Fast Pitch: Chapters 6–11

I was riveted.

He wanted to be recruited real bad. And not just for the money: for the feeling of having proved his mettle, if you will.

I knew he wanted it. He was my big brother. I could tell.
And my intuitions proved true!

Wasn’t nary other player better with a bat or quicker on his feet.

SCANDAL SEES “JUMPIN'" JONJON LEE LOCKWOOD OUSTED FROM
ATLANTA BLACK CRACKERS AND NEGRO SOUTHERN LEAGUE

I have this amazing, momentous, historical thing going (hello, first all-Black team in a DYSA section tournament!), but I’m distracted by something that happened seventy years ago?

The article doesn’t mention there being proof or if JonJon was arrested, but it does reiterate what the headline said: he was kicked out of his baseball league and stripped of the records he’d set.

“Bottom line: new bat for me. And just in time, right?”

The captain of my fast-pitch softball team did not just imply that our first section tournament game is something she put on the back burner of her brain.

Mr. Bonner is notorious for calling on people instead of waiting for someone to volunteer an answer.

They had a runner on first—blond with wispy hair she couldn’t seem to keep out of her mouth or eyes despite it being in a braid.

She genuinely looked mean.

I had just switched over to catcher from second base—partially because my coach realized I noticed stuff like a shifted stance—and I was still getting my bearings.

To this day, I’m convinced she did it on purpose. For one, I was deliberately standing behind home plate. Her path was 100 percent clear.

And the incident became a thing of legend among the smattering of Black softball players across our city.

Because when Daddy and I pull into the driveway, there’s a person sitting on our porch steps. Gazing all forlornly, as Britt-Marie would say, at the gray house next door.

I stare at my chipped orange nail polish. (And, yes, Britt-Marie was appalled when she noticed it this afternoon.)

“Oh, oh, oh, Uncle Jack is gonna be so tickled!” Daddy says, giddy as a gumdrop (something else he sometimes says when excited).

I’ve read that newspaper clipping from the trunk more often than I can count, and spent time at the public library in the archive of “periodicals”—such a strange word.

Heard him laughing about JonJon’s demise at the stadium one day. Told some teammates, 'Them Black boys shouldn’t be allowed in the Major League at all, let alone be given the spots we're working hard for.’

I’ve never felt anything like the white-hot rage now churning inside my stomach over the fact that this Jacob guy succeeded in his stupid, life-breaking mission.

That woulda made JonJon look guilty, his brother suddenly turning up with the contraband.

Great-Grampy JonJon’s chance at making history might’ve been stolen from him. Squandering mine—and my team’s—because I’m distracted isn’t an option.

“Let’s not use the H-word, ladies,” Ms. Erica says from the front seat. I swear that woman has supersonic hearing. “We must edify!”

“Coach, you are clearly taking those ‘suburban dad’ aspirations pretty seriously with jokes like that.”

“All of you are old enough to know—and have probably felt—that the world ain’t always a nice or fair place for bright and bold young royals like you. But that is exactly what you are—royalty—and me and Nat want you to get out there and show those bigots who’s boss.”

“I mean...it’s the most well-known symbol of the governing body in this country that supported the continuation of US chattel slavery,” Britt-Marie says. (And no one is surprised.)

The strangest part is that while I’m thrilled we won, it also made me afraid: Great-Grampy JonJon being good at something inspired a person who didn’t like it—and who had more power than he did—to do an awful thing.

“I didn’t stutter,” the ruddy-faced bat says.

“Ladies, ignore them,” Coach Nat says. But I’m pretty sure it’s just a formality. There’s zero force behind the command. We all know that once Britt-Marie gets going, there’s no stopping her until she’s finished.

Of note: this isn’t the first time some knucklehead boys have interrupted our practice with their “toxically masculine tomfoolery,” as Britt-Marie puts it.

"Remember me?" Britt-Marie says, more annoyed than taken aback.

Hennessey, who was working catcher, casually hands him a bat as he steps up to the plate, and I jog to take over for her.

Now that I see how unwieldy and overpowered his swing is, I have zero doubt he’ll mistime it and swing too soon.

“You swing like a boy—all force and no finesse.”