I'll win $100 million in three pitches. Sullivan stopped, turned. The field went quiet. Wesley continued, steady as a heartbeat. Put a bat in your hand, coach.
I don't care that you're a World Series champion. Three pitches. You won't touch one. For Two seconds nobody breathed. Then Sullivan laughed.
Not a chuckle, a full explosive doubled over roar. He looked at his coaching staff. “Did you hear that? A hundred million. Three pitches.” He pointed at Wesley the way you'd point at a dog doing a trick. “The kid doesn't have a hundred dollars and he's talking about a hundred million.”
The laughter spread. Coaches, parents, players. A hundred people were laughing at a 12-year-old boy in a gray T-shirt who had just made the most ridiculous promise anyone in that building had ever heard. The security guard pulled Wesley toward the exit. Wesley didn't resist, but his face, jaw locked, eyes burning, glove pressed against his chest, was not the face of a boy who had been defeated.
It was the face of a boy who had just set a timer on a bomb. High in the bleachers, a man in an expensive but understated jacket lowered his phone. He had filmed the entire thing. He wasn't laughing. His name was Victor Crane and he was already making a call.
Wesley sat on the bus home, forehead against the window, glove pressed to his chest. He didn't cry. He replayed Sullivan's words, every one, and whispered to himself so quiet only the glass could hear, “Three pitches.” That night he sat at the kitchen table in an empty apartment, the glove laid flat in front of him, initials J I staring up like eyes. He picked up his phone and typed, “Garrett Sullivan MLB career stats.”
He read everything. And when he was done, he looked at the glove and said to the empty room, “Who are you? Who are you really?” The answer to that question would change his life. But the person who held it was not his mother. It was a 68-year-old man in a crumbling batting cage and a ghost with the same initials on his hand.