Diamond in the Rough. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ heroes, well, there was only one for him. Steven Orin Shaw. SOS.

      That August day—August 7th—he’d been stripped of his hero. Stripped of his innocence. SOS had come crashing down off the mile-high pedestal he and countless other boys and men had placed him on. After listening to the news bulletin, a dark parade of emotions had bounced around inside of him: disbelief, denial, dismay, disappointment.

      Disappointment eventually overtook his other emotions, making him hurt so bad he could hardly stand it. His brothers had tried to help him come around, as had his father. But it was Kate who’d finally gotten him out of the tailspin.

      “We’ll never know the real full story,” she’d told him, sitting beside him on his bed in his room later that night. “Mr. Shaw isn’t elaborating on what made him do this. And, up until now, he’s been a very good, decent man who played his heart out for the game.”

      “How do you know he’s a good, decent man?” he’d challenged, doing his best not to cry angry tears. Tears were for babies. “He coulda done something else we don’t know about.”

      “Maybe,” Kate had agreed. She ran her fingers through his light blond hair, the very action calming him down. “But I really don’t think so.”

      “Why?”

      “Because there’s pain in his eyes,” she told him simply. “Deep, bottomless pain. He’s had tragedy in his life and survived. Those kind of people are honorable people.”

      He remembered looking at her then, confused. “What kind of tragedy?”

      “His older daughter, Ariel, died of cancer. Something like that can destroy a person, but he went on playing. Because a lot of little boys like you were counting on him.”

      “Then why did he do this?” he’d cried.

      “I don’t know, Mike. But I do know that he’s sorry it ever happened. Sorry that he disappointed boys like you. And girls, too,” she added with that smile of hers that promised him it would be all right.

      And it was.

      Eventually.

      Discovering that his hero had feet of clay hadn’t killed his love of the game—something else he shared with his stepmother. He went on to go to other baseball games and eventually, could even tolerate watching the Angels play again. Without Shaw.

      Like all boys at some point or other, he’d entertained dreams of being a baseball player himself. Not outstanding enough to ever make it to the minors, much less the majors, he went to college, got a degree in journalism and did the next best thing to playing—writing about the game and the players who made it all come to life.

      He’d honestly thought he’d gotten over his disappointment in Shaw until he’d started writing the article. It was as if something deep inside of him was set free. The boy who’d been so sorely disappointed had been there all along, waiting to ask why.

      Until he knew why, he couldn’t begin to forgive. But all his attempts at interviewing Shaw over the last few years during baseball season had been rebuffed. The man didn’t even return his phone calls.

      Every year the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America would get together and pore over a list of eligible retired players to decide if there were any viable candidates. This year, there had been a rumor going around that perhaps it was time to bend the rules a bit, to forgive and forget and welcome a man who, had he not committed the unforgivable, would have been a shoo-in.

      As far as Mike was concerned, there was a difference between retired and run out on a rail. One was honorable, the other drenched in disgrace.

      When he’d heard the rumor a third time, Mike knew he had to say something, to finally speak up and make his feelings known. Looking back, maybe it had been the hurt boy who had written the article. But what he’d written needed to be said and he was certain that it had been the right thing to do.

      But obviously “Miranda” from Bedford didn’t share his opinion, he thought with a bemused smile as he read her latest e-mail. She’d told him so in no uncertain words—he paused to count the number of e-mails with her name on them—ten times. Ten different times. He shook his head. Who would have thought there were ten different ways to say the same thing?

      The woman was probably an old groupie, he thought. Baseball groupies had been around as long as the game, following a team from city to city just to sit in the stands and look adoringly at some player or other, if not the whole team. He had no doubt that Miranda had probably gotten a little something on the side once from SOS—the man was only human after all—and felt a personal connection to the pitcher.

      Mike rolled the thought over in his head. Shaw had been touted as the ultimate family man—until the death of his daughter. Shaw’s wife, he’d heard, never recovered and eventually died, but not before divorcing him. That had been a black period for the pitcher, but he still played. Some said better than ever, as if he was taking solace the only way he knew how. Off the field, there’d been talk of women and wild parties, but nothing had ever been substantiated.

      Mike couldn’t help thinking that this Miranda was probably from that era.

      Straightening, Mike began to type.

      Dear Miranda, he wrote. I’m afraid that you might be allowing sentiment to cloud your judgment. No one is arguing that SOS wasn’t a dynamic player in his day, only that he turned out to be a monumental disappointment to the worshipful boys—and girls, he added in deference to his stepmother, who all thought of him as their hero. Heroes blackened by scandals are no longer heroes, no matter what their personal stats are. I stand by my position. Under no circumstances is SOS to be absolved of his sin and welcomed into the hall of fame, to share space with the men who truly deserve to be there.

      He reread his words once, decided that he was satisfied and hit Send.

      Working at her station, Miranda noticed the e-mail response that suddenly popped up in the corner of her screen. Because the subject referenced was the title of the article that had gotten her so angry, she opened the e-mail immediately. She hadn’t really expected an answer.

      Scanning the reply, she set her jaw hard. Within a heartbeat, she was firing back a response to Marlowe’s response.

      Were you always such a pompous ass, or did your present so-called vocation do that to you? I’ve been following your column for some time now. Until today, I actually thought you had a brain, as well as a heart, but obviously the wizard decided to abruptly take them both back.

      Not bothering to reread her words, something she usually did very carefully before sending anything, Miranda hit Send. She hit the key so hard, she broke a nail.

      Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tilda watching her. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to let it out slowly in an attempt to calm down. But she’d no sooner blown that breath out than more words appeared on her screen.

      Clever. Obviously I am not going to make my case with you, which is all right. Different opinions are what make the world go around. Let’s just agree to disagree.

      He was being lofty, and high-handed, making her out to be the small-minded one here when they both knew it was him.

      I don’t agree СКАЧАТЬ