Bases Loaded Jam (Bases Loaded Jam Series #1)

Ch. 24: Dog Days of Summer (Jordan)

I was depressed in the weeks after the confrontation with Huey. I was really bummed out after I just lashed out at him when I found out the truth about his past. It really hurt me a lot that he didn't tell me who he was. Maybe he was right about the fact that I couldn't get over the pain of the past or that he didn't want to hurt me because the subject was so sensitive. But that still didn't change my anger towards him. I felt like I was done with him. I had spent almost an entire year wanting him to be a part of my life and sadly, he was.

I did see his texts of wanting to explain his reasoning behind not informing me. But I never responded to any of them. After a week, the texts stopped coming and I believed I was ready to move on with my life. I had a freshman season to continue. If there was anything I took pride in, it was not letting whatever was going on in my personal life affect me when I was pitching.

That strategy seemed to pay off for me as I continued to dominate opposing hitters. Even in front of crowds that weren't sold out, I still found ways to record strikeouts and allow my teammates to pick up outs for me as well. It just felt like I was continuing to be myself and have fun. But my teammates were cautious about approaching the subject of Huey because they were aware of the tension between us. However, none of that seemed to matter to me as I didn't see Huey in the stands for the remainder of the season. It was odd, but I felt it was the right thing that he wasn't there.

Our team remained in the hunt for the conference championship entering our final weekend against #1 ranked Oklahoma. We were a game behind them, so we needed to sweep them to be regular-season champs. I started the first game that Friday and was locking zeroes with their pitcher, who was an All-American. But in the sixth inning, I made a bad pitch to the Sooners' power hitter and she made me pay. The ball was gone before I could react and Oklahoma ended up winning the game 1-0.

This was also my first loss of the season as I had been pitching well up to that point. Because of the loss, Oklahoma led by two games. So we needed to win the last two games to finish in a tie. But because of head-to-head competition between us, if we won the last two games, we would be the champs of the regular season because of the tiebreaker rule. It wasn't to be. We got smashed in the next two games and finished second. Our conference tournament fared no better as we lost in the semifinals to Kansas State, which was shocking to us. But we also knew that we would be competing in the NCAA Tournament.

Now for those of you might think the tournament is like college basketball, it's completely different. There are sixteen regionals comprised of four teams. Each regional is double-elimination, which means two losses and you are done. The 16 regional winners would advance to the Super-Regionals to take on the winner of the regional winner below them in the bracket. In a best-of-three series, the eight winners would advance to the College World Series, which is also double-elimination until there are two teams left. In another best-of-three series, the first team to win twice is the national champion.

But just to avoid giving y'all a glimpse of the complicated tournament, I spoil the results. We sucked in our regional. We had won the right to host a regional because of our outstanding record all season long and we went two-and-out. We lost to the University of Houston, who went on to win the whole thing that year. Then, we suffered a humiliating loss to our former conference rival Texas A&M. I was so mad that we lost both games and I was embarrassed that I pitched poorly in the first contest against Houston. It was not a great way to end our season. But we only were losing three seniors and were expecting to be back for another crack at the national championship.

When my freshman season ended, I decided to head back home to Long Beach, California where I met up with Bethany and Quinn. They were my two best friends from our high school softball team. Bethany was seen as a queen bee like personality. She acted like she had a silver spoon in her mouth as her family was among the richest in our neighborhood. Not a day went by when Bethany would check her phone to see how much income she could have as she got older. It was like she was obsessed with money. Her dad had worked as a card dealer in Las Vegas until he inherited money from his father, who was a former oil tycoon from New Mexico that had passed away.

She lived in a three-story mansion just at the end of her street, which was five streets from my place. Her bedroom was so massive that it could've easily been a dance hall. Her closet made you think it was the cleaners because she had so many types of clothing hung up or in drawers. I can't even remember a time when she wore the same clothes within a few weeks aside from our softball uniforms.

Quinn, on the other hand, was the opposite. Her family wasn't rich, but they weren't poor either. They were middle-class citizens that were invited to Bethany's house for social gatherings. Quinn's parents worked in the law firm with her mom as a secretary while dad was a prosecutor. He had many high-profile cases that were on the news. One of them involved a former athlete being accused of robbing a gas station just so he would make it seem like he earned more on his salary than others. The athlete was found guilty, fined, and released from the team he played on.

The thing that I loved about Quinn was that whenever Bethany would act all mean girlish, she would be there to calm her down and prevent any drama. Bethany was an intelligent person, but sometimes her ego got the better of her and only Quinn could humble her when it was necessary. In spite of their different backgrounds, none of that affected their friendship with each other and with me. I was glad that they were on my team. Quinn was my catcher while Bethany spent most of her days trying to impress the boys in the right-field seats.

They both ended up attending UC-Irvine, which I was surprised because we had planned on attending UCLA or USC together. But then, things happened and our plan didn't work out. It was still nice to be spending the summer with them again just like old times. We went on summer vacations together and did spend a few summers working at camps as counselors for young children believe it or not.

This summer, we decided to just chill around and go to the beach. I just wanted to stay in Long Beach all summer long after spending a year away. Every day, we would go find our spot to just lie and get a tan. Somedays, we would be reading a book while other days, we might hit the waters and just have fun. One day, we were joined by company.