"Borrowed cleats," she said. "Good. That means somebody trusts you to bring them back in good shape."
"Yes, ma'am," Davon said. "I will."
Chapter 15: The Team That Laughed
The first Falcons practice felt colder than the weather warranted. The sky was clear and warm, but when Davon walked onto the field in borrowed cleats, carrying his borrowed glove, the conversations around the dugout went quiet in patches. A few boys looked at him and looked away. One muttered something to another, and both laughed, not loudly, but enough. Davon kept walking. He had practiced this in his head: head up, bag on his shoulder, find a spot, get to work.
Coach Ron Callahan blew his whistle and gathered the team. "We have a trial player today," he said, in a voice that was neither welcoming nor hostile. "Davon Mitchell. He'll work with Coach Beasley and the pitchers. Same drills, same rules, same expectations. Nobody gets special treatment here."
Davon nodded and took his place at the end of the line. The warm-up drill was simple: jog, stretch, throw in pairs. Nobody chose him first. He stood for a moment, alone on the grass, feeling the old fence feeling return, that sense of watching a game he was not quite inside. Then Marcus Bell jogged over, glove in hand.
"You're with me," Marcus said, as if it were obvious. "I caught you before. I know how your ball moves."
Relief washed through Davon so quickly he almost laughed. They threw back and forth, easy at first, then longer. Marcus called out small corrections, not as a coach but as a catcher who had felt the pitches. "Keep that change-up down," he said. "When it's up, good hitters will crush it. When it's down, they beat it into the ground."
Cody Sullivan watched from a few yards away, arms crossed. His pride was a visible thing, like a jacket he had not decided whether to take off. He had been the Falcons' starting pitcher, the boy everyone counted on, and now a mower boy was throwing in his bullpen. Davon understood that sting, even though he had not caused it on purpose. He did not try to befriend Cody all at once. He just threw, and let his work speak in the small ways it could.
The drill that changed the afternoon was a simple one: pitchers threw to targets, and catchers called balls and strikes honestly. Davon missed his first two spots, rushing, trying too hard to impress. Beasley stepped in quietly. "Slow your feet," he reminded him. Davon breathed, planted, and threw. The next three pitches hit the glove where Marcus had set it, low and true. A couple of boys stopped to watch. One nodded, almost against his will.
During water break, Cody came over, not smiling, not scowling either. "Your breaking ball," he said. "How do you grip it?"
Davon showed him, fingers across the seams, pressure on the middle finger, wrist loose. Cody tried it, and the ball broke a little, not much, but enough that he looked surprised. "Huh," he said. "That's different from what I've been doing."
"I learned it from a library book," Davon said. "And from throwing at a wall a thousand times."
Cody almost smiled. "A wall doesn't laugh at you."
"No," Davon said. "It just bounces it back until you get it right."
By the end of practice, the coldness had thawed a fraction. Nobody cheered Davon, and nobody needed to. A few boys said his name correctly when they called for a ball. Marcus clapped him on the back. Beasley told him to ice his shoulder and go home and do his homework. Callahan, packing up his clipboard, gave Davon a short nod, the kind that was not praise but was not dismissal either.
At the end of practice, the team ran a short scrimmage, and Davon was sent to the outfield for two innings, not the mound. He chased a fly ball that fell just beyond his glove, and he backed up a throw to second base, doing the small jobs without complaint. A boy in the infield, whose name Davon was still learning, tossed him the ball after a play and said, "Good backup." It was a tiny sentence, but Davon held onto it, because it meant someone had noticed work that was not pitching.
Callahan watched from the dugout steps, saying little. Davon did not try to read his mind. He ran, backed up, kept his glove ready, and let the scrimmage end without asking for the mound.