Sparkplug

I replayed the innings back in my head as I sat at Benyals.

I had gone in the bottom of the sixth and struck out the batter on the first pitch I had thrown. That first pitch had definitely taken some pressure off of me. When I was pitching, our team scored two more runs. With the help of my teammates, I managed to hold the Stalls to the four runs they had before I came in to pitch. When I had the last batter ground out to Adam Sills at shortstop, all of the guys rushed the mound while the Stalls player walked back to the dugout in shame. After the game, Addison came up to me and said, "I wasn't expecting that last pitch from you." That was all he said, and he walked back to the dugout to gather his bag. I realized that it was him I struck out last.

I was pulled out of my thoughts as Mike stood up, raised his glass, and said, "we owe our victory to Ryan and Mel. I'd like to give a toast to them for holding them at only four runs, especially Ryan because his shoulder was bugging him something awful."

Ryan smiled and looked down, his brown hair moving slightly as he did so. Drew hit him lightly on the shoulder. I smiled at Ryan and wondered why he was so quiet tonight.

"Toast!" Mike yelled, and doused down his cherry Coca Cola.

"Toast!" the guys responded enthusiastically, and drank their own drinks.

"You guys did most of the work." I said, smiling.

"Please Mel; you and Ryan faced a good hitting team. You guys deserve a good job pizza," Noah deadpanned, referring to the pizza that just showed up in front of us. On it in pepperoni it literally said "good job". Ryan and I laughed for at least five minutes. The others only rolled their eyes and dug in.

Matt finally showed up after a while, putting his phone away as he got to the table. He sat next to me and said quietly, "what'd I miss?"

"Only the best pizza ever," I said, leaning in as I whispered, "they already destroyed the masterpiece."

Matt smiled slightly, but his face turned serious all of a sudden.

He leaned in and said to me, "Ed Myzak was marveled at you today. He called me and said that he hasn't seen anything like Mel Bailey in his ten years of coaching."

"There's nothing much baseball-wise in this town," I said, not believing that the Ed Myzak was impressed by me.

"Mel, Ed played in the minors for six years before playing in the majors for a year. He's seen his share of players, and he would never compliment unless he believes you work hard or deserve it or both," Matt said, looking me in the eye. I looked away quickly and grabbed two slices of pizza and put them on my plate. As much as I liked the pepperoni pizza with "great job", I can't stand eating pepperoni on pizza.

"Why did he leave the majors?" I asked lowly, and started to grab pepperoni pizza for Matt.

"That's not my story to tell, sorry." He said quietly, and happily ate the pizza I put on his plate. I swear he ate it in two minutes flat. I only rolled my eyes at his quick eating.

I sat thinking as he did so. Why would a man who made the majors for a year be marveled by me? Then, I realized how selfish I was because Ryan and all the others wanted to make the majors just as much as I did.

"What about everyone else?" I asked him, louder now because nobody was listening to us. They were all watching Mike as he tried to flirt with Abigail Clemens, a girl who was in my science class. I looked at Abigail for a second and I saw that she was trying to keep a serious look, but a smile kept finding its way to her face. I turned my head back to Matt as I heard him take in a deep breath and say, "I'm not sure about them. Ed said he would have people picked out for the Stalls by the start of senior year."