Chapter 3: What Was Written on That Paper
Coach Eddie Ruiz had worked the Falcons' dugout for eleven years.
He had seen arguments, injuries, a no-hitter, and one very ugly contract dispute that ended with two players not speaking for a full season.
He was not a man who stepped forward unless he was certain.
He held the paper out to Dennis without a word.
Dennis unfolded it slowly.
His eyes moved across the page once.
Then again.
Then he looked up at Jordan.
"Where did you get this?"
Jordan's jaw tightened.
"It was my father's."
Chase took a step closer.
"What is it?"
Dennis didn't answer him.
He turned toward Eddie instead.
"How long have you had this?"
"Found it in the equipment room," Eddie said.
"Fell out of the boy's bag when he was moving gear earlier.
I was going to set it aside.
But then I read it."
Chase moved to look over Dennis's shoulder.
Dennis folded the paper before he could see it.
"That's private," Dennis said.
"Private?" Chase's voice rose.
"We're standing on my field, this kid just hustled a luxury car out of me, and you're telling me what's private?"
"It's not your field," Dennis said.
"And nobody hustled you.
You made the bet yourself."
Several players shifted uncomfortably.
Rafael had not moved from near the mound.
He was watching Jordan instead of the argument.
Jordan was staring at the ground.
His hands were at his sides, completely still, but his right thumb was pressing hard against the black tape on his cleat.
The only sign that anything was happening inside him at all.
Dennis stepped closer to Jordan and lowered his voice.
"Your father played ball?"
Jordan nodded once.
Small.
Careful.
"Where?"
A pause.
Then, very quietly: "Here.
He played here.
For the Falcons."
The field went still in a different way than it had before.
Eddie spoke first.
"His name's on the paper, Coach.
Marcus Price.
Played for the Falcons organization fourteen years ago.
Single-A.
Made it to Double-A before his knee went."
Chase blinked.
The name landed somewhere behind his eyes.
He reached back through memory the way you reach for something in a dark room.
"Marcus Price," he repeated slowly.
"You knew him?" Dennis asked.
"I was seventeen.
He was in the system when I first came up for a tryout camp.
I barely—" Chase stopped.
He looked at Jordan properly for the first time.
Not at the shoes.
Not at the uniform.
At his face.
"You look like him."
Jordan said nothing.
"What happened to your father?" Dennis asked.
Jordan's thumb stopped pressing the tape.
He looked up.
"He passed away.
Two years ago.
His knee never healed right and then—" He stopped.
Started again.
"He worked construction after baseball.
There was an accident."
Nobody spoke.
Tamara Price appeared at the top of the tunnel stairs, a cleaning rag still in her hand.
She had seen the group gathered near second base.
She had seen her son standing in the middle of it.
She was already moving toward them, and her face carried the particular expression of a mother who does not yet know what has happened but knows that something has.
"Jordan." Her voice came across the field flat and clear.
"What's going on?"
Dennis turned the folded paper over in his hands once.
Then he looked at Chase.
"You still think he got lucky?"
Chase didn't answer.
He was still looking at Jordan.
Something in his expression had shifted — not guilt exactly, not yet, but something adjacent to it.
The beginning of a reckoning with a moment he had not expected to arrive on a Thursday afternoon practice.
Rafael walked in from the mound slowly.
He stopped a few feet away from Jordan and held out his right hand.
Jordan looked at it.
"You read my tell twice," Rafael said.
"Same tell.
Two different pitchers.
That's not luck." He kept his hand out.
"Rafael Mercer."
Jordan shook it.
"Jordan Price."
"I know," Rafael said.
"I heard." He glanced at the paper in Dennis's hand.
"Your dad — was he good?"
Jordan's answer came without hesitation.
"He was the best baserunner this organization ever had."
Three of the older coaches standing near the dugout wall exchanged a look.
Because they knew that wasn't a fourteen-year-old boy's opinion.
That was a fact written somewhere in the record books that most people had simply stopped looking at.
Dennis turned to Chase.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't hand that boy the keys right now."
Chase opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Dennis waited.
May you like
And then Chase said the one thing that made everything worse.
"I'm not giving a car to a kid whose father couldn't even finish his career."
