He did not give the speech. What he said, in a voice so level that Rene Paquette, who was sitting two spots down unbuckling his shin guards, later said it gave him a chill, was:
"Not anymore."
Shug looked up. He was still smiling, a little, the way you smile when you think you did not hear something right. "What?"
Garrick stood up straighter. It was the first thing everybody noticed, later, when they talked about it. That he stood up straight. That he was taller than they had thought.
"I said not anymore, Shug. Give me the bat."
"Come on, man. It's one at-bat."
"It's not one at-bat." Garrick heard his own voice and did not quite recognize it. "It's the cap. It's the batting order in Little League. It's my cuts in the cage. It's the seat on the bus every single away game for three years. It's the glove. It's my lunch in seventh grade, every Tuesday, for a whole semester, because Tuesday was the day my mom packed the good stuff. I'm not mad about the lunch. I'm telling you I remember it. All of it. And I'm saying not anymore."
Somebody down the bench said, very softly, "Holy cow."
Shug's smile went away. It did not turn into anger, exactly. It turned into something flatter, something Garrick would later recognize as fear, though at the time it just looked like a closed door. Shug stood up. He was three inches taller and thirty pounds heavier, and he held the bat in one hand, down by his leg.
"It's a bat," Shug said. "It's a stupid bat. I'll give it back after."
"You'll give it back now."
And Garrick reached out and took hold of the barrel.
What happened next lasted maybe four seconds. Rene Paquette, who was there, said it was two. Ty Vosberg, who was also there, said it felt like a whole inning. Shug did not let go. He pulled, and Garrick did not let go either, and for a moment they stood there in the narrow dugout with the bat between them, both hands on it, Shug on the handle and Garrick on the barrel, like two men at either end of a crosscut saw.