And Garrick Thiel, who had hit .241 the year before and batted eighth, was hitting .412.
Nobody understood that either. Garrick did not understand it, not really. He had not done anything different over the winter except swing. He had swung in the basement, under the bare bulb, between the furnace and the washing machine, five hundred times a night, until his mother pounded on the floor with a broom handle at ten o'clock. He had swung the bat in the corner of his room, the ash 125, and somewhere in all those swings something had come loose in him, some knot in his wrists, and now when the ball came in he did not think about it. He just saw it, and the bat went to it, and the sound came back like a door closing firmly in a quiet house.
He was in the on-deck circle in the fourth inning when Shug struck out the second time, on a high fastball he swung under by six inches. Garrick watched him take the long walk back. Then Garrick went up and lined the first pitch he saw over the second baseman's head for a single, and Rene Paquette scored from second, and it was three to two.
He was standing on first base, his hands on his knees, when he saw it happen. He saw it the way you see something through a window across a street, small and silent and very clear.
Shug Kettleman, back in the dugout, walked down the bench to the spot where Garrick always set his bat, leaning against the chain-link at the far end, away from the rack. Garrick did not put his bat in the rack during games. He leaned it in the corner where he could see it. Shug picked it up. He held it out at arm's length and looked at it, turned it in his hands, sighted down the barrel like a man checking whether a board was warped. He took a little half swing in the dugout, and Ty Vosberg had to lean back to keep from getting clipped. Then Shug carried the bat back up the bench and set it in the rack, in