Chapter Five

“Hey Doc! Are you home?” Ryan peered through the locked screen door and banged again on the door frame. Henry Murphy lived in a simple three bedroom beachfront home on the south end of Mimosa Key. Eager to escape Chicago winters, the widower had sold his counseling practice and retired to Mimosa Key two years earlier.

Because he loved baseball, he volunteered as a stadium usher, and his counseling background led him to offer the players free, and often unsolicited, advice about how to navigate through the world of professional sports and keep your head screwed on straight. Too bad Doc hadn’t been around in Ryan’s first year of Major League play. Ryan had learned the hard way, and as a result, he had steered young players to Doc so they could hopefully avoid the same pitfalls.

Doc Murphy had guessed Ryan’s secret fairly early, and he had promised to keep it a secret. But the older man often encouraged Ryan to do something about it. Ryan had insisted he was learning on his own, and didn’t want to go to an adult literacy program because it would embarrass the team if the public learned Whiz Kidd couldn’t read. If he had known he would be out of baseball at age twenty-two, he’d have worked harder in school. Maybe gone to college. His twenty-twenty hindsight was unparalleled.

Ryan banged on the door frame again. If he was going to figure out this dancing stuff completely and be ready by the next rehearsal, Doc would have to help him read it.

“Keep your shirt on,” he heard from inside the house. “Don’t take out your frustration on my door. I’m coming.” Soon a tall, wiry man with a head full of snow-white hair reached the door.

“Ryan,” he called out as he strode closer. “What has you riled up today?”

Ryan held up the sheaf of papers. “You’re never going to believe what I’ve been roped into, Doc. And I need your help.”

The older man swung the screen open and waved Ryan inside. Sitting around Doc’s kitchen table with tall glasses of iced tea and a plate of Doc’s famous peanut butter cookies, Ryan laid the papers out on the table and explained about the contest.

“She gave me a list of online videos to watch and that’s easy. But there are also these written instructions. I can read some, but I can’t make sense of most of it.” Even though Doc had never passed judgement on his inability to read, Ryan still felt a sense of shame leaning on the older man like this for help.

“Let me take a look,” Doc said, pulling a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and slipping them on his face. He flipped through the pages, nodded here and there and glanced up at Ryan after turning over the last one.

“She’s written out the instructions for different steps along with the choreography for your whole dance routine. That part should be pretty simple. She’ll teach you the steps and you’ll need to memorize the routine. The videos should help with the basic steps.”

“That’s a relief,” Ryan said, his shoulders sagging as he sighed.

“The last few pages are about your practice schedule as well as information about the contest itself. Background stuff like who organized it, who put up seed money, ticket prices, that the proceeds go to Dr. Oliver Bradbury’s clinic in Naples. Did you realize people are paying a thousand dollars each to attend this event?” Doc asked, tapping the stack of papers with one finger. “Ha! I just realized it’s a thousand bucks to watch a Buck.”

Ryan blew out a breath. “Holy shit. I can’t screw this up, Doc. And I can’t get out of it. Cutter made that damned clear.” He groaned and leaned forward, banging his head gently against the table top. “What am I going to do?”

“For a start, you could sign up for that program down at the Presbyterian church and learn to read,” Doc instructed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ryan replied, sitting up and leaning back in the chair. “I’ve told you. I don’t want to embarrass the team with negative publicity if someone recognizes me. And eventually someone would.”

“I’m sure the franchise would survive. Comparatively speaking, not being able to read is small potatoes compared to the headlines some athletes make. And you’d be championing a great cause.”

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t have time anyway. She said we’d be rehearsing a couple times a week for the next month. Between that and my coaching responsibilities, I doubt I’ll have time to take a leak, much less go to some class at night. And besides, I doubt I’d learn quickly enough to figure all that stuff out in time. So what am I gonna do in the meantime?”

“With the videos you should be able to figure out the choreography part of this on your own,” Doc began. “And I’ll read the rest into my phone and send you the audio file. Let me go make a copy of all this.”

Doc rose, scooped the papers off the table and then strode from the room. He returned minutes later and handed the sheets back to Ryan.

“How’d you figure out I couldn’t read, Doc?” Ryan asked, staring at the floor.

“I recognized your coping mechanisms.”

Ryan glanced up suddenly, his eyes wide with amazement. “How?”

“My son has dyslexia,” Doc said matter-of-factly.

“But he has a college degree. He’s an architect.” Ryan remembered hearing Doc speak of his son. “How did he accomplish all that if he couldn’t read?”

“We were fortunate that he was diagnosed early, so with special tutoring programs and a lot of work by his mother and me, he learned to work around it,” Doc explained. “Have you ever been tested for learning disabilities?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nah. That’s not my problem. I was just a lazy kid who thought he could charm his way through anything, and apparently I charmed my way right through twelve years of school without learning my ABCs.”

“You’re not lazy now. You worked hard to achieve all you did as a pitcher. I’ve seen how hard you work with the Bucks and how you volunteer with the high school team. You can change things, you know. But you have to want to do it. And if you want to read badly enough, you’ll find the time to attend an adult literacy program.” Doc paused for a moment and studied Ryan from across the table. “You do want to read, don’t you?”

That was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Ryan had always been a winner, though he had figured out early on that it wasn’t how much he wanted to win that counted as how much he hated to lose. Conquering illiteracy would definitely be one in the win column. But could he handle the accusing looks, or worse yet, looks of pity, when people found out? Yes, his hindsight was unparalleled. Too bad he hadn’t opened his eyes sooner and looked forward.