Mordecai Brown by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Mordecai Brown

Page 45

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to.

By the time the game began, the stands were packed, the air buzzing with the confidence of a city that knew it was watching something historic. Brown took the mound with the same calm he’d had that morning. His curve was sharp, his fastball lively, and the Giants hitters looked increasingly irritated as inning followed inning with nothing to show for it.

In the seventh, after another strikeout on a pitch that seemed to vanish, the Giants had lost their raucous mood, and Brown glanced toward the foul line. The boy was there, perched on a railing, watching every pitch as if memorizing them.

Brown tipped his cap; just a small gesture, barely noticeable to anyone else.

The Cubs won, of course. They won almost everything that year. But what stayed with Brown wasn’t the line score or the cheers. It was the look on that boy’s face when the ball dropped out of the air, the look of someone seeing possibility for the first time.

Years later, Brown wouldn’t remember the exact date of the game. But he remembered the morning light on the empty field, the quiet conversation with Chance, and the boy holding the baseball like it was a secret.