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Diamonds Are Forever

  Adam Hughes

  Copyright © 2016 Adam Hughes

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  Your Free Gift

  To show my appreciation for you taking the time to read my story, I have a special gift for you.

  The tale of Dan Hodges and his mysterious situation began with Alive on Opening Day, a novel set against the backdrop of the 1974 baseball season. You can get your FREE copy here: https://adamhugheswriter.com/alive-opening-day-giveaway/ — it’s my gift to you.

  Thank you!

  Sam Butler

  It was a bright but cool early spring day in Goodyear, Arizona, when Sam Butler stepped onto the wet grass and wrapped his gnarled fingers through the chain link backstop.

  His back was so stooped that he spent most of his days looking at the floor, and his knees and hips were so stiff that he pivoted from place to place more than he walked. But even with the chill of winter still eating at his bones, Sam felt renewed by the sights and sounds of the diamond. Baseball had been the one constant in his long life, from before he started school, through eight years in the Air Force, and while he raised his family with Melinda.

  No matter what happened to him, good or bad, baseball was always there as a backdrop.

  He had never been to Spring Training, though, and its lure had clawed at him for decades. This trip to Arizona, from their home in Ohio, had been Mel’s Christmas gift to him three months before. Neither of them had spoken the words, but they both understood it would be his last chance. By the time the doctors found his cancer the previous fall just after the World Series, Sam was too far gone.

  Doctors could extend his life by a few months, and they could make him fairly comfortable during that period. He was much better off than he would have been under the same conditions a decade earlier, but there was only so much medicine could do, even in 2030.

  “Will I live to see Opening Day?” Sam had asked his oncologist in December.

  “I don’t make predictions,” the young woman told him.

  Sam had nodded, and he remembered thinking to himself that his physician was not a baseball fan. All baseball fans make predictions.

  Melinda had been standing next to Sam in the exam room, and he could feel her eyes well up even before he looked at her. He nodded and turned to his wife.

  “I’ll make it to Opening Day, alright,” he told her.

  He had made it through the winter, and that was a big step toward seeing the start of the new season. If he could survive the snow that dumped all over Cincinnati that year, he figured he could hold out for another six weeks.

  Besides, the Reds looked like they might finally be good again, and he couldn’t miss the start of that.

  At the moment, there were just a few red windbreakers on the field. Pitchers and catchers had reported to camp a week earlier, and this was the first day that the full squad was due to get together. The posted schedule said their practice would begin at 10, but Sam couldn’t wait that long.

  He showed up a few minutes after 8:30, along with just a few other brave souls, one of them being Melinda.

  “It’s cold out here, Sammy,” Mel said.

  “Yes, but you should enjoy it while you can, honey,” Sam said. “It’ll be hotter’n a firecracker by Noon. This is Arizona, after all!”

  “I guess,” she said. “Why don’t we sit down.”

  She pointed to a set of metal bleachers 50 feet off the diamond. Sam knew she was more interested in his comfort than her own.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Good idea. You go sit down, and I’ll be right over. I just want to watch the action for a little while.”

  Mel looked out onto the field where the “action” consisted of two groundskeepers sweeping the bases, one young man rolling out the pithing coach’s cage, another lugging a bag of bats toward a ground-level dugout, and two maybe players running laps in the outfield. Sam needed quiet time alone to drink in the ballpark. She understood.

  “OK, dear,” she said. “Come see me when you’re ready.”

  “I will, Mel,” he said, but his stare was fixed on the empty space beyond center field.

  —

  Over the next hour, more of the Reds made their way to the field.

  Around 10 o’clock, hitting coach Joey Votto pulled a group of young players together at the plate and spent several minutes demonstrating some finer points of the trade.

  When the group broke, one of the youngsters stepped to the plate and drilled the pitching coach’s first offering down the third base line. The player stationed at the hot corner made an impressive stab, and someone cheered their approval from the nearby stands.

  “Sure is hot down at the corner this morning!”

  Sam followed the voice into the crowd and zeroed in on a fit young man with black hair wearing a red windbreaker.

  There was something familiar about the man. Something so familiar, that Sam felt compelled to move closer to him.

  Dan Hodges

  The cool spring desert air felt unreal on Dan Hodges’ face. It had been so many years since he’d seen February that he almost didn’t believe the month existed. His world ran from early April — or late March at best — through the end of June, and that was it.

  But somehow, here in the the final days of winter in 2030, he had managed to make it to the first full day of Cincinnati Reds Spring Training camp. It was a gift that he would not question, and he intended to soak in every minute of it.

  He had been one of the first members of the Cincinnati staff to arrive, behind only the local grounds crew, and he’d spent several minutes running around and around the outfield. It was a practice he picked up in 1974 as his life was unraveling, and it always brought him comfort to imagine that he was taking a victory lap after some monumental achievement. Hank Aaron’s record-breaking home run was his model.

  To observers in the scant stands or behind the gleaming backstop, Dan probably looked like just another of the Reds’ hopefuls that spring. He preferred to dress in team pants and a windbreaker whenever he was on official team business, which was almost always if he was awake, and the club obliged him. His physique was not as powerful as it once had been, but he’d learned to stay in shape over the years, and his dark hair and clear skin belied his true age.

  As the bulk of the team streamed onto the field around 10 am, Dan yielded his position, jogging toward the third-base line. Players that knew him called out as they passed, and the younger guys hardly paid him any attention. They, too, likely thought he was vying for playing time, so they were loathe to acknowledge their competition.

  Dan ambled into the field-level dugout and fished a bottle of water from the big cooler perched in the center of the bench. Manager Tommy Willers was just emerging from the locker room, and he nodded to Dan.

  “Dan,” he said. “Good to see you out so bright and early.”

  “Yeah, good to see you, too, Tommy,” Dan said, still not sure how he’d pulled off the feat. He grinned. “We’re going all the way this year, right, Skip?”

  “That’s the plan, Dan,” Willers said as he pushed past Dan onto the field.

  Dan grabbed a second water and left the dugout, heading for the small row of metal stands near third base. That had been his position, third base, and he always gravitated to that area of the diamond when he was scouting.

/>   Of course, Dan already knew most of the players in the Reds organization, but the off-season always brought new faces, and early spring workouts gave him a chance to get a look at the incoming talent. He was embarrassed and confused to admit, even to himself, that he had no idea who came and went this off-season, so he was entering the day completely cold.

  But even Dan was surprised by how many new faces there were on the field that day. He recognized a few of the veterans and one or two of the high-profile prospects, but almost every other face was unfamiliar to him. That was good news in one respect, because he could put his scouting skills through a hearty workout. If he could spot a flaw here or a hitch there, maybe he could tell the coaching staff and help the club score more runs — or prevent some — in the coming season.

  And it was always fun to look back on your notes at the end of a season, or at the end of a career, to see how well you did in predicting stardom or bust for a group of youngsters. Maybe Dan would discover the next Joey Votto.

  Just as that thought passed through Dan’s mind, Joey Votto himself walked in front of third base on his way from the clubhouse to