Open tryout day at Riverbend dawned clear and warm, and by nine o'clock the park was fuller than Davon Mitchell had ever seen it. Kids came from all over Millerton, some in full uniforms, some in sneakers and T-shirts, some carrying gloves that looked new and some carrying gloves that looked older than they were. Parents stood along the fences with folding chairs and coolers, and Maya Torres moved through the crowd with her phone, filming, but this time she was filming everyone, not just one boy.
Coach Tom Beasley stood at the gate with a clipboard, and he checked each name in without a fee, without a list, without a question about where a boy lived or what his parents could pay. Coach Ron Callahan stood beside him, quieter than Davon had ever seen him, and when a nervous boy asked if he was in the right place, Callahan said, "You are. Go on in."
Davon was assigned to the youngest group, the ten- and eleven-year-olds, and his job was simple: show them how to warm up, how to throw without hurting their arms, and how to have a fair turn. He took it seriously. He showed them the shoulder rolls Beasley had taught him, and the way to stand on the rubber, and the way to breathe before a pitch.
One of the youngest boys threw the ball straight into the ground and laughed at himself, and Davon laughed with him, not at him. "That is how everybody starts," he said. "I started with a tennis ball against a wall. The wall did not care if I missed. It just gave the ball back."
Then Andre Johnson arrived, with his glove under his arm and his cap pulled low. Andre was fourteen, and he had mowed with Davon sometimes, and he had watched from the wall the day Davon came back to throw alone. Now he stood in line for his turn on the mound, and his hands shook a little as he took the ball.
Davon walked over to him before his turn. "You do not have to be perfect," he said. "Just throw your pitch. Breathe first. Then throw."
Andre nodded, stepped onto the rubber, and threw. The first pitch was high. The second was wide. The third was straight over the plate, clean and true, and Marcus Bell, who was catching, held it up and grinned. "That one," Marcus said. "Do that one again."
Andre threw again, and again the ball found the plate, and his face broke into a smile so wide it looked like it might split. Davon felt something catch in his chest, a feeling he recognized from his own first day, when three pitches had changed everything. Only this time, he was on the other side of it, watching a boy find his own pitch.
Callahan watched from the fence, and afterward he came over to Davon and Andre. "Good work, both of you," he said, and he meant it. He did not make a speech. He just watched the next boy take his turn, and the next, and the next, while the line moved steadily and no one was turned away.
By noon, more than forty kids had thrown, caught, run, and been looked at fairly, and Beasley closed his clipboard with a nod. "That is how you run a tryout," he said, simply. A boy in sneakers who had never owned a glove borrowed one from the equipment bag and threw three strikes in a row, and his father, standing by the fence, put both hands over his mouth in surprise. The only question that mattered was whether he could throw, and he could.
In the afternoon, the older boys played a short scrimmage, mixing Falcons with newcomers, and Davon pitched an inning, and Andre played the outfield, and the game did not matter much, which was exactly why it mattered. Nobody was trying to prove a point. They were just playing.
As the sun dropped, Davon walked the field with Earl Jackson, picking up stray balls and folding chairs. Earl looked at the fence, the same chain-link Davon had once stood behind, and said, "Funny thing. The fence is still here. But today it did not feel like a wall."
Davon nodded. The fence had not come down with tools or trucks. It had come down because someone had opened the gate and meant it, and because a team had decided that talent could live anywhere, even on the other side of a park, even in a boy with work boots and a tennis ball. That was a better kind of demolition, slower and quieter, and it lasted longer.
He went home tired, with dirt on his shoes and a list of names in his pocket, boys he wanted to throw with again. The fence was still standing, but it was no longer a barrier. It was just a fence, and a gate, and a place where a boy could stand and watch, and then, when he was ready, walk in.
Chapter 30: He Keeps Throwing