I tipped my hat to the kid. He had the biggest smile on his face. I knew that feeling, and now I knew what it felt like to be the pitcher on the other side of it. His teammates cleared the bench to congratulate him. The breaks wouldn’t always go your way.
Johan came out to see if I was okay. I sent him back, and we faced the next batter. I struck him out on three pitches.
We couldn’t do anything in the bottom of the eighth and ended up losing 4–3. I stopped our line to shake hands when I found the kid that hit it out on me.
“Hey, great job. I noticed the adjustment you made at the plate to give yourself a chance,” I said.
“Believe it or not, that was my first home run. I hope I don’t face anyone that throws as hard as you do the rest of the tournament.”
“Do me a favor: win this, so I can at least say we lost to the best.”
“Thanks. We’ll see what we can do,” he said, and then we continued shaking hands.
After the game, the whole team signed autographs. The batboys handed out stacks of baseball cards. When we were done, we wandered over to the locker room. Moose had a plaque that he held up.
“In my twenty-seven years of coaching at Lincoln, I’ve only won eight of these. This proclaims this team as Regional Champions. Next year I want to win State,” he said, to our vocal approval.
“I also want to congratulate three players. Jim Ball, Johan Bauer, and David Dawson were named to the All-Conference team.”
That caused more whoops of approval.
“Finally, I just got word that we have an All-State Player in our presence. David is the first player at Lincoln Hight to be All-State in both football and baseball in the same year in our state,” Moose said with a big smile.
I had absolutely no idea that I even had a chance at All-State. Moose showed me my final stats. I’d hit for a .435 average, an on-base percentage of .558, and a slugging percentage of .741. That was accompanied with 17 home runs. I’d only struck out 8 times and had 9 stolen bases.
Moose and Coach Haskins both offered to work with me until I left for my movie to help me get ready for Under-18 USA Baseball tryouts. I really appreciated their offer.
◊◊◊
When I got home, Caryn was there, along with Mom, Dad, and Fritz. They were ambushing me with a conference call with Frank, Ms. Dixon, and Tom. In a way, I was glad for the ambush because I hadn’t spent any time worrying about it before it happened.
“David,” Ms. Dixon started, “we’ve all been through every video and audio recording we have from yesterday, and we walked through it with Fritz and with your parents. We have some ideas, and a couple of ways we can prepare, but a lot of it depends on the strategy we go with.
“Tom and Frank have different ideas on how we set ourselves up to handle this situation. I have my own thoughts, but I want them to present theirs first,” she said.
I sat back with Mom and Dad. We listened as first Tom, then Frank outlined their approaches.
Tom essentially wanted us to sit on the information and let them publish, then take them to court and surprise them with our own recordings. He wanted an airtight judgment against them.
Frank was more concerned with the PR aspects, and with the impact to my image and reputation. He recommended releasing everything right away. Frank wanted to get the media on board with our message, which was that unscrupulous independent journalists were manipulating the facts so they could get a big payday. He wanted to be sure they didn’t close ranks and try to protect these women as members of the press.
Then Ms. Dixon chimed in.
“David, I want to preface this with a little more information. I’ve done some digging and had a comprehensive background check done on the two women involved. The videographer who called herself ‘Bridget Anderson’ is, in reality, Hillary Stamford. She has been very active in the radical wings of the feminist movement for several years. More important, though, is that she has a criminal record. That may account for her using a different name. Specifically, she’s been arrested for two criminal assaults and has one conviction as a result of a plea bargain. She’s currently on probation for one of them. Her latest stunt, if we can turn it into a criminal action, would violate the terms of that probation.
“Stamford also has two restraining orders against her. One of those is on behalf of a rather engaging couple who were targeted because of the wife’s outspoken belief in a strong family structure. I have arranged to get copies of Stamford’s criminal records, as well as her mug shots.
There was the sound of some papers rustling over the phone, and Ms. Dixon cleared her throat.
