Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 162

was already there, stretching, joking, trying to forget they were hitting .220 as a collective enterprise. They greeted him with the easy respect of men who knew they weren’t good enough to carry him, but were grateful he still carried them.

Brown nodded, hung his coat, and began rubbing warmth into his right arm; the good one, the one with the mangled fingers that still made the ball dance.

A Morning of Quiet Work

He didn’t talk much. He never had. But he watched everything.

He watched the young shortstop, McGivern, not charge aggressively when he should have, fielding grounders too close to his chest. He watched the catcher, a big farm kid named Leland, stab at pitches instead of receiving them. He watched the outfielders drift lazily toward fly balls as if the wind would do the last few steps for them.

He corrected none of it directly. Instead, he walked out to the mound and began throwing.

Slow at first. Then slower. Then a curve that bent like it had a hinge in the middle. The boys stopped what they were doing and watched. They always did. The ball didn’t move like theirs. It