Obstacles(1)

Days later, after a couple days of training in Taiwan, the coaches have found tasks for everyone to work on and improve their weakness. For Dan, he has a good arm and great fastball but can't keep it staying in the strike zone on every pitch, and he needs to improve his breaking balls. The boy is a typical power pitcher. The coach told him it might work in high school but not in a professional league, anyone in the TBL would not go for his pitching if it was not in the strike zone. That's the biggest challenge Dan needs to overcome during the camp, and he has to learn how to stop walking batters as well. For other guys, Josh has the opposite problem; he is able to dominate his breaking balls and knows how to make ground balls. He doesn't allow batters to reach bases easily. However, his biggest weakness is that his fastball is soft and easy for hitters to have good contact. As a batter, Matt has speed and high skills on stealing bases but he needed to work hard on his batting skills and power. Everyone has their own problems to fix in the camp.

One night during the training camp in Taiwan, Roger sits on the bed and prepares his report for the managers. Alex knocks the door and asks for permission to go in. "Hey, it's me. Alex. May I come in?" Alex asks behind the door.

Roger hears the noise. He leaves the bed to answer it. "Hi, Alex. How are you? What brings you here?" He opens the door and lets him in.

"I'm here to catch up." He walks in with a bag. Alex enters the room then walks to the table to put down his bag on it and grabs a chair to sit. He asks Roger for his opinions about the rookies they selected this year.

Roger looks at him and walks back to bed to sit, "Ok, good question, where should I begin?" Then he starts to talk about what he thinks of them; As the first-round pick, they have a lot of expectations on Dan. He has good talent on pitching fastballs but needs to have better command. His future module could be Ian Miller or former Major League pitcher, Nolan Ryan. For Matt, his future module could be the London Eagles outfielder, Cameron Maybin, and the Fighters scout team expects him to take the spot of leadoff man, and for other players... Roger goes through other players and their potential future modules. Minutes pass, after going through the other eight people, Roger is down to the last one. As a submarine pitcher, for Josh, there is no existing module. There are a few sidearm pitchers in the league, but none of them is a real submarine pitcher. The office doesn't expect him to grow fast and become big. They selected him in the last round and saw him as a backup for relief pitchers. His module might be former major league pitcher, Chad Bradford.

"I see…" Alex nods.

"Overall, it was a great draft. We selected many good players. Some of them even just graduated from high school, like Dan, Matt, and Josh…They have time to be great." Roger says. When the explanation of his report is done, "That's it. It will be what I am going to be reporting to the managers." Roger puts down his laptop, "What about you? Young man. How have you been? Let's catch up. Do you like your new job?" He asks Alex and smiles.

Alex stares at him, "Uh…Me?" He takes a breath before he replies. "Well, I like it. It's not bad. I mean…My jobs…It's still related to baseball, my favorite thing…But…" He pauses and scratches his head.

Roger senses his hesitation then goes, "You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Alex puts down his hand.

Roger stares at him and sighs, "But you are not on the field anymore… Is that what you are trying to say?" he asks, and Alex nods. "I'm sorry about what happened to you. It shouldn't have ended that way. I'm truly sorry."

Alex sighs as well. He looks away and gets up from the chair, turns around then walks to the window. He looks out through the window with his reflection on it. Silence takes over the room for a moment. Alex looks down and stares at the street, and Roger stares at his back. "Yeah…" Alex speaks after a moment of quietness. He turns to the table then points at the water bottle on it, "May I?" then he asks Roger for the water.

"Sure." Roger nods.