Playing The Hot Corner

“Guys,” Ron called out to us, his deep voice a little apprehensive. “I need you all to come and listen to me for a minute.”

My stomach immediately dropped. Spring training was a week from being over and Opening Day was approaching fast. Ron told me that it was going to be around this time that he told the players my secret. Joe, who had jumped right back into his role of my best friend, pulled his mask off and must have seen something on my face that gave away what was going to happen next. He made sure he was next to me when the entire lineup squished to fit on the bench. Justin was on my other side, and that comforted me, but not as much as Joe’s arm almost invisibly around my waist did.

Ron took a deep breath before starting to pace in front of us. “This team has obviously melded very well over spring training. I think you all agree that you’ve gotten to know each other and have grown to respect each other, both as baseball players and as people. There’s something that one of our players – and one of your friends – has had to hide in order to fulfill his dream of being here with all of you. He wouldn’t have made it here if he hadn’t done what he did. It was a necessary course of action.”

I tried to hide the fact that I was almost shaking with nervousness. Justin must have noticed, though, because he kept glancing at me, probably sensing something was wrong. I just looked at the ground, pretending my cleats were way more interesting than they actually were.

“It makes him the unorthodox player on this team, and a lot of teams wouldn’t have even signed him if they knew. You all are good guys. You are part of the team dynamic that let me sign this player, and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable putting him on the team if I didn’t know you guys would turn against him. I’m trusting all of you to keep treating him as you have been. If you don’t, there will be serious consequences,” Ron stated, emphasizing the word ‘serious.’ I saw his feet stop their pacing in front of me and I looked up to see him looking back at me.

“Jesse?”

My heart pounding, I stood up and turned to look at the guys. “I really didn’t like keeping things from you guys, but like Ron said, it was kind of necessary.” I pulled off my cap and wig, shaking my hair loose. I heard Carlos Gomez from one end of the bench – “Whoa.”

“Ron’s been using the wrong pronoun for me this entire time. As you can probably tell, I’m not a guy.” I let my voice fall to its normal register, a little higher than I let it go around the team.

Before anyone could say anything, Ron stepped up to my side. “Jesse has been a member of this team for the past two months, and I expect it to go on like that. You know the league would have my head if they knew I had a woman on my team, but she’s worth the risk.”

“I agree.”

I jumped at the sound of Justin’s voice. I looked at him, a little startled. I had expected an almost hostile reaction to my secret coming out. Instead, he was looking at me with something like admiration and one corner of his mouth was turned up in a smile.

“She’s an awesome player, and easy to be around. I don’t see why there should be a problem.”

“She always has been,” Joe jumped in. “I mean, have you guys seen any reason to believe she doesn’t belong here?”

The rest of the team, still getting over the shock, murmured a faint response.

“Like I said earlier, anyone who even thinks of disrespecting Jesse for this reason will be out looking for another team to play for.”

“Don’t worry about it, Gardy,” Carlos Gomez said, standing up and putting an arm around my shoulder. “As long as she wears a Twins jersey, she’s one of us.”