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Frankly, I admire what you want to do a hell of a lot more than I admire what I do. I get to hit a ball and call some pitches for a living. You are choosing to save lives.’
    “ Christine smiled at me. ‘You’re an old soul.’
    “‘ How so?’ I asked, trying to wrap my mind around what she meant.
    “‘ You see things most boys our age couldn’t even begin to comprehend. You take the time to see the world. I like that a lot.’
    “‘ I’m just letting you know that you’re still in the caterpillar phase. You’ll be a butterfly soon enough. Heck, I’m still not a butterfly yet.’
    “‘ Yet? You already know, when will that be?’
    “‘ Yup, when I put on the Dodger blue.’
    “‘ I know you’re athletic and talented, and I have no doubts you’ll make it, but, let’s say something happened?’
    “‘ What would I hang my hat on?’ finishing her sentence.
    “‘ Yes, could you still be a butterfly?’ she asked.
    “‘ Possibly…But I would be one bitter butterfly.’
    “ We both laughed. It was our turn to get our pizza. I ordered two slices of pepperoni and Christine grabbed a slice of plain cheese.
    “ I said, ‘Plain cheese? You got to put some items on your pizza. Otherwise, you are just eating cheese bread.’
    “‘ I like cheese bread. This isn’t my first rodeo, cowboy. I like cheese pizza. All that other stuff gets in the way of the true beauty of the pizza.’
    “‘ Which is what?’
    “‘ The perfect combination between cheese, the tomato sauce, and the bread. Adding more to it is just greedy. It’s already delicious.’
    “‘ I think you make good points.’ I smiled at Christine. She had so much personality. It was refreshing, hearing a girl talk so much. She acted as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. She might have envied what I did for a living, but I envied that in her character. She seemed at peace with herself and that’s a rare trait, a trait that was always appealing to me. Maybe because I had so many brothers and sisters, chaos was just a way of life.
    “ We grabbed a couple of sodas and made our way to the table area and sat down. ‘So, where is your friend from the diner?’ Christine asked.
    “‘ You mean Douglas?’
    “‘ Yeah. He seems like a real good guy.’
    “‘ He is,’ I agreed.
    “‘ He thinks you’re something else.’
    “‘ That’s because he’s my best friend. I think the same thing about him.’
    ‘“ That’s great that you two are so close,’ Christine stated. ‘Is it hard with all the foolishness that is out there?’
    “‘ Douglas has taught me to ignore the comments and to allow his ball playing do the talking. And if anyone truly has the skills to be a major league ball player, it’s him. He puts up with a lot of crap. He has more character in his pinky than most men have in their entire bodies.’
    “ She wanted to know, ‘Where does he bat in the batting order?’
    “‘ He leads off,’ I told her. ‘He is the biggest reason why I lead the league in RBI’s. It’s because Douglas leads the league in runs. I’m usually hitting him in.’
    “‘ You two sound like quite a pair.’
    “‘ Yeah, a pair of jokers,’ I said.
    “‘ More like a pair of aces,’ she said.
    “ I became embarrassed and decided to change the subject because I was never good at receiving compliments. Even when I was young, I didn’t know how to receive one, maybe it was because my own father never gave me a compliment.
    “‘ What about your mother?’
    “‘ She complimented me ten times a day. So the compliments that mattered to me were the ones I never got.’
    “‘ That sounds a little ‘Greek Tragedy’ to me.’
    “‘ Oh, you have no idea,’ I agreed. I could talk about myself all night, and I had learned that that wasn’t usually the smartest move with girls. Frankly, most girls didn’t know half of what Christine knew about baseball, but now she was diving into my family life and I thought it was a good time