The season ended the way minor-league seasons end: suddenly, with a handshake and a cleared locker and a bus that would take players toward winter jobs and winter doubts. Cameron left Noah with a handwritten note tucked into the bat's grip tape.
Watch the ball. Watch your life the same way. Don't let anybody name you a joke before you've finished your swing. — C.B.
Noah read it until the paper softened. He taped it to the wall beside the baseball cards.
Winter in that town was gray and mean to people without spare money. Noah practiced swings in the laundromat hallway when it was too cold outside, careful not to hit the dryers. Denise picked up extra shifts. Ray Bennett called once on Christmas Eve, spoke for four minutes about weather and a promotion, asked Noah if he was "still doing the baseball thing," and hung up before Noah could decide whether the question deserved an honest answer.
In February, a package arrived with a Florida postmark. Inside: a new pair of cleats, not expensive brand-new but clean and sound, and a note from Cameron. Spring training invite. Thinking of your swing. Keep the hands inside. See you when the lights come back on.
Noah wore the cleats around the apartment until Denise laughed and told him to save them for dirt that deserved them.
When the next season opened, Noah was eleven and half an inch taller and somehow both more nervous and less. Cameron Blake returned with a slightly altered swing of his own — coaches had been tinkering — and a story about a near-call-up that had dissolved into a roster freeze. He told Noah the story without bitterness, which taught Noah something about adulthood that no classroom had managed.