For a Team

Family

At barely ten years old, Jacob was greeted by warm smiles and a sense of unity that he couldn't identify.  He didn't know anyone here, and they didn't know him, but he still felt connected.  The way the grass smelled and the dirt looked.  The image of shyness on everyone's face and undoubtedly on his.  The shirts the men were handing out were all the same color and oddly enough had numbers on them in the same way the shirts of the people on his father's television did, when he dared get close enough to look.  Jacob didn't know what he was doing here, only that his mother had driven him here as some sort of escape from the fighting.  He wasn't supposed to know that, but he did.

Jacob wasn't a normal child.  He didn't go to school the way the other kids did, but learned at home.  He didn't even know any other kids, except his older sister, who he had to watch sometimes.  He knew there was something different about her, but he never said anything.  He didn't think he was supposed to know that either.

Home was a constant for Jacob, and not a good one.  His parents fought and his father got such a look in his eyes sometimes, which was dangerous.  Jacob's father was dangerous.  He had a big fist, hard shoes, and a temper.  He was a mean man, and Jacob did his best to stay out of his way.  No, home was not very nice at all, but it was the only place he knew.

This wasn't home though, this was somewhere else.  Jacob thought he should be scared, but he wasn't.  He was kind of in awe at the way the people smiled at each other and talked instead of shouting.  Jacob thought he kind of liked it.

"Hey!"  His thoughts were interrupted by a boy he hadn't noticed before appearing right in his face.  This boy wasn't shy.

"Uhm, hi."

"What number are you?"  The boy asked, and Jacob looked down at the shirt one of the smiling men had pressed into his hand moments before.

"Twenty-three," he said.

"Cool, I'm Jeremy," said the boy,"What's your name?"

"Jacob.  Do you know what this is?  I mean, what are we here for?"

"You really don't know?  This is baseball.  Everyone here is on our team."

For the first time in a while Jacob smiled, and looking at the boy in front of him, and the boys around him, and the men with the warm faces that reminded him of boys, he finally realized what that feeling was.

Family.  It was family.