Can we get you something?” Brett said. “Something to drink, maybe?” “A new bike?” Hank said. “If you want to rest on your . . . laurels and take it easy,” Paul said, “that’s fine with us.” “Wait, I’ve got an idea,” Cody said. “Why don’t all you comedians kiss his . . . laurels.” Hutch laughed along with everybody else. Eventually his teammates let up on him and they all started to warm up, the conversation shifting to their next game, against Sarasota, to be played down in Fort Lauderdale. Darryl was the last one to show up, right before Mr. Cullen did. As usual, it was as if he just appeared, out of nowhere, or got beamed in the way guys did in one of the old Star Trek shows that Hutch liked to watch on the Sci Fi Channel. They’d just look up and there would be Darryl, bat bag slung over his shoulder, wearing his Nike flip-flops. Even if it was one of their late practices, way after the sun had gone down, he’d still be wearing some pair of cool sunglasses, never the same pair two days in a row. Hutch didn’t know a lot about fashion, or what things cost, but Cody did, and he had told Hutch one day that the pair of Oakley glasses Darryl was wearing cost more than both their baseball gloves combined. Today Darryl was wearing the kind of glasses you sometimes saw big leaguers wearing, the kind that seemed to just fit your face like a mask even though they weren’t really attached anyplace. We will start him low and let him work his way up. He could possibly be a Tolworth horse or he could be one for the Challow. If he wins a couple of novice hurdles in early November and December then those sorts of races could be targets. Now they were in the car, this quiet car that was much nicer than their own Camry, Carl Hutchinson gripping the steering wheel with those big baseball hands of his. “Why?” he said to Hutch. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “You can decide something like that, whether you want to talk about it, when you’re the dad someday. But I’m the dad here. So you’re sure-as-Sunday gonna talk about it now.” Hutch slouched down even lower in the passenger seat than he already was. Where did he even start a conversation like the one his dad wanted to have now? When he was seven? Hutch thought of himself as a pretty smart guy. Not the smartest kid in his class. But smart enough. Just not right now. How did he explain to his dad, how did he make him understand that he’d been waiting for his dad to come out and play with him for the past five years . . . that when he finally came out of the house to play ball, even for a few minutes, he’d done it with Darryl? “How come you want to start talking to me now?” Hutch said. “That’s a question, not an answer.” “It’ll have to do.” “Don’t use that snippy tone of voice on me,” his dad said. “I didn’t do anything tonight.” “Who are you, Darryl?” “I’m your father,” Carl Hutchinson said, “the one who’s trying to understand why you’d do something to hurt your team that way.” Hutch didn’t care. It couldn’t be colder than what he’d felt tonight at practice, what he was still feeling now, even on a hot Florida night. Hutch hadn’t said this to Cody. He’d thought about saying it to his dad just now in the living room, before he lost his nerve. But how could anything be colder than what Darryl Williams had done tonight? Holding that ball on purpose. Hutch knew he couldn’t prove it. He just knew. Darryl had wanted him to get run over.

Always when Hutch had imagined himself out here, playing for the real Cardinals or Marlins or even the Yankees, he imagined himself at shortstop. That’s what he was, after all. A shortstop. Tonight, and tomorrow night, and all weekend, he would be a second baseman. Hutch knew as soon as he stepped out of the dugout on the first-base side, got on the grass and stared out at the Budweiser scoreboard and the huge Bank of America video board in left center, that playing second base here would do just fine for now. There was still plenty of daylight left when they took the field after Orlando finished their practice. But the lights were on anyway, just so players on both teams could get used to them, according to Mr. Cullen. Good thing, Hutch thought when he looked around. These lights weren’t the ones they’d played under at Santaluces, as good as those were for town fields. These were spotlight-bright. They were big-time. And somehow, playing on this field under the lights made everything feel even more big-time. But then Hutch and Cody had been feeling pretty big about themselves from the moment they got out of the bus in front of the main entrance and walked across the little patch of green grass cut into the shape of a diamond, walked across that and between the two tall palm trees that felt like goalposts and underneath the huge white lettering that read ROGER DEAN STADIUM. living room was still on, tuned to the Marlins station, and that his father’s beer can was still on the table next to the couch. But his dad wasn’t there. Hutch went outside, saw that his car wasn’t there, either. At least tonight, Hutch thought, I know where he went. He was wrong. I’ve got him entered at Wetherby on Wednesday in a novice handicap chase and he could start off there. He improved with every run last season, and he is stronger this season. If he doesn’t quite go on over fences but he finishes in the first four the Pertemps qualifier then we have the option of doing that at Cheltenham in March. I think he is good enough to run at Cheltenham.” a little too full of himself ? He acts like he’s better than everybody else.” “Only because he is better than everybody else.” Now he grinned. “And I don’t think he goes around big-timing anybody. He’s just cool is all.” They were sitting on the steps in front of Hutch’s house in East Boynton, finishing the milk shakes they’d stopped for on the way home from the game. Cody’s dad, who worked for the phone company, had dropped them at the Dairy Queen on Seacrest and told them they could walk the rest of the way if they promised to go straight to Hutch’s, which they had. Hutch and his mom and dad lived here on Gateway, in a house faded to the color of lemon-lime Gatorade that his parents talked about painting every year and yet never did. Cody’s house was right around the corner on Seacrest, not even a five-minute walk away. His family had moved down to Palm Beach County from Pensacola when Cody was five, and he and Hutch had been more like brothers than friends ever since. They didn’t just have a lot in common, they pretty much had everything in common, starting with baseball. They didn’t go through life worrying about how neither one of their families had a lot of money. Or that they lived in the neighborhood that they did. Or that Cody’s house—a shade of pink that Cody liked to say even flamingos would find gross—was an even uglier color than Hutch’s. As long as they had each other, and a game to play, they thought things were pretty solid. Now they had more games to play. First the regionals. If they got through that, they played for the state championship

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That was your way of trying to help me? Do you have any idea how weak that is?” “Don’t talk to me that way,” his dad said, getting hot himself now. “Sorry if I don’t know how to talk to you, Dad, but let’s face it, it’s not like I’ve had a lot of practice.” It was on now between them, so on, no stopping it. This probably wasn’t the heart-to-heart, the father-son talk, his dad had planned. But this was the one they were having now, standing out here on the golf course in the night. Hutch said, “Are you trying to tell me you hardly ever coached me because you didn’t want me to care too much? How about giving me a vote on that? How about asking me what I thought? All the times I wanted to play ball with you so much and I couldn’t, and it was like somebody punched me right in the gut . . .” He stopped because he was afraid if he didn’t, he might start crying. “Don’t,” his dad said. “Don’t what?” Hutch said. “Tell you the truth? You know what I think the truth really is, Dad? That you don’t want me to care so much about baseball because you don’t think I’m good enough. Not as good as you were when you were my age.” On the empty golf course, wherever they were on the No. 1 hole, Hutch’s words came out so loud, it was like they were booming out of a PA system at the ballpark. “That’s not what I mean.” “You never wanted to help me before,” Hutch said. “So don’t start helping me now.”

Carl Hutchinson had worked with Hutch at the very beginning on baseball, the first year his son had been old enoughIt was not based on a genuine pre-estimate of the losses that a delay might cause. There were no calculations or financial breakdowns in negotiations but rather this figure was lifted from a Spanish Contract.

Hutch and Darryl weren’t looking at him, they were still looking at each other, still trying to stare each other down. Playground stuff to the end. “I didn’t do anything,” Darryl said. “Right,” Hutch said. “Am . . . I . . . understood?” Mr. Cullen said, spitting out the words one at a time. Reluctantly, both Hutch and Darryl nodded. It was then that Mr. Cullen had turned to Hutch and said, “What were you possibly thinking?” And Hutch Hutchinson, who had just shown he didn’t have the best judgment in the world, but who still prided himself on telling the truth, told the truth now. “I wasn’t thinking.” Mr. Cullen shook his head, exasperated, took off his Cardinals cap the way he would sometimes after they got a bad call, and ran his hand through what hair he had left. It was then that his coach hit Hutch a lot harder than Hutch had hit Darryl. “You’re out of the game tomorrow night,” he said. “I love most everything about you, Hutch. Love your game, love your passion for the game, love your heart. But I wouldn’t let another player on this team get away with what you just did, and I’m not gonna let you get away with it, even if it costs you—and us—our season. Now is that understood?” “Yes, sir,” Hutch said. They had all stood there for what felt like an hour to Hutch, Mr. Cullen done now, nobody on the team saying anything, until Hutch’s dad had said, “Let’s go.” Run Free was established in 2017 to provide safe and secure dog walking fields where you can take your best friend to run free off the lead. Our exclusive enclosed dog parks have 6ft high fences, which are also dug into the ground to prevent even the greatest escape artists!There’s nothing wrong with team spirit,” she said, still smiling at him. “Now I want both of you team members to head up.” Hutch got up and hugged his mom, and as he did she said, “I’m proud of you.” “What about Dad?” he said. “He was, too,” she said. “But you know your father. He has a hard time expressing himself sometimes.” Hutch thought: Sometimes? At least his dad had showed up. He had cared enough tonight to do that. In a lot of ways, it was like baseball, if you really thought about it. You took what they gave you. The court’s findings are highly fact-specific in this case. However, it is interesting to see that Salter QC has upheld the sums provided for in the LDs clause, in spite of their labelling as “penalties” and his consideration of what constitutes a penalty is a helpful nod in the right direction for Employers. The court’s finding that the LDs clause survives contract termination and continues to apply, meaning LDs accrue, could be considered somewhat unorthodox and might be the subject of a future challenge. White’s primary goal is ensuring the club are a stable presence at the heart of the town. “When I drive through Dorking now, I see dads with their kids in the shirts. It’s become a real hub of the community.” Behind him, a soccer school for local kids makes full use of the artificial pitch. When comparing the sums of the LDs across 2 of the contracts, Salter QC stated that “ the difference between the output of the two plants was dealt with by relating the damages figure per day to the MWp of each of the plants”. This suggests the sums due were based on the projected peak generation of the photovoltaic installations in the solar plants. The reference to MWps installed was underlying across all the EPC contracts. The LDs clauses in the EPC contracts were not penalties. The court found this clause survived the termination of the Contract, confirming Hall v Van der Heiden (No 2) [ii].