Teammates

By Kelly Coates

The best friendships don’t often start with brawls on the baseball field. But when unassuming, under-talented Nick Davis and Ryan Winter each take exception to some hard-nosed baseball, a rivalry born of a mutual understanding of what it means to be a teammate is formed.
Nick, aided by his talented best friend Greg Romano, squares off against Ryan, along with his fiery younger brother, Henry. Aside from their on-the-field issues, each of them contends with the harsh realities that go along with being eighteen years old as they vie to become Iowa State Champions.
As the boys work, fight, and strive for their first chance at success, their mentor, Sheldon Hill, a former World Series hero, struggles to come to terms with the end of his playing career.
Teammates is a novel about baseball, friendship, growing up, and learning what it takes to become a good teammate and a good man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Feb 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662941535

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Nick Davis

Keep your spikes down! the gangly, but admittedly resolute, Plumgrove second baseman said. It came out forcefully, yet quietly enough that no one else would hear him as he dragged himself off the ground without dusting off his black and purple jersey.

Nick Davis, with just a hint of the respect he felt, murmured equally quietly, As soon as you quit tipping pitches . . . as he too pulled his broad shoulders up and out of the dust and began trotting back towards his dugout.

It had been a tough stretch for Nick. He was in the midst of a one-for-fourteen slump and had only been on base because the umpire had either missed or simply ignored just how far he’d stuck his elbow out to get hit by the previous pitch. It was a roasting hot July thirty-first. In the second game of the high school senior’s season his Gateway Bullets’ all-state catcher had gone down with an injury. As their only other experienced catcher, Nick had taken on the lion’s share of the duties for most of the season. Catching both ends of double headers all summer was finally catching up to him, causing a slow bat and his surly disposition. So, when Nick had caught the scrawny though scrappy, eighteen-year-old Plumgrove second baseman relaying signs to his hitter from second base in the prior inning, the square-jawed catcher decided to do something about it.

As luck would have it, Nick led off the next inning with the debatable hit-by-pitch, and then his best friend and three hitter in the Gateway lineup, Greg Romano, bounced a slow three hopper to the shortstop, giving Nick just the chance he needed to lay a hurting on the defenseless pivot man attempting the double play.

There was no chance for two and the smart play would have been for the second baseman to receive the throw, eat the ball, and get himself to safety. It’s what anybody with half a brain would have done with Nick’s stocky girth bearing down on him, a fast runner heading towards first, and a blowout of a game, but the kid hung in and tried to complete the turn. He paid for it. Nick went late and hard (legally, but just barely) into the scrapper’s stiff front leg, and as the pair tumbled, his spikes may have inadvertently raised up into the bony back knee of the helpless second baseman.

Maybe you need a better set of signs.

Nick bristled at the retort. He was now too far towards the dugout for anything he said back to go unheard by umpires or the rest of the Plumgrove squad, but questioning his baseball acumen struck a nerve that he couldn’t bear. The truth was, he hadn’t caught him until about the fourth or fifth pitch. Though he and Greg stole signs from other teams frequently, he had become so accustomed to nobody else paying attention and trying to gain an edge that he’d gotten lazy with his sign sequence and wasn’t paying attention to the subtle way the runner on second would hang both his arms down for breaking balls and just one for fastballs while he took his lead. It was something that Nick was aware guys often tried to do at the upper levels of baseball, but in their high school baseball schedule no one had ever been heads up enough to even try it, let alone actually crack their signal sequence and almost get away with it.

The insult hurt because Nick knew it was true, and whether it was the scorching heat, the fact that he was catching his fifth game in three days, or the third consecutive oh-fer he was working on, he snapped. As the calm, elder presence on his team, he was generally mild mannered and took care of conflicts quietly and subtly. But this time he stopped dead, turned, and exclaimed, Why don’t you worry more about not pussing out on the next play at the plate, and less about my signs.

Early in the game Nick had tagged the guy out on a close play at the plate. Nick had blocked the plate with his shin guard, leaving the hustling runner no real place to go. There was no rule against barreling the catcher if he was in the baseline, but it was still thought of as uncouth and Nick sensed that the runner was not one to attempt to hurt a defenseless catcher, so he’d dropped his shin guard staunchly in front of the plate. It was both to ensure that the throw would get the runner by making him slow down to go around his broad legs, and a show of masculinity. In Nick’s mind, many games were decided in the early innings just by subtle signs of virility and a take-no-shit attitude. It had worked. The kid had pulled up, slid weakly into Nick’s shin guard, and been called out, killing Plumgrove’s first and only shot at a real rally.

Nick chose the comment now because he knew it would hit the same chord with the hard-nosed second baseman as his comment had struck with Nick. He’d avoided the collision as a stand-up play with the aim of keeping everyone healthy heading into the separate regional tournament each team would start the following week for a chance to play in the Iowa State Tournament. Today’s contest was a throwaway consolation game in a small, meaningless, regular season tournament in a no-name town in the middle of Iowa. The score was already lopsided at that point. It had been a classy play and Nick knew it, but also was unwilling to suffer this most recent insult.

As he said it, he knew that there was no way to end the disagreement peacefully. He just barely had time to brace himself as the scrawny second baseman threw off his glove and came at him with a haymaker of a left hook. Nick had the advantage in terms of mass, but he was caught flat footed by the zeal of the attack and the superior reach of the taller scrapper. The punch landed squarely on Nick’s temple and his only defense was to grab a couple of handfuls of the black and purple jersey and pull his challenger, rolling, towards the ground as he went down himself.

As they tussled, two bodies, one from each team, were the first to reach the fray at full speed. Nick felt Greg’s big hand grab a handful of his jersey. It was slightly comforting. Greg’s big frame cast the shorter friend aside and then began to calmly move his combatant away. But almost as suddenly, the Plumgrove center fielder came flying into the fracas with both fists flying.

His initial heading was for Nick, and for a second Nick’s befuddled brain struggled to make sense of it. He knew Greg was currently toting the second baseman away, but the face coming at him, teeth bared, looked like the exact same guy, if not a little more lithe. But as Nick threw his hands up to push the seething figure away, the eyes were wrong. Whereas the second baseman’s had been steely blue, the Plumgrove center fielder’s were fiery green.

The voice didn’t match either. The first guy had seemed almost composed in the confrontation. The outfielder was raging, angry, and gave no sense that this was his first scuffle.

You dirtbag mother fucker! the guy shouted in Nick’s face as he grabbed a handful of jersey.

Luckily, several other teammates converged on the scene in time to pull the new combatant off of Nick before any more haymakers could be thrown.

Nick saw the first guy pulling the center fielder away. He wasn’t crazy—the two could have been twins aside from the eyes.

Greg tugged Nick away from the fray, and his friend’s massive paws on his shoulder helped Nick regain himself as he noticed there was no fight left in the second baseman.

Ha ha ha, Greg laughed. Cool out fellas. Cool out! It’s over. It’s OVER!

Nick began to relax. With Greg’s big 6’4 frame between them, and all the teammates from both sides pulling the biggest tempers apart, there would be no further conflict. Greg looked like a linebacker playing shortstop. It was kind of nice being on the other side of the tussle for once, Nick thought briefly. It was usually Greg doing the jawing and fighting and Nick desperately struggling to keep him out of trouble. A couple members of the Plumgrove group, led by the crazed-looking center fielder, were still fired up and looking to extend the fight as both teams reached the initial scuffle. But the second baseman, regaining his breath and wits, quickly snapped, Enough fellas. Go win a ball game!

As the umpires began to restore order and handed out ejections to both Nick and the Plumgrove second baseman, the field began to clear. As he sauntered off, Nick made a point of walking with his pitcher, Dan Singleton, and the backup-backup catcher, sixteen-year-old Marshall Macks.

Make sure you guys are set on signals. You’ve got the bottom of their order coming up in the next half inning. Pound the zone with fastballs, and finish the eight hole with a slider, just like we did in the fifth. He won’t make an adjustment. Macksy, I know you’ve never caught Danny in a game before so make sure he shows you all his pitches in warm-ups.

It was the kind of thing that Nick loved about the Game—his Game. He had never been the most talented, but he did know the Game. He relished outthinking opponents and valued the mental aspects of the Game above anything else. His dad, Paul Davis, had been a semi-professional baseball player for the Gateway Explorers for all of Nick’s life, so he’d grown up around the ballpark. He was constantly around the clubhouse and had gotten to know many of his father’s teammates. It was during the summer when he was ten the Explorer’s had signed 1991 World Series champion Sheldon Hill and changed the way Nick thought about baseball.

-----

Hill had never been a big star during his career. Though in physique he looked like the epitome of a catcher of his era with big shoulders and a gritty demeanor, he bounced around the minor leagues for many years, never quite talented enough to get the call to the big leagues. But his defense and demeanor made him an excellent clubhouse presence. Eventually he found the right fit and was called up as the backup catcher for the Minnesota Twins the year they’d won the World Series. While he was the last man to make the roster coming out of spring training, every pitcher on the team regarded him with utmost respect. In fact, Hill was the only catcher that World Series MVP Jack Morris would pitch to, meaning Hill had been in the starting lineup for the ten-inning, legendary game seven. Hill had been the hero, lacing only his second extra base hit of the season into the right-center gap to score the winning run, but it was the interview afterwards that had turned Hill into Nick’s idol.

As Morris was awarded the series MVP trophy, he pulled Hill into the camera shot and stated that he’d only accept the award in union with his catcher. Grinning, the fabled pitcher patted his humbled catcher on the chest as he bearhugged him with the other arm.

There’s never been a baseball player that cared more about winning and playing the Game well than this man, was the quote in the newspaper clipping that hung above Nick’s desk.

Hill had responded in his typically brief style. Instead of discussing his monstrously big hit, he’d simply said, I’m just happy to be here and glad that I got the opportunity to catch for Jack and make a contribution. With that he disappeared into the clubhouse. To Nick’s great sadness, Hill started the next season in the minor leagues in favor of a younger, better hitting catcher and had never quite made it back to the big leagues.

It was after he’d been given his outright release just before the 1994 season that Hill had signed a contract with Iowa’s semi-professional Gateway Explorers at the extreme northwestern corner of Iowa, to Nick’s muddled joy. Nick had usually gone to the field early with his father during the summers before, but once the news broke that Hill would be their catcher for the summer, Nick was practically dragging his dad out the door each day to get to the field hours before game time. It was during that time that he began to soak up information.

Nick thought he knew the Game pretty well. His dad had coached him in all the fundamentals and physical skills a baseball player needed. But as Sheldon took a shine to Nick’s enthusiasm and they developed a relationship, he began to talk to Nick about many of the mental aspects of the Game, as well as pitch calling. It quickly turned into a passion of Nick’s as he realized he barely even knew what he didn’t know. He’d stand on the top step of the dugout during Explorer home games with the manager and try to guess what pitches Sheldon would call next. Then, in between innings, Sheldon would ask him how many he’d gotten right. By July it was rare that he missed any. When he did, he’d make a mental note and he and Sheldon would talk about it during batting practice the next day. Pitchers on the team would laugh when they did this. Nick could simply say, Why didn’t you waste a pitch before you went to the slider to the big lefty?

Sheldon would immediately know which inning and pitch he was referring to. The previous day’s pitchers would joke, not necessarily untruthfully, that they didn’t even remember the sequence and they had been the one throwing the pitches. It was during these conversations that Sheldon helped cultivate Nick’s love and respect for the Game. Sheldon always referred to it as her.

She’s a cruel, beautiful, ungrateful, enchanting, spiteful bitch of a game, he’d say before quickly adding, Don’t tell your old man I said ‘bitch,’ while casting a sideways glance to the other side of the batting shell towards Nick’s dad.

Nick ate it up. By the end of the year, he’d even talked his father and his manager into letting him tag along on the endless bus trips if he didn’t have games of his own. Nick always made sure he and his dad’s seats were right next to Sheldon’s. The three would talk for hours on end about all things baseball: how to work an umpire into getting calls for your pitcher; how to enforce the unwritten rules of the Game; how to deal with both success and failure and stay on an even keel. His dad always called it staying off the roller coaster, meaning you should never be too high when things were going well and never get too low when they were going poorly. They also went over how being a team leader means always being a good teammate and fighting for every win, no matter the situation.

-----

That was the memory Nick was mulling over as he sat on the trunk of his beat-up Chevy Cavalier in the right field parking lot. As he thought, he watched his teammates begin to squander their big lead. It was strange to watch them play from the outside after seeing nearly every inning of the season from his vantage behind the plate. He struggled with the thought that he’d let his team down. He had allowed himself to vent some frustration and gave Plumgrove’s second baseman an opportunity to light a little fire in his teammates’ bellies. The difference was growing more apparent by the pitch. After being down 11–4, the Plumgrove Barnstormers had looked beaten. It was hot and they had looked whipped before the fight, but the scrum had ignited a spark, and a little of their fire returned. They closed the gap to 11–9, with two runners on before the final out was thankfully recorded.

Nick remained perched on his car trunk, already changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and his flip flops, watching the teams begin to clear off to make way for the final game of the inconsequential tournament. As he contemplated, he noticed the still fully uniformed Plumgrove second baseman hustling back into his dugout from the left field parking lot. Nick watched with a hint of admiration, mostly covered up by his remaining anger and a new sense of guilt, as the gangly player slapped a few teammates on the back in a show of support for their late inning surge, before grabbing his glove and a bucket of baseballs. His begrudging coach and the Plumgrove center fielder followed him out, taking up positions at home plate (hitting fungos) and first base (shagging his throws). The grounds crew was anxious to get the field ready. Even after repeated requests to get lost, the second baseman stayed, approaching every meaningless ground ball as if it were the last out of the World Series. As the coach hit the final ball in the bucket, the sweat-drenched and bloodied (his right pant leg was beginning to soak through from where Nick had spiked him) second baseman hustled in, thanked the coach, and finally made way for the other teams to warm up.

It was one last slap in the face to Nick. All his teammates regarded him as the hardest-working player they’d known. Nick took a lot of pride in being the grittiest player on any field he ever stepped on, but he’d just utterly and totally been proven wrong. Nick felt infuriated, embarrassed, and pathetic all at the same time. He may not have been talented, but he was never outshone as a leader or hard worker. The scrawny little second baseman had just out-thought, out-hustled, and out-worked him—not to mention kicked his ass. He rubbed the shiner that was starting to swell on the outside of his eye.

CHAPTER 2

Ryan Winter

Immediately after the fight, Ryan Winter felt his adrenaline suddenly replaced with an amount of embarrassment. Fighting!? Who was he kidding? He wasn’t the fighter. That was Henry’s job.

First of all, he wasn’t built for it. He stood an even six feet, but despite his relative height and best efforts in the weight room, he was still rail thin. During the senior year of high school he’d just finished, his muscles had hardened, but he’d added absolutely no girth and didn’t have the mass to look like a baseball player, let alone a boxer.

Ryan fired most of his gear haphazardly into the back seat of the car he and Henry shared, careful at least to remove his beloved glove, so it didn’t get smashed and lose the form he worked so attentively to maintain. Henry, his quicker-tempered younger brother, would give him no end of grief if he ever found out that Ryan often talked to her, and had even named her. Isabelle, he called the sweaty, soft hunk of cowhide.

He took a seat on the trunk of his and Henry’s aging Achieva, parked beyond the chain-link left-field fence. He set Isabelle on the trunk next to him and settled in to watch the rest of what sure looked like a losing effort for his Plumgrove Barnstormers. In the opposite parking lot, he noticed the Gateway catcher doing the same thing. He was not surprised that all his feelings of anger towards the guy had quickly dissipated. Anger wasn’t in Ryan’s nature. He took his black and purple Plumgrove hat off and ran his hand through his sweat-matted brown hair.

Yeesh, Bella. What a week.

-----

Ryan had all the trouble he could stand right now anyway, even without a fight. He took a moment to hope that the fact that his parents hadn’t attended this weekday tournament meant that it might fly under the radar. It was so odd to find himself hiding indiscretions after so many years of being the steady, level-headed one who was constantly pulling Henry’s backside out of the fire.

Ryan was used to being the new kid and was never in one place long enough to get into much trouble. They were a military family. His father was continually moving up the ranks and into new positions that kept the family’s geography in a constant state of flux. Moving around so much was frustrating at times, not being able to make and keep friends. Up until his freshman year of high school, though, it was really the only life he’d ever known.

That year his dad had taken a four-year-long position as the head officer of the ROTC program at the University of Iowa, in Plumgrove in northeastern Iowa. It was exciting to finally get to settle in at a school. Towards the end of freshman year, he’d even let himself get involved with a girl. Sammi. She was perfect. His father had made his misgivings known from the start, but Ryan’s mom, Michelle, had quietly advocated for letting him date, and his dad had finally given in to some extent.

He and Sammi had been going steady since the end of freshman year. That had been three years ago, now. Sure, they’d had their share of squabbles, but they were good together. Sammi got him. Ryan was so quiet that he was tough to get to know, but Sammi just seemed to understand him and sincerely liked him for who he was. And Ryan was just so happy to have someone like her that he always treated her well. Things had gone great for over three years of high school, and the two both felt that they were truly in love.

Ryan’s dad was always hovering, though, constantly reminding both Ryan and Henry that the community was always watching, and his career wouldn’t suffer any screw-off behavior from the two of them.

So Ryan got nervous when, during the fall of their senior year, Sammi started attending parties. She’d never been much of a drinker, but her conservative parents were also much more traditional even than his. She’d started rebelling. She always talked about how boring and oppressive growing up in the Midwest was. She wanted to see the world, travel, explore. But until high school was over, she was stuck with her parents, who very clearly wanted her to stay home and work the family farm just outside of Plumgrove. The drinking was a way to escape it for the moment and drive a wedge that might allow her out of the life they so clearly wanted for her.

She wasn’t a drunk, not the way a lot of their classmates were. But as their senior year went on, the parties increased. Initially, Ryan resisted, always finding some excuse (usually homework or chores) to stay home while she went out. He was not only worried about his dad, but also his main focus, aside from Sammi, was baseball. He’d seen more than one teammate’s performance suffer once they started drinking. Eventually though, his excuses ran out, and he felt a rift starting to form between himself and Sammi. She always seemed to shoot him a look as if to say, You think you’re better than me, or what? when he’d come up with some less-than-adequate excuse for not going. He didn’t want to turn into one of the hardcore partiers, but he also didn’t want to lose her. So he’d slowly started attending a few parties with her. For the most part he’d stand in the corner and politely take a beer when offered, nursing a single drink for a few hours so that he could keep up appearances, but remain alert enough to avoid trouble. If anyone caught on that he hadn’t taken a second beer in a while, he’d simply slip outside, claiming to relieve himself, and dump the rest of the beer in the bushes before coming back for a second.

It was a good system . . . until a week ago. He knew Henry did his own fair share of drinking with his basketball buddies, but he and Ryan ran in different circles at school. A classmate had thrown a rager last Saturday that nearly everyone at school attended, including Sammi and Henry.

With a party that big, Ryan knew it would get busted. But it was also exactly the type of social event that Sammi seemed to be falling in love with. He was out of excuses and had to go.

He hadn’t even let a beer touch his lips. He’d taken the dark bottle proffered, but immediately excused himself to the bathroom, dumped it, and refilled it with water.

Sammi and Henry, on the other hand, both seemed to be trying to go drink-for-drink with some of the biggest partiers at school.

Still alert, Ryan was the first to hear the officers approaching the door. He hurried to get Sammi and Henry out the back door. Henry, pretty tipsy, had been adamant that he take his drink with him, and Ryan had to wrestle it from his grasp. Despite the fact that he hadn’t been drinking, the officers hadn’t even breathalyzed Ryan before citing him with a minor when they busted in and caught him with a drink in his hand.

Captain Eric Winter was not a man to be trifled with. Ryan and Henry’s father was a career military man and enforced the same discipline on his family that he did on his soldiers. The fact that Ryan had literally never been in trouble before, and really shouldn’t have been in this case, didn’t enter into his thought process.

Grounded until you leave the house! he’d spat, slamming his fist on the table.

Ryan suppressed a chuckle when thinking about how Henry would have responded. Ryan knew he had only a few weeks of summer in the house before moving out anyway—if he ever figured out a plan. Whereas Henry would have smart-alecked the comment into an even bigger tirade, Ryan just thanked his stars for the fortunate situation.

"No TV, no friends, no stipend attached to your chores, but they will get done."

Check, check, and check, Ryan had thought while maintaining a look of acceptable sorrow. None of those were serious concerns to him for the last several weeks of summer.

No phone. And you’re not to see that floozy again!

Even Ryan’s generally unflappable demeanor was shaken to hear his father belittle Sammi. Though she caused him some grief, he was also very in love with her. After witnessing the same scene between Henry and his father countless times, he knew better than to argue, but couldn’t contain himself.

Floozy!? She’s my girlfriend, Dad, not some bimbo. And she wasn’t even at the—

He was saved from an outright lie by another slam on the table.

Dismissed! Captain Winter said with a sharp and authoritative tone.

Ryan remembered wanting to fight, wanting to express that he wasn’t one of his father’s soldiers, that he wouldn’t tolerate him talking about his girlfriend in that way. But that just wasn’t who Ryan was. He wasn’t a fighter or the kind of