Perfect Catch(73)

“Gotcha.” Chuck nodded, and then slapped Miles on the arm. “You’re doing great, kid.”

It wasn’t exactly permission, but it wasn’t a chastising, either.

The rest of the fourth and the fifth were clean, fair innings with no signs of reciprocation. Alex half-expected the Mets pitcher to ding one of the Felons batters. It wouldn’t be out of line, not in terms of the unwritten rules. But maybe the opposing team was about as fond of Matt’s antics as they were.

Top of the sixth found Matt up to bat again, and Alex couldn’t resist. “How’s your shoulder treating you?” he asked.

“About as good as your girlfriend’s mouth is going to be treating my cock after the game,” Matt retorted. “Oh wait. It already has.”

Alex wasn’t terribly proud of what he did next, but something clicked in his head. The part of him that might have stayed calm and rational went silent, and the little devil on his shoulder said, This asshole has it coming.

He called for a ball inside.

Miles looked surprised but didn’t shake him off, instead giving a slight nod of consent. Since Alex had been the voice of reason up to that point, Miles was clearly using him as the barometer of how to proceed. If Alex said hit, Miles was saying how hard.

The pitch came in lower than the previous one had, and again Matt saw it coming a second too late. He turned to avoid it, but it got him hard in the ribs, and Alex heard the breath whoosh out of the other man’s lungs. Matt grunted from the pain and doubled over. Once he caught his breath, he straightened and chucked his bat in the direction of the visitor dugout.

“That’s it.” He pointed to Miles. “You’re gonna regret that, kid.”

Alex had assumed Matt would understand where the call had come from and turn his rage behind the plate where it belonged. Instead he was aiming it in the direction the ball had been thrown from.

Matt charged the pitcher’s mound like a bull running the streets of Pamplona. Miles froze for a moment, and in that slim span of time it seemed like Matt was the only person in motion.

Then both benches emptied and the crowd swelled to its feet, shrieking with the bloodlust of professional wrestling fans. The pitchers in each team’s bullpen were on the field, running in from farthest reaches of the park, and Alex knew what was going to happen.

Logic told him to hang back.

But logic had never been a part of a brotherhood like that of a baseball team.

Alex pulled his mask off and raced after Matt, hot on the batter’s heels as he gained on Miles. The young pitcher backed off the plate, saying, “Man, you do not want any of this.”

As Matt got closer, Miles dropped his glove in the dirt and met the charging player full on. Matt leapt at Miles, and the younger man grabbed him by the front of the jersey and used his momentum to flip Matt on his back in the dirt.

What could have ended right there escalated when both teams reached the fray at the same time. Matt, with the help of his teammates, regained his footing and went for Miles again. He hauled the young man off his feet, and with a hard left hook to the cheek, knocked him to the ground. Before Matt could start pounding on the kid, Alex got in front of him and threw a punch of his own, sending Matt sprawling backwards into a wall of groping, swinging hands.

Soon it was impossible to tell who belonged to which team or who was coming out on top. Bodies piled on top of each other, and men were slapping, elbowing and clawing at each other, desperate to get a small piece of the action.

The brawl was over in a minute, but in that time both dugouts had emptied and all the umpires and managers were working to break things up.

When the dust settled and everyone was pulled apart, Alex, Matt and Miles were the worse for wear, all three bloody and scuffed. Matt looked like he had a broken nose, but the kid had gotten the roughest end of things. He lay in a heap where he’d been thrown, letting out a harsh, ragged yowl.

Emmy, with little sense of self-preservation given how high tempers were raging, shoved her way through the masses and came to Miles’s side. She gave Alex a cursory glance and asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Honestly, he felt like he’d been run over with a freight train, but he was in better shape than Miles. His wounds could wait.

Emmy crouched next to Miles and touched his arm. The young man wailed.

At the sound, everyone seemed to take a collective step backwards, and all residual squabbling came to an abrupt halt. Dead silence replaced the yelling and roughhousing that had ruled moments earlier.

Jasper joined Emmy on the mound, and they whispered in hushed, worried tones to one another.

“Miles, you think you can stand?” Emmy asked.