Free Wherever I Wind Up by R. A. Dickey

troops arrive .
    Coach Forehand does thoughtful little things like that all the time. One day he motions to me to meet him on the side of the field. I run over to him from shortstop, with the Mag, my old $12 glove from Little League, in tow. I’ve never done a survey but I’m sure the Mag is the oldest and worst glove on the team.
    Just in case you are thinking about getting a new glove, Poe’s Sporting Goods is a good place to go, Coach Forehand says. Mr. Poe has real nice gloves and he’s a friend of MBA and he’ll give you a good deal.
    Okay, thanks. It’s probably time I get an upgrade on the Mag.
    Granddaddy takes me down to Poe’s, off Highway 100, west of Nashville. There’s a wall of beautiful gloves, and the whole place smells like leather. I could stay there and smell it all day. I try out a few gloves, and then come upon a Wilson A2000. It’s black and has a beautiful, deep pocket. It’s the nicest glove I’ve ever seen. I want it desperately. I look at the price tag.
    Oh, jeez. One hundred dollars. No way we can afford a $100 glove.
    I put the glove back and keep looking. Mr. Poe comes over and says, That A2000 is a beauty, isn’t it?
    Yeah, it is, but we can’t afford it.
    He pulls the glove off the shelf and puts it back in my hands. I’m not sure what he’s doing; I just finished telling him we couldn’t spend that much.
    Mr. Poe says: The cost of the glove has been taken care of, young man. Now go play some ball with it.
    Excuse me, what did you say?
    The glove is yours. It’s all squared away.
    Squared away, as in mine? To keep?
    I can’t even take it in. Somebody just bought me the best glove in the world? Is this for real? I thank Mr. Poe again and again and shake his hand, and leave the store with the A2000 on my hand.
    It wasn’t until years later that I found out that Granddaddy andMr. Poe were in cahoots to get me the glove. And of course Coach Forehand was in on it, too, because he steered me to Mr. Poe in the first place. He’d seen enough of the Mag, that’s for sure.
    Midway through my senior year, 1993, Jeff Forehand, Fred’s son, asks if he can talk to me for a minute. Jeff, a former second baseman for nearby Belmont University, is an assistant coach for MBA.
    What’s up, Jeff?
    I don’t know how to put this, but we just found out my dad has cancer, and it’s at a pretty advanced stage. He doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it and doesn’t even want to tell the team, but I wanted you to know.
    Oh, no. I am so sorry, Jeff.
    He’s starting chemo right away, so we just have to hope and pray for the best.
    Your dad’s going to have every prayer I’ve got, I promise you.
    Coach Forehand goes through chemo and radiation and keeps right on teaching and coaching. By the time our season starts he looks more gray and gaunt with each passing week. Everybody on the team knows what’s going on but Coach still never talks about it, never alludes to it, never complains. He just keeps running himself out there, directing drills and hitting fungoes and getting us ready to play, doing it all with a colostomy bag attached to his abdomen.
    We win our district and region and make it all the way to the state championship game, against Germantown at Middle Tennessee State University. Coach Forehand looks thin and weak, the months of treatment having taken a huge toll, but he’s not stopping now and neither are his players. In the span of three days, I pitch twenty-one innings and give up one run. The title comes down to a single final game. I come in the game in relief in the fifth with the score tied, 1–1. It stays tied into the ninth. With pinch runner Ted Morrissey on second, Trent Batey, our shortstop, lines a shot over the Germantown left fielder’s head and within moments, we are all in a pile on the field, hugging Ted and Trent and anybody else we can find. It’s bedlam, a tangle of maroon-and-white uniforms everywhere you look, and right in the middle of it all I see is