“Mm-hmm. A decent one or so I was told, but that only comes from the fact that I basically lived at the field.” He reaches over and takes a sip of his water, as I try to fathom the notion of not wanting to be at home or that home isn’t a safe space. “Sal had a son. He played baseball too. He was mediocre in talent but Sal wasn’t having any part of that, especially when I was getting attention from four-year colleges and MLB scouts.”

“You must have been good.”

“I was decent,” he says and sighs. The agent in me wants to shake him senseless and tell him for MLB scouts to be looking at him, for my dad to be interested in representing him, he was more than decent.

A one-hundred-mile-per-hour arm that has command of five pitches is not decent.

It’s utterly, freaking phenomenal.

But I can’t say a word, and I think, of all of this charade, that’s the toughest part. I want to tell him he was incredible. I want to tell him that a team would have taken him and signed him for a one-year contract just to see if he could hack it. I want to tell him that regardless of what was his perceived lack of control, teams would have still been interested. That they overlook things like that when you have a one-hundred-mile-per-hour arm.

But that’s where part of my dilemma comes in. The part where I can’t be honest with him and tell him that even though Sal was a raging asshole who discredited him out of jealousy, Gunner really was quite incredible.

I try in the most muted sense possible.

“If major league teams were looking at you, I’m pretty sure you were more than decent.”

He shrugs. “It’s all relative. I truly loved the game and the escape it provided me from the toxicity of my house. I stayed home longer than I should have because I was trying to fulfill that promise to my dad to take care of my mom. I was trying to do what was right and make sure she was okay. I don’t know . . . Shit got bad. I didn’t care that I was acting out—hell, maybe I was acting out hoping she’d notice and pick me over him. Whatever it was, I thought I could help get her out of the situation with my stepfather, but I learned you can’t change people or make them see things differently. That realization came at a brutal cost to myself.”

“What do you mean, if you don’t mind me asking?”