“Travel coach?”
“No.”
“High school coach?”
“The school cut the junior varsity program last year.”
“What team do you play for?”
“I don’t.”
Mercer looked at Earl.
“You taught him?”
“A little.”
Isaiah almost laughed.
Earl had taught him everything.
Mercer asked, “How often do you throw?”
“Three mornings a week.”
“How many pitches?”
“Usually thirty-five.”
“Any breaking balls?”
“Only changeups.”
Earl answered before Isaiah could.
“No sliders. No curves. His arm is fifteen.”
Mercer nodded approvingly.
“You understand how unusual ninety-eight is at his age?”
Isaiah looked at his shoes.
“I know it’s fast.”
“It’s beyond fast.”
“Does that mean I can play?”
The question silenced the room.
Mercer sat in the chair across from him.
“It means people will offer you things.”
“A team?”
“Teams. Training. Travel. Attention. Some will be real. Some will want to use your name before they help your arm.”
Isaiah looked toward the field where parents were shouting at Brent.
“How do I know which is which?”
“You ask who benefits if you say yes.”
Earl smiled faintly.
Mercer continued.
“And you do not sign anything without your mother and an independent advisor.”
Isaiah nodded.
“My mother is at work.”
“Call her.”
Rochelle Reed arrived forty minutes later wearing her hotel housekeeping uniform.
She had left work so quickly that a plastic name tag remained pinned crookedly to her shirt.
Naomi sat in the passenger seat of their old sedan.
Rochelle crossed the parking lot with fear in her face.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, ma’am.”
“They said you threw a baseball and something happened.”
“My arm is okay.”
She looked toward the police vehicle near the clubhouse.
“Why are officers here?”
“Coach Brent changed radar numbers.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
Isaiah hesitated.
Earl handed her a bottle of water.
“Your son threw ninety-eight miles an hour.”
Rochelle stared at him.
“Is that dangerous?”
Earl almost smiled.
“Only to hitters.”
Isaiah explained what happened.
The laughter.
The one-pitch challenge.
The first reading.
Mason’s throw.
The second reading.
Then he explained the stored history.
Brent had known about Isaiah’s speed for months.
He had attached Isaiah’s early-morning pitches to Mason’s recruiting profile.
Rochelle listened without interrupting.
When Isaiah finished, she looked toward the field.
“Where is this man?”
“Rochelle,” Earl said, “there are investigators with him.”
“He humiliated my child for entertainment after stealing his work.”
“Yes.”
“I only want to speak.”
Earl watched her.
“So did he.”
Rochelle found Brent near the first-base dugout.
Alicia Warren, Daniel Mercer, and two sheriff’s deputies stood with him.
The deputies had not arrested him.
Not yet.
They were preserving equipment after Alicia discovered financial records linked to the altered player profiles.
Brent charged families for “verified performance certificates.”
Those certificates contained the false radar numbers.
Several parents had used them in scholarship applications, academy placements, and recruiting communications.
The showcase council’s attorney had advised everyone not to delete anything.
Rochelle stopped six feet from Brent.
“You knew my son could pitch.”
Brent looked at Isaiah’s hotel-uniformed mother, then at the people watching.
“I knew he had been using the field without authorization.”
“You knew how fast he threw.”
“I saw questionable readings.”
“You copied those readings to your son.”
“That has not been established.”
Daniel Mercer held up the radar gun.
“It has.”
Brent ignored him.
He addressed Rochelle.
“Isaiah entered restricted facilities, used equipment without permission, and created liability for the program.”
Rochelle looked at Isaiah.
“Did you break into the field?”
“No. Earl let me in.”
Brent pointed toward the groundskeeper.
“He exceeded his authority.”
Earl said, “The field belongs to the county, not your academy.”
“The academy has priority use.”
“Before sunrise in January?”
“You had no right to train him.”
Rochelle stepped closer.
“You keep talking about rights as if you did not put my child on a mound cold so people could laugh.”
Brent’s face reddened.
“He volunteered.”
“He asked for one pitch.”
“And I gave it to him.”
“You gave him a damaged ball and threatened his job.”
“It was a joke.”
“Who was supposed to laugh?”
Brent said nothing.
Rochelle looked around at the parents.
“Who was supposed to laugh?”
No one answered.
She turned back to him.
“You saw a Black child carrying buckets and decided his dream was entertainment.”
Brent’s attorney, who had just arrived, moved toward them.
“We should end this conversation.”
Rochelle looked at him.
“I’m not speaking to you.”
The attorney stopped.
Brent folded his arms.
“This is not about race.”
“No,” Rochelle said. “It is about what you believed you could do to a boy whose mother could not pay you.”
The sentence landed harder than shouting would have.
Brent glanced toward the cameras.
Rochelle continued.
“You knew his arm had value when you put the numbers under your son’s name. You only pretended he had no value when he stood in front of people.”
Mason Harlan stood several yards away.
He heard every word.
He walked toward them.
“Mom Reed?”
Rochelle looked at him.
“I didn’t know the numbers were his,” Mason said.
Brent snapped, “Do not speak.”
Mason turned toward his father.
“You used his readings.”
“I used test data.”
“You put them on my profile.”
“The profile needed complete metrics.”
“I told you I wasn’t throwing ninety-five.”
“You were close.”
“I was throwing eighty-eight.”
“With proper mechanics, you will reach ninety-five.”
“But I didn’t.”
Brent lowered his voice.
“Everything I did was for you.”
Mason looked at the folded banner in his hands.
“No. You did it so people would see what you wanted.”
He placed the banner on the ground.
Then he faced Isaiah.
“I’m sorry.”
Isaiah did not know what to say.
Mason continued.
“I laughed before. Not today. Other times.”
Isaiah remembered.
Mason had laughed when Brent called Isaiah a bucket boy.
He laughed when Isaiah asked about showcase registration.
He had also once left a new pair of batting gloves beside Isaiah’s locker without a name.
Isaiah never knew who put them there.
