Cameron was there. Denise was there. Paul held a cardboard sign that said WATCH THE BALL in letters large enough for the upper deck. Ortiz, coaching now for the opposing club, tipped his cap from the other dugout. Somewhere in the building, Noah imagined Frank Callahan's ghost adjusting an invisible chest protector and muttering, Swing's cleaner.
In his first at-bat of the series, Noah took a strike, fouled off two tough pitches, and then drove a ball into the gap for a double. As he stood on second, breathing hard, dirt on his pants, the bright field lights pouring down like the summer evening of his becoming, he looked toward the seats where a handful of kids leaned over the rail with eyes full of wanting.
He found one in particular — a girl about ten, oversized T-shirt, nervous hands — and he nodded at her the way Cameron had once nodded at him. After the game he would find a bat. He would kneel. He would say the only words that had ever been the point.
Here. Take this. You've got this.
Because that was the whole religion, in the end. Not the scouting grades. Not the almosts. Not the fathers who left or the umpires who guessed wrong. The religion was the handoff. The watching. The trying in front of everyone. The long seasons after a single pitch, when a life learns how to echo a moment of courage until the echo becomes a voice of its own.
Noah Bennett trotted in from second after the next batter moved him over, touched home on a sacrifice fly, and pointed once — subtly, privately — at the stretch of dirt near the plate where a machine had once thrown a ball toward a boy the world was prepared to laugh at.