Free Out of Control by Richard Reece Page B

stay at the best places when we’re away. When we’re at home, we have chartered time at a high-end gym and a part-time trainer to give individual attention to every team member.
    It sounds like a great deal. But there’s one problem. I am sick of baseball.

CHAPTER 3
    I ’ve been playing baseball almost every day for a dozen years. And not just playing—training and practicing too. When I’m not on a field, I’m looking at videos.
    Even when we were really little, it was all about baseball. On Monday nights when Dad wasn’t performing, he’d sit J.T., Alex, and me down in front of the screen in our home theater for ESPN Monday Night Baseball. He would turn off the sound because he had no patience for the broadcasters. And he would comment on every play himself. We had to be ready for questions.
    â€œJ.T., pay attention. Why is the outfield playing in?”
    â€œAlex, how come that pitch got by the catcher?”
    â€œCan you believe it, Trip? The guy threw to first! What was the right play?”
    This wasn’t all crap. Dad knows baseball. And the three of us, by the time we were ten, knew it too. We’d been lucky enough to have talent and training, and we were all grateful and eager to please Dad.
    It wasn’t until I was thirteen that I expected anything more out of life than becoming a major-league star. When I did, it was because of Dad. Next to baseball, the biggest thing in our house, naturally, was music. Musicians came to see Dad, to jam with him, all the time. These guys were millionaires whose names weren’t known outside of the small print on album credits, but they were legendary instrumentalists sought out by vocal stars like my dad who knew their value.
    Music was a different world from baseball. I don’t mean to say there isn’t creativity in sports, but baseball—and I would think most sports—is about dependability, repetition, and routine. There is no situation in baseball that hasn’t happened before, and for every situation there’s a time-tested, reliable strategy for handling it. But music is full of surprises. In music there are no “percentage plays.” Genius gets to play. Doing the unexpected is a good thing. I feel like I’ve always known this.
    When Dad and his friends played around, if I wasn’t at baseball practice, I would find a place to listen. I picked up keyboard and guitar pretty early. I practiced whenever I had a chance. Kinda funny—you hear about kids wanting to bolt music lessons so they could play outside. I was the opposite.
    A couple of years ago I even started a band with three guys I know at school. We call ourselves Four. Dad was okay with it as long as it didn’t interfere with you-know-what. We do covers of pop stuff, and we’ve actually played at a few school dances and some parties.
    But baseball was fun too. I thought my brothers were heroes, and I always expected to play for the Roadrunners. When I was old enough and realized Dad was right about my talent, I was happy in a kind of unthinking way. And I loved that Dad was happy about me.
    So when did it all change? It wasn’t clear-cut. I guess baseball just lost the element of surprise, and that was something I valued. The closer I got to choosing baseball as a profession, the more I started to feel closed in. Trapped. Everyone I talked to seemed to be talking about my future in baseball, like it was all decided. But I didn’t decide. Shouldn’t it be my decision? Maybe it was like an arranged marriage, and I was starting to feel like a runaway groom.
    I still play and work at playing, even though my teammates and coaches sometimes tell me I don’t look too aggressive at the plate. “You’ve got a good eye, though.” Which means I walk a lot. Which means I score a lot. At shortstop—that’s my position—I get recognized. Shortstop allows for most of the very limited creativity