“Yes, ma’am,” Isaiah said.
“I did.”
Walter smiled.
The showcase continued around them.
But for Isaiah Reed, the day had already changed forever.
He had walked in asking for one pitch.
He had been laughed at by a superstar.
But an old scout had stood up.
And now, for the first time in his life, Isaiah’s hidden practice was no longer hidden.
[End of Part 5]
Part 6
Isaiah Reed’s mother did not speak for several seconds.
Through the phone, he could hear noise behind her.
The low rumble of industrial washing machines.
A cart rolling across tile.
Someone calling for clean sheets near the far end of the laundry room.
Then her voice came back softer.
“You got to throw?”
Isaiah nodded even though she could not see him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“On the mound?”
“Yes.”
“In front of everyone?”
Isaiah looked across the field.
The scouts were still writing.
The reporter near the dugout was still filming.
Caleb Monroe stood with his arms folded, pretending not to care.
Walter Hayes waited a few feet away, giving him privacy but not walking off.
“Yes,” Isaiah said.
“In front of everyone.”
His mother inhaled shakily.
“And?”
Isaiah looked down at the baseball in his hand.
“They’re evaluating me.”
The machines on the other end seemed to grow louder because his mother went completely quiet.
Then she whispered,
“What do you mean evaluating you?”
“Mr. Walter Hayes.”
Isaiah glanced toward the old scout.
“He’s a scout.”
“He saw my grip.”
“He said he saw Dad throw once.”
This time, Isaiah heard his mother cover her mouth.
“Your father?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He remembered Dad’s pitch.”
A sound came through the phone that Isaiah had only heard a few times in his life.
His mother trying not to cry at work.
“Mom?”
“I’m here.”
“You okay?”
She laughed softly, but it broke in the middle.
“I’m supposed to ask you that.”
Isaiah swallowed.
“I’m okay.”
Then he looked toward Caleb.
The memory of the laughter still sat in his chest.
“I think.”
His mother heard the hesitation immediately.
“What happened before you threw?”
Isaiah did not answer fast enough.
That told her everything.
“Isaiah.”
He lowered his voice.
“Some people laughed.”
“Who?”
He hesitated again.
“Caleb Monroe.”
The silence on the phone changed.
Not shock.
Not confusion.
Anger.
A mother’s anger.
“He laughed at you?”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it is not.”
Isaiah looked toward the stands.
People were still glancing at him.
Some were smiling now.
Some looked curious.
Some looked sorry.
He did not know which felt stranger.
“He told me I didn’t belong,” Isaiah said quietly.
His mother’s breathing tightened.
Walter turned his head slightly, not eavesdropping, but understanding from Isaiah’s face that the conversation had reached the hard part.
Isaiah continued,
“But I threw anyway.”
His mother’s voice softened.
“That’s my boy.”
Those three words almost broke him.
He blinked fast.
“I wish you were here.”
“I do too.”
A supervisor called something behind her.
She answered quickly, then came back.
“I have to go in a minute.”
“I know.”
“Listen to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You stay respectful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“But do not shrink.”
Isaiah looked at the mound.
The place where everything had changed in less than an hour.
“I won’t.”
“And Isaiah?”
“Yes?”
“If that scout says your father’s name again…”
Her voice trembled.
“You listen carefully.”
Isaiah nodded.
“I will.”
When the call ended, he stood there with the phone still in his hand.
For a moment, the stadium felt too big.
Then Walter stepped closer.
“She proud?”
Isaiah looked up.
“Yes, sir.”
Walter smiled.
“Good.”
Then he glanced toward the evaluators.
“Now we make sure today becomes more than a story.”
The official evaluation station moved Isaiah into a bullpen lane near the first-base side.
This time, things were different.
A staff member brought him water.
Another gave him a clipboard form and asked for his full name, age, school, guardian contact, throwing arm, height, and weight.
Nobody had asked him those things before he threw.
Before the pitch, he was just a kid near the dugout.
After the pitch, he had a line on a form.
Isaiah noticed that.
So did Walter.
The old scout stood beside him while the staff member wrote.
“Guardian name?” the staff member asked.
“Lena Reed.”
“Phone number?”
Isaiah gave it carefully.
“Travel team?”
Isaiah shook his head.
“None.”
“Pitching coach?”
He hesitated.
“My dad taught me.”
The staff member looked up.
“Current coach?”
“No, sir.”
The man wrote none.
Walter watched the word hit the paper.
None.
It looked small.
But in scouting, it meant something big.
Raw.
Untouched.
Unprotected.
Easy to overlook.
Easy to mishandle.
Walter leaned in.
“Write father-trained.”
The staff member looked surprised.
Walter’s voice remained calm.
“Don’t write none like nobody taught him.”
The man flushed slightly.
Then corrected the form.
Father-trained.
Isaiah saw it.
His throat tightened.
Father-trained.
For the first time, what his dad gave him did not look like an absence.
It looked like a credential.
Across the field, Caleb Monroe watched all of it from near the dugout.
His assistant, a young brand manager named Troy Ellis, stood beside him with a phone in hand.
“This is spreading,” Troy said quietly.
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“What?”
Troy turned the phone slightly.
A short clip had already appeared online.
Caleb laughing.
Isaiah asking for one pitch.
Caleb saying,
“Throw from the parking lot.”
Then Walter standing.
Then the pitch.
The clip had only been posted twenty minutes earlier, but the comments were moving fast.
Who is that kid?
Caleb looks bad here.
That scout knew something.
Old man saved the moment.
Let the boy throw.
Caleb looked away.
“It’s one clip.”
Troy lowered his voice.
“It’s the kind of clip people share.”
Caleb wiped a hand over his mouth.
He was not used to being on the wrong side of attention.
He had built a career on confidence.
On swagger.
On the belief that people liked him because he acted bigger than every room.
