game.

I ask for my glove, and Dad looks at me suspiciously.

“What? I'm not going to run out onto the field!” I say. We're still up to bat, anyway. “What am I gonna do, field for the other team?”

So someone gets my glove, some adult, because the players are finally getting back to business. Jackson is back on base waiting around for the pitching change. They just lifted that pitcher, Tebow.

I look around the field, trying to find him and wondering why the game hasn't started yet. And then I realize that he's coming right toward me. I can feel the people around me tense up. I hear some old guy suck in his breath. I watch Tebow step up onto the first row of the bleachers. I think maybe I'm supposed to fight him, but I really don't want anything else hitting my head right now, just when it's starting to get numb.

“Sorry,” he says, holding out one big hand.

“No problem,” I say.

I raise the hand that's not holding the ice pack, and we shake.

“Didn't have it today,” he says.

“Yeah, I could see you were kind of wild,” I say. “Thought maybe you were settling down.”

It feels a little weird to talk, but it doesn't really hurt that much.

“Yeah,” he says, “so did I!”

He sort of grimaces at that last part. Then he turns around and heads back down the bleachers.

He's an OK kid, that Tebow, even if he just drilled me in the head with a rock-hard missile.

Someone hands me my glove, and I put it on so that I can hold the ice pack with it. That way my hand won't be so cold while I'm freezing my brain.

Finally, the game is starting up again. The Haven coach shuffles some players and sticks Tebow in the outfield, where he can't do any more damage. I guess the umps had just given him, like, extended time-out to come over and make nice.

And what was Jackson doing at home plate, now that I think about it? My thinking is clearing up. Suddenly, I'm sort of annoyed that they're bending the rules around so much.

My head is getting really cold, like so-cold-it-hurts cold, and not just the surface, either. And I'm no doctor, but are you really supposed to do that to your brain?

“Is this a good idea?” I say. I don't say it to Mom or Dad in particular, but they're both hovering around me so they both hear. And just like that they start walking me over to the car. They're on both sides of me, and they each have an elbow. I try to shake them off, but
they're holding on so tight it's like they're going to make a wish.

Geoff is on first base, even though that should be my base. J.P. is just stepping to the plate. I think I might get to see a swing or two. He has power, but he kind of strikes out a lot. Everyone starts clapping for some reason, and he steps back out of the box.

It seems so dumb. Yeah, he's a great pitcher, but he hasn't even taken a swing, so why are they all clapping for him? And then I realize they're clapping for me. That seems dumb, too. What did I do except get hit in the head? Yeah, what a skill … I hold up my hand because I don't want to be rude, and they clap louder. It's still dumb, but I admit that I kind of smile.

And then we're at the car and Mom is closing the door for me. I get shotgun without even calling it. All of a sudden, Dad is in a huge hurry and driving about a hundred miles per hour. His eyes stay on the road this time.

I don't have to wait long for the doctor. It's not like there are a lot of drive-by shootings to attend to out here in the sticks.

“So we meet again,” says Dr. Redick.

I have to smile at that. I've been here before, for my ankle and my wrist and my other ankle. Dr. Redick is probably the leading expert on which kids around here play sports and which ones don't.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I see you've stepped it up this time,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, “I thought you might be getting bored of ankles.”

He takes the ice pack and throws it away. He doesn't ask about it or say that it was the right or wrong thing to do, he just takes it from me like it's a leaf that I didn't realize I had in my hair.

Then he asks me some questions and makes me follow a light with my eyes.

“Is there a ringing in your ears?” he asks. “Anything like that?”

I try to listen to the inside of my head, which is weird. “Maybe, like, a hum?” I say. “A humming, maybe?”

“A humming?” he says.

He flicks his eyes up toward the ceiling.

I look up at the big bank of lights there. I listen again, and yep, that's what that is. “Oh,” I say.

That's kind of embarrassing. Duh. He asks me some more questions and pushes my hair aside to take a look at the knot I can feel just above my left ear. The skin feels really tight, and it hurts when he touches it.

“Maybe a minor concussion,” he says when he's done. “Maybe not. Nothing too serious, but I wouldn't run out and get another one anytime soon.”

It's not clear if he's talking to me or my parents, but I look him in the eye because it's my head.

“Does it hurt now?” he asks, and now he's talking to me.

“Yeah,” I say, “a little.”

And it does, but it's just a normal sort of hurt, as if I got punched. It isn't some special brain pain or anything.

“It's what we used to call getting your bell rung when I was a kid,” he says.

Adults are always saying things like that: “When I was a kid…” Like life was so much tougher and more hard-core back then. I sort of want to say something like, Yeah, what happened? Did the first caveman wheel run over your head?

I don't, though. I like Dr. Redick. And anyway, I figure I'll be back again before too long.

“I got my bell rung,” I say. I guess I'm sort of trying it out to see how it will sound in school on Monday. Pretty good. You know: tough. “I got my bell rung; no biggie….”

After I get out of the little white room, my mom lets me borrow her cell phone. I don't bring mine to games: no pockets. The game must be over by now, so I call Andy to get the scoop. He picks up right away and says, “Hey, my man. How
are
you?”

I hold the phone against my right ear, because of that knot above my left.

“OK,” I say.

“We won,” he says. “Seven-zip.”

“Sweet,” I say. “Did I score?”

What I mean is, Did Geoff come around to score when he was pinch-running for me? And with anyone other than Andy, that's probably what I'd have to say. But Andy knows what I mean, just like he always does.

“Nah,” he says. He pauses, setting something up.

“Yeah?”

“Thrown out at the plate!” he blurts.

“No way!” I say.

I wince because shouting into the phone hurts my head, but it's not too bad, and I don't miss anything. “Yuh-huh,” he says. “Gunned down!”

I pause to make sure I'm OK, which is fine because it gives me time to think of something good. “Of course, you know: I woulda made it.”

“Oh, by a mile. No doubt.”

Andy laughs and so do I, even though that doesn't feel so great, either. Mostly, I'm just glad we won.

People look over at me. A kid sitting there in the hospital lobby, laughing into a cell phone while his mom signs some forms up at the desk. They probably think it's “insensitive” or whatever. I don't see it that way: I'm injured. Totally legit. I have as much reason to be here as any of the people looking over at me.

But I'm leaving now. The sooner Mom can sign her name, like, seventeen times, the sooner we'll be out of here. Dad has already gone to get the car.

“J.P. was really mad after you got hit,” Andy is saying. “They just had no shot at him after that. If it was possible to score less than zero, they would have.”

I feel good about that, like I contributed. Mom finishes the last form and pushes it across the desk to the lady. I say bye to Andy and hand the phone back to her.

“Got everything?” she says.

“Except for the pieces I left on the field,” I say.

She doesn't think that's funny.