For the Love of the Game

Morning came all too quickly as my alarm started going off letting me know that it was time for me to get up. Tommy had went to sleep early last night as he was starting to not feel well but Nikki and me had stayed up well into the night trying to set some rules and talking about what I was allowed to do and what I wasn’t. Everything was a compromise between us and we agreed on everything so that we were both on the same page. I think he felt a lot better about having a teenager around now than he had a few hours before. Like I had said, we were going to make it.

“You awake, mini me?” Tommy asked from beside me.

“I don’t know.” I mumbled.

I stirred and stretched a little bit, throwing the sheets off of me and onto Tommy. He pushed them back in between us and gave me a playful shove. I forced myself to sit up and ran a hand through my messy hair.

“What the hell happened to your leg?” Nikki asked, stopping dead in his tracks as he walked by me.

“Huh?” I asked, confused, and then I saw the nice black, blue, and purple bruise the size of my spread out hand, complete with lace marks from the softball. This was definitely in my top three best bruises ever. “Oh. Ask Tommy. It’s his fault.”

“Hey! It was an accident and I said I was sorry.” Tommy said.

Nikki gave him a ‘really?’ look, already becoming a bit more protective than he normally would have been. I smirked back at Tommy who flipped me off.

“It was really my fault. I was pitching to him yesterday and he hit the ball and I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t fully focused on what I was doing. I’m okay though.”

“Put some ice on that when we get on the plane, okay?”

“Will do.”

I spent the rest of the morning getting dressed for the service that I was dreading. I had been doing fairly well controlling my emotions the last few days, but today wasn’t one of those days. I had thought about putting makeup on, but I couldn’t keep my eyes dry long enough to even attempt that. I tried on a dress that I had kept out of my clothes to wear but thanks to my new bruise Tommy had graced me with, the dress didn’t work. So I settled for some black dress pants and a nice shirt.

"Let’s go get this over with.” I said as we got into the vehicle that was going to take us to the baseball stadium and then back to the airport to fly back to Los Angeles.

The stadium was already packed with family members of the players that had lost their lives. I put my sunglasses on as I approached Dad’s casket which had his jersey draped over it, his team picture on a stand right beside the casket. I had a mix of feelings in that moment that I didn’t like and wanted to go away. I wanted to panic, to turn around and run as fast as I could away from all of this while at the same time I wanted to see my Dad one last time. My dad shouldn’t have been in that casket. He should have been waking up after playing a game last night and calling me to see what kind of hell Tommy and I had managed to raise so far. And the thought of him being lowered into the ground, never ever again to play another game or call my name or walk me down the aisle or teach his grandkids to play baseball, that was just too much.

“Nikki, I can’t do this.” My voice trembled as I reached behind me to grab for him, to know that I wasn’t alone even though I knew I wasn’t.

“You’re doing fine, Collins. It’s going to be okay.”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m about to have a panic attack. I don’t want to be here! I want to see my dad and I want to go home! I can’t do ---“

He wrapped me tightly in his arms as everything that I had been fighting back finally surfaced and came out. He quickly walked us over to some chairs that had been set up and we sat down. I felt Tommy rubbing his hand up and down my back, but that wasn’t going to work this time. I knew that this second would come, the second where I would finally realize that was my dad was never coming out of that wooden box and that in just a few hours’ time he would be nothing more than a memory , but at the same time I had been in denial about it all. I guess if I had to be brutally honest with myself, I had been waiting the whole time for Dad to call and say that he was alright. I knew now though that that phone call would never come.

“Nikki, can we please go? I hate crying in public.”

“You aren’t the only one, Olli. There is nothing wrong with crying. No one here has a dry eye. I’m crying and so is Tommy. You had one little episode when you found out what happened and you have been trying to be strong since then. This needs to happen, okay? It’s a natural process that you need to go through. It’s going to be okay.”

“Sometimes the strongest of the strong have to shed a tear, little shredder.”

The sound of Mick’s quiet voice was enough to get me to look up from where I had my head buried into Nikki’s chest. Mick and Vince were sitting in the two chairs behind us, both of them with tears rolling down their faces. I hadn’t expected them to be here but then again, I hadn’t asked if they were going to be here either. I was happy that they were here though. Mick hadn’t called me little shredder in a long time. He had given me that nickname when I was little because I wanted to play guitar like him and couldn’t and I hated the world for it. He always told me that I had to practice playing guitar just like I practiced softball and one day I would be able to play like him, but no matter how good I ever got at playing guitar I would always be his little shredder.

“So this is it, then? He’s really never coming back is he?” I finally managed to ask.

“You will see him again one day. This is just for a little while.” Nikki said, his voice thick with tears.

“I would be with him right now, if it wasn’t for you guys. I mean that.”

“It’s going to be okay. This is hard for all of us, Olli. And trust me, as bad as it sucks that Jake is gone, sitting here with you and you not being beside him is making this a lot easier for us too.” Vince said.

The service began shortly after, and thankfully I was feeling somewhat better. Farmer had joined us and managed to talk Tommy out of his seat right next to me. He was being his typical self as we sat through the service, one of his arms around the back of my chair and his other hand holding mine. I had never in my life felt as weak and numb as I did now, but I was hoping that once I got on the plane headed back to Los Angeles that it would all settle down some.

After the service was over Dad’s jersey was removed from his casket, folded up and handed to me as all of the other players’ jerseys were given to their family as well. I held the jersey close as I said my final goodbyes to Dad before his casket was loaded into the hearse and driven off of the field. I had chosen not to attend the burial, because I wanted my last seconds with my dad to be on the baseball field, where he was happiest and loved to be. I stood and watched until the hearse was turned out of sight and my dad was gone forever.

“Bye Daddy.” I whispered.

The ride back to the airport was pretty much a blur to me. The guys talked amongst themselves, but I really didn’t hear a word they said. Farmer was sitting right beside me and glanced over at me every now and then but didn’t really say much. Before we got onto the plane at the airport I changed into a pair of Dad’s team sweat pants and one of his many team hoodies. I picked the seat in the very back corner of the plane, put on some music, and curled up to go to sleep. I wanted this day to be over with and the less I had to see of it, the better.