Sage: Take the Risk (F&L Story #3)

Sage: Parts 7 & 8

Part Seven

Wednesday, July 28, 2010.

Half an excruciating hour later, Carey noticed Sage frowning and concentrating way too hard on the game, her eyes darting from the replays to the banner of stats on the bottom of the screen. She would grunt with frustration, huff with annoyance, and then begin ticking off fingers like she was working an algebra equation in her head. “What are you doing?” he asked when he couldn’t stand it any longer.

She said, “Oh,” and composed her face, “Nothing,” and sat back only to resume her weird behavior a few seconds later after an impressive double play that Carey committed to memory.

“Sage,” he said when she’d flicked through her fingers a second time, “stop doing that. You look like you’re in pain.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing…never mind.”

He hit the pause button on the DVR and turned to her. “Now, you’ve got me curious. Just tell me.”

She pressed her lips together in a tight smile. “I’m just a little confused, but don’t worry about it. I’ll go unpack or something, so I won’t bother you.” She moved to stand, but his hand shot out to grip her knee and hold her in place – not his smartest reflex action, considering how warm, soft and smooth her skin was – and said, “What are you confused about?”

Her gaze drifted back to the frozen television, and that frown returned to her face. “Just about how they got that one guy’s On Base Percentage. It didn’t seem right to me…you know, that announcer guy said that they take the hits and walks and hits by pitch and divide it by how many times they’re at bat plus their walks, hits by pitch and sac flys – whatever those are. But that one guy…um, Ramirez or something, his numbers didn’t add up when they showed it a moment ago, and …well, I’m sure it’s more complicated that they said, and I know guys don’t like having to explain every little detail about a game, so I didn’t want to bother you about it – what? Did I say something?”

Carey gawked at the woman next to him. “Did you just try to work the OBP formula in your head?”

"Um, yeah…I guess that’s why I’m not getting the same answer.” She shrugged again and let out a hesitant laugh and tried to leave him again, but his grip on her knee tightened.

“Let’s find out,” he said, backing up the game on the DVR – modern technology was wonderful – until Sage told him where to stop. A screen flashed of the batter’s numbers, and the announcer related how to find the OBP of a player, a formula which Carey had memorized when he was six-years-old, but he’d never been able to do the damn thing in his head. He had assistant coaches for that.

He paused the screen again and wrote the player’s numbers on the top of a pizza box. After a few moments of working the problem, even whipping out his cell phone to use the calculator function – which Sage sighed and shook her head at – he compared his answer to the one on the television, threw his pen down and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. They did get it wrong.” He turned to study her with amazement. “How did you do that?”

She smiled a secretive smile and said, “You don’t get to know everything about me on the first night. Now…tell me why that pitcher guy threw a curve ball when that other guy’s stats clearly showed that he can hit nearly every curve ball ever thrown.”

Carey kept his stunned eyes on her. How many women would have noticed something like that? He fast-forwarded to the part she was talking about and explained, “Johnson, the one at bat, can smack the yakkers with ease, but they’re fly balls sixty percent of the time, and the player on base, Marcus, has been through two knee surgeries in the past five years. He’s a little slow out of the gate, plus he still has to tag the bag before attempting, but Marcus has always been an ambitious stealer. And the other team knows this. I’d have his ass running drills for stupid stunts like that. So anyway, Johnson hits a fly ball…easy catch for Peterson in mid field – that’s one out – and then they’ll toss it to second to seal the second out. It’s a two-fer deal.”