Pitch Perfect(69)

“Right.”

“So I told him to suck it up and stop throwing like a gimpy old man. Otherwise his surgery would have been for nothing.”

Slapping his knee, Mike gave a hearty chuckle, his round belly jiggling under the taut fabric of his uniform. “Damn, girl. Where have you been hiding from us all these years?”

“Chicago,” she answered.

“Well, if we can’t get any decent players from them, I’m mighty glad we managed to get something useful from their club.” He slapped her hard on the back, jolting her forward.

Emmy kicked her legs out in front of her, stretching them out and crossing them at the ankle to mirror the gesture most of the other men in the dugout preferred. Spitting her seed shells to the side to avoid depositing them on her lap, she returned her attention to Tucker, who was in his seventh inning. He was well on his way towards making good on his promise to Miles, that he’d complete a full game.

She kept her face impassive, watching his mechanics instead of checking out his ass, but he wasn’t making it easy on her. He wore the tightest pants on the damn team.

But the trainer in her was bursting with pride over how well he was doing. He’d taken her suggestions to heart and was proving to be an even better player than he’d been for years. The season was winding down, but she was hearing whispers in the media. They were saying Cy Young.

Tucker had won the award twice before, but that had been years ago, in his prime. It wasn’t unheard of for aging pitchers to get the prize, but it certainly wasn’t common. And no one had won it with such a large gap of years in between. He’d be a first.

She wasn’t sure how closely Tucker followed the MLB rumor mill—Emmy had the bad practice of keeping a few blogs in her browser’s RSS feed—but he had to know his improvement of skills hadn’t been overlooked by the general public. He was becoming something great again, and she’d played a part. She didn’t want to give herself too much credit, but she had helped him. And he was continuing to use her advice, which meant he respected her opinion as a trainer.

It meant a lot to her that he cared about her as a coworker and advisor and not just as a woman he’d wanted to sleep with. Had he only been listening to her to get in her pants, he could have stopped after the first few games. But here they were, months later, and he’d now successfully gotten into her pants and continued to take her professional advice.

She spit more seeds on the floor and repressed a grin.

One of the power hitters from the Indians was batting fourth—the cleanup man—and when he got to the plate, all the guys in the dugout leaned forward simultaneously. The guy was a mountain, pushing six-four and easily two hundred and eighty pounds. Modern audiences tended to underestimate the big guys because they couldn’t run fast and didn’t look like athletes. But Babe Ruth didn’t look like an athlete either, and he was so good he had become a legend.

She didn’t think the big batter for the Indians was likely to make it to legendary status—not many players would—but she knew he was a force to be reckoned with in the here and now. Already he’d scored a one-run homer off Tucker in the third inning, so the pitcher would be out to prove something.

It didn’t matter how many times a pitcher struck a man out, it would always be the hits he remembered and fought to improve on. That’s what made a pitcher great, but it also made them irritating, mule-headed buffoons sometimes.

Emmy cupped her chin and propped her elbow on her knee, watching to see what would come of this matchup. In this, the third meet-up between the two, all eyes were waiting to see if the batter would break the one-one tie, or if Tucker would keep it balanced.

With the regular season winding down, the Felons had a tenuous hold on the number-one spot in their division, and a loss to the Indians wouldn’t be any help.

The Indians were third in their own division, and barring any miracles, they wouldn’t be making it to the postseason. Emmy wasn’t even sure what kind of miracle would be required to bring the flagging team into a winning position.

But they were out to prove they could win. Starting with the Felons. Starting with this game.

They were playing like they were already in the damn playoffs and the Felons defense was trying to keep up. They’d gone in assuming it was going to be an easy win, but the Indians weren’t going down without a fight.

The Cleveland crowd was going apeshit, cheering like it was the bottom of the ninth and they were praying for a walk off. Emmy hadn’t realized her knee was bouncing nervously until Mike gave her a friendly paternal pat and said, “Simmer down.”