Read Online The Game Player by Rafael Yglesias - Free Book Online Page A

just kept tripping him up or kneeing him. You know.”
    I was offended by this explanation. It didn’t sound like an honorable way of fighting. My cowboy heroes hadn’t yet begun to fight that way.
    Brian noticed, of course. “Well, he’s taken boxing lessons and he’s also stronger. I wanted to win, right? So I fought to win.”
    â€œYeah, that’s all right,” I said, unconvinced.
    â€œAnyway, our team’s been playing tight baseball and this’ll loosen us up. You’ll see, everybody will forget about winning and just play ball. We’ll win big tomorrow.”
    It took longer than usual to get the next day’s game started. There was a lot of talk and fooling until Brian ran about ordering people to be serious. And even when we started, my team joked more and were less attentive. Instead of focusing on each pitch and play, the bench talked among themselves, and from my outfield position I was envious of the camaraderie of the infielders—one of them always seemed to be making the wittiest comment possible about our opposition’s batting styles.
    Brian led off our first inning with typical concentration and success: he singled to right field and stole second on the first pitch to me. I kept trying to punch a hit through the right side, and, after the count went to three balls and two strikes, I fouled off five straight pitches. My bench thought this hilarious and yelled out to their pitcher, “Give up. Walk him already.” Adam came up with their favorite line: “No, no, he doesn’t want a walk. Howard’s trying to figure out a way to bunt Brian home.”
    And when the sixth full-count pitch came in high and out of the strike zone, my bench stood up and gave me a standing ovation while I trotted to first. We only got one run out of this beginning and I glanced at Brian but he seemed satisfied. In the third inning Adam made a great play to save a run when he ran hard from shortstop into shallow left field to catch a ball just in the webbing of his glove, somersaulting and holding onto it.
    We got another run in the third, when somebody on their team misplayed a deep fly ball into a triple and the run came home on a ground out. In the fourth, we loaded the bases and Adam, his whole body powering into a nice visible pitch, hit the longest line drive I had ever seen into left center. The ball was there so fast that their outfielders couldn’t cut it off and while I watched their shrinking backs tremble in the sunlight as they chased the ball, everybody crossed the plate, and Adam ran and ran furiously, his face full of excitement and triumph. By the time Adam rounded third, though they had reached the ball, it was obvious that he would score and he began to slow down, in great rearing motions like a horse. He crossed the plate with his feet making loud smacking sounds on the hard dirt.
    We won seven to two.
    It was a pleasant, easy victory and my teammates were proud of themselves. They crowded around Brian as he and I walked home, reminding him of the good things they had done. I was conscious of the privilege everyone now recognized that I had: the confidence of Brian’s friendship. There were no attempts to move between him and me on the way home and whenever I was outside alone, they would question me about his plans with the hopeful tone of underdeveloped countries speaking to the ambassador of a great power.
    When the summer season ended, we had played Danny’s team forty-five times. Our record was thirty wins and fifteen losses. The next summer, because of this overwhelming dominance, the teams were divided differently, though I was still, was always to be, a member of Brian’s team. We played a mere forty times that year because Danny said, after we had won twenty-nine and lost only eleven, that it was too boring to go on. Our last season again involved a new division of talent: but we stopped after thirty-eight games this