Baseball Great Read Online Free

his own arms and hands. Coach Miller barked out positions for the boys, telling Kerry to take the mound.
    â€œOkay, LeBlanc,” the coach said in a skeptical tone. “Let’s see some greatness.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    â€œCOACH, COACH, COACH,” BENJI said, stepping between Josh and Coach Miller and turning his cap around as he tugged on a batting glove. “You gotta let me go first, Coach. I’m gonna be your leadoff batter anyway, and you gotta let Eschelman warm up his arm on me, save the real stuff for our big bat.”
    Benji took the bat from Josh’s hands. Coach Miller looked at Benji with an open mouth, as if he couldn’t believe it. Benji didn’t blink; he just stepped up to the plate.
    â€œC’mon, Coach,” Benji said, looking over his shoulder as he took some warm-up swings. “You can’t win a championship standing around.”
    The coach took his clipboard and stood over to the side, then said to Kerry, “Go ahead, start throwing.”
    â€œ You be on deck,” Coach Miller said, pointing his pen at Josh and reasserting his authority.
    Josh studied Kerry’s motion as he wound up for the pitch. He watched the ball zip past Benji, who took a monster swing, connecting with nothing but air.
    â€œGetting warm, getting warm,” Benji said, holding off the next pitch with his left hand while he kicked dirt from his cleats and waved the bat in little circles with his right.
    The next pitch came in, a curveball. Benji swung big again, nipping the ball and sending it dribbling down the third-base line.
    â€œNice hit,” Coach Miller said, “for a bunt.”
    Benji stayed focused, swinging big every time, mostly whiffing and, if not, dribbling the ball into the infield or popping it up for an easy out.
    â€œOkay, Lido,” Coach Miller said. “That’s all the leadoff batting I can take. Get out into right field and send Brandon in here.”
    â€œCoach, you gotta give me one more,” Benji said. “Just one. One and done, Coach. One and done. Forget leadoff, I’m a heavy hitter, too. Come on, Eschelman; put one in here, you sissy.”
    Benji wiggled his cleats into the dirt. The pitch came fast, and he smacked it right over the center-field fence.
    â€œWahoo!” he screamed, pumping his fists in the airas he dropped the bat and jogged toward right field. “Heavy hitter! Heavy hitter!”
    Coach Miller chuckled, made some notes, and pointed to Josh.
    â€œNow, let’s see what you got,” he said.
    Josh hefted the bat, letting his body absorb its weight again. He studied the pitcher. In the article Jaden had written about Josh being a baseball great, the next biggest reason she said the team would win the championship was the pitching of Kerry Eschelman. Esch, as his friends called him, had pitched two no-hitters in Little League as a sixth grader. Josh saw why when he watched Esch pitch to Benji. There weren’t many twelve-year-olds who could throw heat, and a curveball, and a changeup, too. That kind of pitching wasn’t typical until high school.
    But Josh wasn’t worried.
    The thing he had—reaction time, or reflex, or whatever it was called—that thing that never let a ball get by him in the infield, also let him see the ball the instant it left the pitcher’s hand. He didn’t just see it; he could read it. The placement of the hand, the laces on the ball, and the spin it had all showed up in his mind as clear as the headlines of a newspaper. And then he had the eye-hand coordination to smack it dead center with his bat.
    So when Esch wound up and let fly with a curveball,Josh watched it come down the middle and veer toward the outside corner of the plate the way most people follow the path of a ladybug slogging along on a windowpane. He swung down on it, driving it right through the hole between first and second. Esch threw two more curves and a changeup, and Josh drove