Coach Conde was talking to their manager when he saw I was up again. He must have decided to bring in another pitcher to face me. They trotted out a left-hander, and while he warmed up, Coach Short called me over.
“This kid has a wicked curveball. It’s his go-to pitch for a strikeout.”
“David, get this game tied up,” Coach Kingwood added.
I just nodded, and the plate umpire motioned that it was time to play ball.
When I stepped into the batter’s box, our fans began to chant. “USA … USA … USA!”
The Cuban fans did everything they could to drown ours out. I stepped out of the box to take it all in. This was the most important at-bat I’d had to this point in my career. I needed to get a hit at the very least. If I hit a homer to tie the game, that would be great, but I couldn’t make an out.
I got ready and fell into the zone. Everything around me fell away, and it was just the pitcher and me. The kid didn’t bother pitching out of the stretch. All he’d been brought in to do was strike me out. He went into his windup and threw a sidearm fastball that was sneaky-fast. If I’d not been so focused, his throwing sidearm would have fooled me. I saw the ball as it came out of his hand and stepped into it. From the sound of the contact, I knew I’d gotten all of it.
I started down the first base line and watched the ball rocket out of the park, just foul.
The Cuban fans let out their collective breaths, and ours let out a moan of despair.
“Get the next one,” Coach Kingwood called out.
The next pitch was high and inside, and I hit the dirt. The plate umpire was having none of that. He warned each bench that if it happened again, there would be ejections. They wanted clean games in international play. This was too big a game for it to turn into a bench-clearing brawl.
I took a minute to knock the dirt off my uniform and get my breathing under control. I don’t care who you are, having a fastball thrown at your head will get your heart rate up.
On his ensuing pitch, I got to see his curveball. I’m ashamed to say my knees buckled when I watched it break. It was a thing of beauty that made my inner pitcher envious. The beast inside of me awakened, and I felt the challenge. Throw that weak stuff up here again, I mentally screamed.
I felt a surge go through my body, and suddenly everything seemed to be heightened. An almost uncontrollable desire to crush the next pitch welled up inside me. I knew this was my moment to shine.
Sure enough, he threw me another gorgeous curveball. This time I didn’t worry about my perfect swing. I jerked my bat through the zone and crushed it. There was no doubt. The ball was out of the ballpark before I’d left the batter’s box. I really wasn’t trying to show the kid up, but I was stunned. I’d never had whatever just happened to me happen before. It was almost like an out-of-body experience, where I was just an observer.
As I came back into the moment, I began to run around the bases while the crowd stood and cheered. With one swing of the bat, I’d tied the game 4–4.
From there, we manufactured another run to make the score 5–4 going into the top of the ninth inning. Shane was brought in to close it out. Cuba got a man on, but we weren’t going to lose.
When it was over, we celebrated. Everyone in the park knew this was the game that would probably be repeated in the finals. Cuba had given it their best shot and led most of the game. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.
◊◊◊
When we entered the locker room, Team USA had ice cream sandwiches for us. Someone had told them what I did when we won, and they decided it was a good idea. Having the hotel do a sundae bar wasn’t the cheapest way to treat everyone.
I spent some time being interviewed. The fielding play apparently had captured the writers’ attention, so I was asked a bunch of questions about it.
Jeff pulled me aside when the interviews were done.
“I want to interview you with your tiger cubs. Can we set something up for tomorrow?”
“If I still have them. They need to go somewhere where they’ll be taken care of safely. They’re cute now, but once they grow up, I’d be nervous about having them around. If someone got hurt, I’d be devastated,” I admitted.
“You could be the next Michael Jackson,” he teased.
I flipped him off.
“Do you think I’ll come off as a spoiled rich kid?” I asked.
“We’ll go with the ‘you’re saving them’ angle. Maybe you could announce you’re donating them to a zoo,” he suggested.
“That’ll probably work. I have a bad feeling that I might get into trouble for buying them, but I couldn’t just leave them,” I reasoned.
“If you were to keep them, you would probably be in trouble. I just can’t believe you found tiger cubs at an open-air market.”
We wrapped it up, and I agreed to meet him in the morning.
◊◊◊
I was settling in for bed when there came a knock at the door. I looked out the peephole and smiled when it was Pam.
“Hey, come in.”
“You were great tonight. People were amazed at the throw you made. One of the scouts talked to your parents and said his team would kill for someone with your arm to play for them.”
“We had to hold that run. It turned out to be the difference in the game,” I explained.
She smiled and pulled my head down to kiss me. I wrapped her in my arms, and things began to heat up. Pam pulled away from me, and gave me the naughty look she got when we were about to have fun.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, throwing water on my parade.
She giggled when she saw the look I always had when a girl said they wanted to talk.
“You’re so funny sometimes.”
“I was hoping our ‘talks,’” I said with air quotes, “would be few and far between.”
“I want you to do something for me. Believe it or not, I want you to seriously consider Tracy as your girlfriend. Before you give me all your reasons why not, just hear me out. Okay?” she asked.
My knee-jerk reaction was to do what I always did and say, ‘hell, no.’ But if Pam wanted to make her friend’s case, I would hear her out. I nodded to let her know I would listen to what she said.
“First off, Tracy has no idea I’m here making her case. I don’t want you to think she pulled a Tami and sent me to do her bidding,” she said with a little smile.
Pam was playing dirty. I liked that.
“What Tracy did to you was uncalled for. I might consider giving her a pass since she was mentally unstable at the time, but I honestly can’t see doing that. I will say that Tracy knows what she did both times and isn’t proud of herself for doing it. Personally, I think she didn’t know how to handle the situation and blew it up. I believe Tracy’s grown up a lot since then,” Pam reasoned.
“I’ve forgiven her for that, but I’ll never forget,” I clarified.
“Yes, I know you have. She wouldn’t be such a good friend if you hadn’t. I want to focus on the friend part of your relationship. I think if you looked at it, you’d see that she’s one of your best friends. Not once have I seen her try to take advantage of you. She has always been one of your biggest defenders. Believe me, I know. I had to listen to her during the troubles we had with my dad. She never stopped supporting me, but she didn’t back down about how I was mistreating you.
“The sad part was I never wanted to do anything to hurt you. I love you too much. Even then, I was in love with you,” Pam said, and the waterworks started.
“Hey, it’s okay. We’ve talked about this and agreed that we were past that,” I said, pulling her to me.
“I know. That’s part of the reason that I know that Tracy would never hurt you again. She and I’ve talked, and we recognize we both made terrible decisions. I’m just grateful you were willing to put it behind us and help me raise our son. I know that we may never get married, but Coby will always know that his parents love him.”