Boy Couch: Homerun

She's a Runner, She's a Trackstar

 Leif didn't particularly want to play baseball, but it wasn't particularly up to him.

Leif's mother had decided to put him in as many sports as she could think of in the past few months in an attempt to "help him relieve his excess energy" and "make him less of a spazz" in her words. While her words may have been a bit harsh, there was certainly quite a bit of truth in them. He was antsy and quiet, a combination that turned out to be an absolute nightmare, as it often led to him acting on terrible ideas with no warning or explanation. After the Mud Incident, which had a rather half-assed signed explanation and a not-so-apologetic apology, his mother decided she had had just about enough of his antics.

Her first idea had been volunteer work. She would send him out into their small, rural port town to run chores for the neighbors and shopkeepers. In general, this seemed to work great, except it didn't actually run him out of energy as much as she would like, meaning that when he was home, he still had plenty of time to terrorize her with his bad ideas. She also heard from the neighbors that while he eventually got the job done, Leif had a tendency to brute-force problems, often leading to even more trouble, or would forget what he was doing completely when he got distracted chasing a sparkly dragonfly.

And so, her new tactic was sports. If he was out all day running around with other kids, maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to curb his "misdirected enthusiasm" as a teacher of Leif's had put it.

Not a woman to commit only partially to a plan, his mother had enrolled him in track, swim, and now baseball. Unfortunately, it would soon seem that his mother may have lacked much of the research she likely should have done before choosing this specific baseball team.

Excited to get on with her afternoon of Leif-free leisure, Leif's mother dropped him off at the park with barely a goodbye.

Shrugging his backpack straps to readjust them and tightening his blue baseball cap, Leif approached the group of people at the edge of the stadium, an unfamiliar bout of nerves jolting down his spine.

"Heeeey! You must be the new kid. Great to meet ya, I'm Coach Nayden!" A man in amber-tinted sunglasses perched above a rather impressive brown stache and a Hawaiian shirt waved him over. Leif guessed this guy sort of looked like a coach if he squinted. Really, he looked more like he listened to a bit too much Jimmy Buffet and described his weekends as "island time".

Leif gave the man a small nod, staring up at him with his unnaturally large and wide eyes that his mom often described as a "fish gaze".

"Ahaha... You sure have a piercing stare, don't ya?" Coach Nayden commented. An elderly lady with a baseball cap pulled over long, silvery braids and a kind smile joined them.

"Oh, you must be Leif, right, boy?" she asked. Leif nodded again. "Well it's great to have you! We're a bit short on teammates, so any new face is a good one to see," she explained with a smile. Leif cocked his head to the side, wondering what this talk about "lacking teammates" meant.

Coach Nayden nudged the lady.

"Cmon, let's not bring the mood down with talk like that, Eugenia. Let's just introduce him to the rest of the team." he suggested.

"Oh! Yes, yes, of course." She smiled kindly and drew a whistle from around her neck up to her lips and blew sharply. Her features suddenly grew much more severe as she shouted out in a sergeant's voice, "LIONS, FALL IN!!!" Leif felt himself stiffen as if the order had been directed at him.

A total of seven players ran up to the group. Weren't little league teams usually closer to 12 players, not seven? Leif shook the thought off as the players started introducing themselves.

"I'm Tiberius, pitcher." called out the first. He towered over Leif and had curly red locks and a permanent air of smugness about him.

"Claudius, outfielder," The boy looked almost identical to the first, but with slightly straighter red hair and a much kinder expression.

"Jeremiah, catcher." This one was closer to Leif's height with short, shaggy brown hair and a certain androgyny about them.

"Toby, third base." Leif thought this guy looked a little goofy. He had mismatched eyes and black hair tied back with a headband and a dumb toothy grin that conveyed a level of friendliness Leif wasn't sure he wanted to interact with.

"Nari, first base." Leif wondered why this girl was even here. Everything about her screamed rich girl, from her fresh manicure to her perfectly styled auburn curls.

"Uhm,, I'm Luciana. I'm, like, an outfielder." She had blonde hair tied back in a high ponytail and dark, heavy-lidded eyes with spiked lashes that made her look a little mean in a way that made her oddly resemble Tiberius.

"Asteria, second base." This one caught Leif's eye. She was sort of pretty in that odd way. She wore her hair in a pair of strawberry pinky-blonde braids tied at the ends with red ribbons, but she had a dirt smudge across her nose and her knees bore scuff marks and bandages similar to Leif's own.

"So who are you?" Tiberius asked, putting a hand on his hip.

Leif thought for a moment. What were the odds that any of these other kids knew sign language? Maybe he could just walk away. Or maybe he could find a leaf nearby and use that? Or maybe he could—

"This is Leif. He will be your new teammate starting today." (Coach?) Eugenia offered, interrupting Leif's thoughts. "I expect you all to be nice to him. You're a team, and teams should work together, especially in a situation like ours."

Tiberius frowned, then nodded. "Well I hope he's good." Jeremiah, who was standing next to him, elbowed him.

"On that note, let's get to practice!" Coach Nayden cut in cheerfully.

After running through a few drills, Leif realized a few things. One was that his track experience seemed to be paying off. The people on his track team always commented on his speed, calling him "scampery" and "surprisingly quick, even for his size." Leif had always had a bit of a "runty" build, small and scrawny, but he could outrun everyone on his team. What this meant for baseball, was that if he could get a hit off, he was guaranteed to at least get to one more base than anyone else on his team. If he hit a single, he could make it to second base, if he hit a double, he could make it to third, if he hit a triple, it might as well have been a homerun, since he was definitely running it like it was.

The other thing he learned was that he was NOT built for team sports. He often found himself getting impatient with the other players, especially Toby, whose aim was awful and managed to smack Leif in the face with a ball with his piss-poor batting. As he had guessed, none of the other players could understand sign language, which was unfortunate, as it meant Toby couldn't understand when Leif cussed him out after the ball incident.

At the time, he could hear the pretty strawberry-haired girl on second base giggling, but he figured she couldn't understand what he was actually saying either.

"Alright, team, that's practice for today! We'll see you all Thursday!" Coach Nayden exclaimed, ending his post-practice huddle by fist bumping the players.

The group dispersed and moved off to different areas of the park to sit and wait to be picked up. The twins, Tiberius and Claudius, left with Luciana, who Leif was pretty sure was definitely their sister pretty soon after practice. Nari and Toby went off together into Nari's mom's fancy car. Leif found himself once again questioning to himself why Nari had joined this random little league when two people moved up to stand next to him, one on either side.