Double Play

Chapter 1

1

In Dwight Conner’s opinion, only a man thoroughly confident in his own masculinity would walk into the Kilby Community Hospital dressed as Elsa from Frozen. The fact that he was black just added to the comedy—that thick platinum-blond braid really glowed against his skin.

His teammate Jim Lieberman, on the other hand, made the world’s most disgruntled Anna in his copper wig and blue dress.

“Why did I let you talk me into this s**t,” he muttered as they trooped down the hallway toward the children’s wing. The Catfish shortstop was on the smallish side, and nicknamed Bieberman for his resemblance to Justin Bieber, the boyish singer.

“Don’t say s**t, we’re surrounded by children,” Dwight said virtuously.

“Yes, children who are laughing at us.”

“I don’t see the problem, man. We’re trying to make them laugh. Laughter is healing.”

“You say that because no one made fun of you in middle school. Or high school. Or your entire baseball career, for that matter.”

Dwight took note of Lieberman’s glum expression. Lieberman was one of his favorite teammates on the Kilby Catfish, because he always had a bounce in his spirit. Every team needed a guy like that. But he wasn’t looking too bouncy at the moment. “Anyone makes fun of you, send them my way. Us sisters gotta stick together.”

“Ha ha.” Lieberman flipped a coppery shank of hair away from his face.

They approached a nurse pushing a young girl in a wheelchair toward the radiology wing. Ah hell—poor Molly was getting another MRI. Dwight stepped into the path of the wheelchair and dropped into a curtsy for her. Her face lit up, warming Dwight from head to toe. Even with her shaved head and the circles under her eyes, she radiated joy. “Hey there, Miss Molly. You going to sing with us later?”

“Will you wait until I’m done?” She giggled as she looked at them both in their Disney dresses. “You look so funny!”

Dwight struck a pose from the movie. “Let it go, Molly,” he sang. “Let it go, can’t hold it in anymore.” He spun around, his dress swirling around his hairy legs. When he finished his twirl, Molly was laughing and clapping her hands.

“Will you sing some more? Will you sing ‘Snowman’?”

Dwight elbowed Lieberman, who started. Dwight figured his off-the-cuff performance must have put him in a trance of awe.

“Do you want to build a snowman?” Beebs squeaked.

The nurse shook her head, laughing, and continued wheeling Molly down the hallway. “We’ll see you fools later.”

“You know it,” Dwight called after them. “We’ll be practicing.”

He and Lieberman continued toward the main children’s wing. His singing had drawn more patients and nurses into the hallway. Staying in character, he grinned and waved. Honestly, sometimes he had more fun doing stuff like this than playing baseball.

Lieberman, not so much. He was trudging along, trying not to trip on his long skirt.

“What’s eating you, big guy?” Dwight asked.

“Don’t call me big guy,” Lieberman snapped. “I’m about half a foot shorter than you, which you’re obviously intending to point out with that inappropriate and inaccurate appellation.”

When Lieberman pulled out the multisyllabic words, for sure he was not a happy camper. “Dude. What the hell is up your ass?”

“It’s Nina,” he blurted, then stopped dead in his tracks. His face went pale under his Anna wig, then red—the same color as when he struck out. “Oh my God. It’s Nina. We have to go. Now. Maybe she hasn’t seen us yet. Go. Go!”

“Whaaaat?” Dwight glanced down the side hallway, where Lieberman was looking, and saw two young women watching them and laughing. One of them was Nina Stark, the little sister of their former teammate, Trevor. A blond pixie with an incandescent smile, she’d captured Lieberman’s attention when he’d nearly landed in her lap while chasing a foul ball into the stands. He’d been moping over her for nearly a year.

Dwight didn’t recognize the other girl, but he was aiming for a closer look when Lieberman yanked him backwards, out of their line of sight.

“What the— Oh.” It suddenly dawned on him what the problem was. Dressing up like a princess charmed the little kids, but Nina was an all-grown-up twenty-two. Maybe she wouldn’t go for the Disney look. “She already saw us, Beebs. You just gotta go with it. Let’s go say ‘hi.’”

“No. I look ridiculous. You can pull this off because you’re…you. You still look like a stud. Me, I look like an elf on hallucinogens. She’ll never take me seriously now. Did you see how she was laughing?” Lieberman grabbed his arm in a death grip. “We have to hide somewhere. We can’t let them see us.”

Dwight let out a shout of laughter, causing Lieberman to shush him frantically. “You’re losing it, man. Who cares if Nina sees us dressed like princesses? It’s for the kids.”

“I care.” With one hand, Lieberman lifted his skirt, revealing hairy shins and hiking boots, and tromped toward the nearest door. With the other, he dragged Dwight along behind him into the exam room. Luckily, it was empty except for two mussed beds. “You should care too, if you ever want to get called up.”

“You done lost your mind, boy.” On occasion, Dwight enjoyed slipping into Southern slang—just for effect. “Nina Stark ain’t got nothing to say about me getting called up.”

“Not Nina. The girl with her. Maggie Blythe.”

Dwight called up the image of the girl next to Nina. All he got was lots of dark curly hair and a slight build. “Okay. Never heard of her.”

“She’s the Friars’ new whiz kid.” Lieberman opened the door a crack and peered out. The San Diego Friars was the Catfish’s parent team, the one they all aimed to join.

“Whiz kid? What does that mean? That ain’t a real job title.”

“She’s Director of Player Analysis or Data Acquisition or something like that. She has some new theory about which players should get bumped up to the majors, and when. It’s all based on a computer model she created.”

“A computer model?” Sounded sketchy to him. The Moneyball theory of baseball—analyzing data—only went so far. “Does it work?”

“You know Dean McFarrin, the catcher they just called up from Single A? He’s batting .300 and no one ever heard of him before. She called it. The Friars are testing her theories out at the lower levels before bringing her to San Diego.”

“She’s experimenting on us?” Dwight folded his arms across his satin-covered chest. Generally speaking, he got along with everyone. But he was starting to dislike this girl before he ever even met her. Experimenting with people’s careers, their dreams, their lives—it didn’t sit well with him.

Then it occurred to him—was she the reason he hadn’t been called up yet? He was past ready for The Call. The fact that he was still here treading water in Kilby…shit, he couldn’t even deal with it. If he thought about it too long, his blood started to boil. He didn’t belong here anymore.

Even Duke, the Catfish manager, agreed. Every time Duke put his name in the lineup, he seemed surprised to see him there. “You again? What is this, Groundhog Day?”

Even though Dwight prided himself on his positivity, it was getting old. Trevor Stark, Mike Solo, Caleb Hart, Eli Anderson, they’d all gotten called up. It was his time.

And some chick with a computer program was standing in his way? Hell. No.

“All I know is that I don’t want her or Nina to see me in a wig and a dress,” Lieberman was saying.

Dwight dragged his attention back to their current predicament—stuck in a hospital room hiding from two attractive women. There was something very wrong with that picture. And it had a lot to do with the shortstop currently scratching his Disney wig.

“Let me ask you something, Beebs. Have you asked Nina out yet?”

Lieberman turned red. Everyone knew he had a crush on their former teammate Trevor Stark’s little sister, but he clung to the illusion that it was a deep dark secret. “Um…I think so?”

“Huh?”

“Well.” Lieberman walked to the wall and bonked his forehead against it a few times. “I did call her a couple days ago. And I mentioned that I was going to a charity dinner and that I had to give a speech.” He bonked again.

“Yeah, and then…”

“Then she asked me about the speech, and so I recited it to her, and then she had to get off the phone because her roommate just got home with mushroom pizza. Maggie’s her roommate, by the way.”

Dwight squinted at his teammate, trying to plumb the depths of Lieberman’s incompetence. “So you never invited her? But you ranted at her?”

“It wasn’t a rant. It was a very well-reasoned speech about the importance of sports for underprivileged kids.”

“Sounds like a rant. How long was it?”

“Not long…” Again with the bonking. “No more than an hour, tops, but that’s taking into account all the times I re-read a section because she had feedback on it. Okay, I suck. I know I suck.”

“It’s okay, man.” Dwight squeezed the shortstop’s shoulder. “I have a plan. We can do this thing. We can make it happen. Nina likes you, this isn’t rocket science.”

“You don’t know that.”

He actually did know that. Dwight had a knack for reading people. As a relatively large black man, he’d found reading people’s signals to be a real survival skill. He knew when to cross a street because a girl walking ahead of him was getting nervous. He knew when to pull out his legendary high-voltage smile that always put people at ease. He knew when a woman was interested, and when she just wanted to bag a ballplayer.

Nina was definitely interested in Lieberman. She’d taken a job in Catfish Stadium selling cotton candy, after all. His theory—she wanted to be close to Lieberman.

“Listen, man, I’m going to make this easy for you. We’re going to go out there and talk to Nina and this girl Maggie. We’re going to invite them out. Double-date style. We’re going to converse with them the way human beings do. No stress, all right?”

But Lieberman was shaking his head in a gesture more terrified than shy. “What about Trevor?”

Ohhhh, right. Dwight had momentarily forgotten about Trevor. Trevor Stark was fiercely overprotective of his little sister. Not only that, but he was engaged to the daughter of the Catfish team owner. That probably made him even more intimidating to Lieberman.

“He might beat your ass, that’s true. Do you want Nina or not?”

Lieberman brushed a coppery strand of fake hair away from his face and stared at Dwight. “Why are you helping me, even though it means crossing Trevor? What’s in it for you?”

Sometimes Dwight forgot that Lieberman had most of a neuroscience degree and was pretty damn sharp. “I want to talk to that Maggie chick. I can’t just walk up to her. I’m a big black dude in an Elsa wig. You’re my way in, brother.”

Lieberman blinked at Dwight a few times, then laughed. “I see what you’re up to. It’s her computer program. You want to get called up.”

“Damn right.” Even in princess garb, when it came to the topic of call-ups Dwight got real serious, real fast. “I’ve been in the Minor League for three years. I got places to go, man. I can’t hang around with the tumbleweeds forever.”

“Forget it. Not even the most popular player in Kilby can charm a computer program.”

Dwight flashed his most dynamic smile and put up a fist for a bump. “Want to watch me? You’ll get a date with Nina out of it.”

Slowly, Lieberman lifted his hand and they bumped fists. “Deal.”