Free Love Bats Last (The Heart of the Game) by Pamela Aares

Jackie asked Gage. “I mean, when?”
    “A perk of arriving early. The players sign before and after batting practice.”
    One little boy had a glove so big it nearly covered his whole arm. She watched as the boy clutched the autographed glove to his chest as if it were a precious talisman. The stadium might have surpassed her expectations, but the look of rapture in the boy’s eyes she’d seen before, in a different stadium hosting a different game. She wished it was a time she liked to remember.
    “Here, hold this.” Gage handed her a cardboard tray of the foulest-looking food she had seen in weeks. Some of the food that passed through the volunteer kitchen was close, but the plate of sticky orange cheese with triangles of chips floating in it won the prize. She couldn’t smell it though. The tray Gage held in his other hand reeked so strongly of garlic that it overpowered any other scent within ten feet. He balanced the tray of fries and a plastic cup of beer and pulled the stadium seat down with his free hand.
    “Finally a realm that services your taste in food,” she said, handing him the tray.
    “We missed the top of the first,” he said, not bothering to conceal his disappointment.
    “I understand there are nine innings.”
    They’d tried for an earlier start, but a fresh wave of rescues had thwarted their plans. Gage needed this break as much as she did, maybe more.
    “You never know. But with no rain in sight, we’ll see eight and a half at least.” He waved a French fry at her. “Hey, nice shirt. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you in real clothes.”
    She tugged absently on her shirt. It unnerved her that she’d spent time that morning sorting through her closet. It was just a sports event with her assistant, but she’d chosen the shirt carefully all the same.
    “Speaking of shirts”—he waved his beer toward the field—“see the guys in gray, those shirts that say Braves ? That’s the other team.” He took a big swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The guy in the middle of the infield, on the mound, he’s the pitcher. The guy in the white shirt preparing to bat—he’s on the home team.” He took a swig of his beer. “The home team always gets to bat last. It’s their last chance to win if they’re behind.”
    He held out the tray of nachos, offering them to her. She started to refuse, but then lifted one out of the cardboard container, scraping off some of the cheese. It was delicious. She helped herself to another as Gage told her the rules of the game.
    “What’s really amazing,” he said, pointing toward the guy standing ready to bat, “is how the best of these guys can react to a visual stimulus in two hundred milliseconds. They’ve got half the time it takes an eye to blink to see the ball after the pitcher releases it. The remaining time—three hundred milliseconds—is the time they have to react, to physically adjust to what they know about the ball’s path and hit it. For the best players, it’s a decision, but it’s a fast one.”
    She reached over Gage, grabbed his beer and took a swig. The crowd booed and she lifted her head to see the man who’d been standing in the batter’s box now walking back toward the stands.
    “Called strike. Bummer way to go down,” Gage said, as if she understood. “You need three things to be great at this game,” he lectured in a tone that was suddenly serious. “Fast hands, fast feet and fast eyes, but it’s eyes that are probably most important. Fast eyes means a hitter can focus on the ball and then transform that focus into an attack.”
    He scooped up some of the cheese from the nachos with a couple of the garlic fries and popped them in his mouth, swallowing in a gulp.
    “My theory,” he continued, “is that the hitter, when he stands facing the pitcher, is tapping into the most primal parts of his nervous system. It mimics a fight to the death, like two lions poised to launch at each