Of bubble gum, brotherhood and baseball

SOMEWHERE IN NELSON COUNTY
The conversation on the vomit-inducing bus ride spans the globe.
They talk about Little League games, Josh Craig played on the Reds, Jeremy Hahn shows off his Mariners’ love. They talk about winning an AAU championship game by forfeit, after being down 8-0 and how the opposing team’s coach, after hearing he would have to give up his victory, chucked the second-place trophy down the third-base line.
Joseph Lucas can’t tell the story without laughing.
Craig, Hahn, Jordan Weatherholtz and Stevie Moreland shout back. It’s the only way to hear over the bouncing of the school bus and every window open while traveling 55 mph as the bus turns onto U.S. 29.
Of course, they talk about the teams they’ve already played and beaten and one team, Turner Ashby, they were probably expecting to play again.
“I betcha Johan Santana could hang a deuce and [Turner Ashby’s Daniel] Bowman would smack it,” Hahn says.
Then it gets quiet, or at least as quiet as you would expect on a school bus full of high school baseball players en route to their Region III title game.
“If I ever see Bowman on TV,” Hahn says. “I’d be like, yep, I gave up one Hopeman Parkway to him.”
Then the laughs start again and the chit-chat is back.
“What car you driving to prom?”
“You were pulled over going 35 over [the speed limit]?”
And Big League Chew Bubble Gum etiquette, or superstition. Either way, Hahn’s mother picked up five bags of the goods and Craig lets out a cheer when he hears the news. Weatherholtz opens up his bag and throws a monstrous wad of the shredded pink gum into his mouth. Craig is worried, that’s not how it works. It’s much too early.
“You can’t take it out until after the game now,” he says. But Weatherholtz has an answer to that, the gum he’s got in now will shrink, “then I just put more in.”
“You can’t,” Craig says. “That’s just stupid.”
Coach Jim Critzer, sitting up front with the assistant coaches, looks back toward the group he affectionately calls “his boys,” and smiles.
“Who do we play tonight?” he asked them earlier, as they waited for the bus at Kate Collins Middle School. The team, sitting in the dugout, isn’t quick to answer. And when the Little Giants do, it’s nowhere close to being in unison. So Critzer asks again.
“Alleghany,” they say, not as enthusiastically as one would expect.
“If we win tonight, where do we play Tuesday?” he asks.
Finally, they perk up a bit.
“Home.”
They’re right, and in a bouncing bus they are on their way to see if they’ll win and where they’ll play. The brotherhood is quite evident. The laughing. The joking around. The typical conversations you’d expect from a group of high school boys that have played ball together for years.
Jay Thompson hunkers down for a nap, 20 minutes later the bus crosses the Tye River and heads into Amherst.
“Jay, wake up, we’re 12 miles out,” Craig says.
Thompson pops right up and the back of the bus suddenly becomes a dressing room as the players grab for their bags. Thompson fixes his cap and leans up against the window.
Moreland stands up and pulls his shorts off, throwing his baseball pants on while keeping his balance as the bus rocks down the highway.
The dressing room weaves its way to the front of the bus, like a shiver down the spine, and the coaches get into the act.
Buttoning up shirts, throwing on pants and adjusting caps.
They pull up to Amherst High School, someone pops open the back door and everybody exits as the alarm sounds.
Without Critzer having to say anything, they dump their bags in the dugout, grab their gloves and run to the outfield where they stretch, toss the ball around and start to run.
The coaches stop and look as Alleghany, dressed in red, shows up and walks to the batting cages.
Critzer slowly saunters from the third-base line into right field where the ping of baseball balls off the Mountaineer bats resonates across the campus.
The players keep running, stopping only to douse their caps in the sprinklers to keep the heat away.
Critzer, silent, stands far away in right field. Legs slightly spread apart, arms folded over his chest as he watches Alleghany hit. Its time up, the Little Giants’ opponents grab their bats and head for the field. Critzer turns and yells.
“Alright. Let’s get hitting.”
The Little Giants walk off the field. Sophomore catcher Kendall Wolfe and freshman Drew DeMoss, who got the start Friday, follow behind.
They slap hands.
Critzer watches them walk away, turns toward his assistants and smiles.
“Hustle up,” he yells.