The Youngest Hero (49 page)

Densing called to the pitcher and asked for the ball. He gave it to the batboy, who was older than I was, and the kid ran
it to the dugout.

Densing sacrificed me to third, and I scored when the second baseman erred on Martinez’s grounder. The Braves knocked the
reliever out of the box and I batted again in the ninth, forcing a runner at second to finish one-for-three plus a walk and
two runs scored.

When I got to my locker I found the ball Roger Densing had removed from the game. The big pitcher had dated it and written:
“The first of many.”

I stood in the bowels of the stadium at the players’ exit, waiting with Luke while Mr. Thatcher went in to be at Elgin’s side
for the crush of the press. I looked at my husband, my lips pressed
to hold back a torrent of emotion. I was grateful that Luke seemed to know there were no words worthy of the occasion.

I was proud as a mother could be, and while I was not naive enough to believe it would be all smooth sailing, I looked forward
to the ride.

My man-child had achieved his dream.

That night while reliving the game on the sports news, Miriam heard for the first time what Elgin said after the game.

“I said before that my dad taught me baseball. But it’s my mom who raised me. She did everything she could, on her own, to
let me follow my dream. I love you, Momma.”

Roger Densing could have had no idea how prophetic he had been.

Within a week, Elgin had been moved to sixth in the order. By the end of the season he hit second occasionally, though his
speed cost the Braves a few double plays and a few runs. In seventy-two games, Elgin led the Braves in hitting at .310 and
filled every stadium in which he played. The Braves finished second, six games back of the Phillies.

The following season, without a home run to his credit, he started the all-star game, led the National League in hitting at
.345, and batted second on a Braves team that won the NL East by nine games but lost to the Dodgers in the play-offs four
games to one. He was named Most Valuable Player, and only his having had more than 130 at bats the previous season kept him
from being named Rookie of the Year.

The Braves drew an unheard of 3.6 million–plus fans that year
and would not fall below that mark throughout Elgin’s career. When his three-year deal expired, after he had won the batting
crown again (this time at .389, the highest NL batting average in decades), he was considered the best bargain in sports history.

Sportswriters and baseball executives, to the Braves’ distraction, agreed that no price was too high for a phenomenal prodigy
who was the best thing that had ever happened to baseball.

Elgin Woodell would dominate baseball as no one had ever dominated a team sport. He made more than two hundred hits in a season
nineteen times, including eleven straight, and led the majors in homers nine seasons, including six straight. He had two fifty-one-game
hitting streaks and batted over four hundred eight times. Had it not been for an abbreviated season, due to a broken leg at
age twenty-six in the middle of his most productive years, he would surely have hit more than a thousand career home runs.
From age fourteen through age thirty-three, he was named MVP sixteen out of twenty years, including streaks of four, five,
and seven.

When Elgin’s initial three-year pact with the Braves was about to expire, Billy Ray Thatcher negotiated a most unusual deal
wherein Elgin was guaranteed to be the highest-paid player in baseball for the next five years. Every time another star’s
contract was renegotiated and surpassed his deal, his was to be adjusted within thirty days. One year into that deal, when
he became the first player in decades to hit over four hundred, the Braves renegotiated and extended the contract to cover
ten years. That was the first of three similar contracts during his career.

When he was nineteen Elgin opened the Woodell Home in Atlanta for otherwise homeless girls, run by Lucas and Miriam Harkness
until their retirement.

When Elgin was twenty-three, Billy Ray Thatcher and his wife Shirley died within months of each other.

Twelve years into his career, Elgin married a young woman from the Braves’ public relations department. They had three girls.
And a boy.

With more than fifty million copies of his
New York Times
bestselling
Left Behind
novels sold, Jerry B. Jenkins is a writer who speaks powerfully to the heart. Now, the author of
Hometown Legend
(also a Warner Bros. movie) returns with the story of a boy who has been bestowed a gift that presents the challenge of a
lifetime, and of the mother determined to help him become…

THE
YOUNGEST
HERO

Miriam Woodell realizes that the hometown hero she married, though charming and athletic, is gripped by a dangerous darkness.
She has no choice but to save herself and Elgin, her young son-leaving rural Mississippi for the big, cold city of Chicago.

Strong, resolute, and determined, Miriam struggles to survive. Meanwhile, Elgin pursues a seemingly impossible dream. Fueled
by the lessons his father taught him, he plays ball on the concrete streets and even sets up a batting cage in the basement,
using a decrepit, malfunctioning pitching machine to teach himself to hit.

By spring, Elgin is ready to find a team. By the end of the summer, everyone will be talking about the eleven-year-old who
plays baseball like a high school star—a prodigy on his way to greatness, despite staggering odds.

Yet Elgin must still come to terms with his father, whose life has reached a dead end. With a
new man entering Miriam’s life and scouts wooing Elgin, mother and son must learn painful lessons about themselves, about
each other, and about the people they are forced to trust.

THE YOUNGEST HERO stands as a legend for our troubled time. The story of a brave young mother, protecting her gifted son during
his spectacular rise, becomes a rousing portrait of their unbreakable bond and of the power of faith and love to make even
the most improbable dream come true.

J
ERRY
B. J
ENKINS
is a novelist and biographer of many sports superstars (including baseball greats Hank Aaron, Orel Hershiser, and Nolan Ryan).
Best known for his
New York Times
bestselling Left Behind series, Jerry has been profiled in
TIME
, the
New York Times
, and
USA Today
, and featured on
Good Morning America
and
Larry King Live
. He and his wife live in Colorado.