Johan came out to see if I was okay. I sent him back, and we faced the next batter. I struck him out on three pitches.
We couldn’t do anything in the bottom of the eighth and ended up losing 4–3. I stopped our line to shake hands when I found the kid that hit it out on me.
“Hey, great job. I noticed the adjustment you made at the plate to give yourself a chance,” I said.
“Believe it or not, that was my first home run. I hope I don’t face anyone that throws as hard as you do the rest of the tournament.”
“Do me a favor: win this, so I can at least say we lost to the best.”
“Thanks. We’ll see what we can do,” he said, and then we continued shaking hands.
After the game, the whole team signed autographs. The batboys handed out stacks of baseball cards. When we were done, we wandered over to the locker room. Moose had a plaque that he held up.
“In my twenty-seven years of coaching at Lincoln, I’ve only won eight of these. This proclaims this team as Regional Champions. Next year I want to win State,” he said, to our vocal approval.
“I also want to congratulate three players. Jim Ball, Johan Bauer, and David Dawson were named to the All-Conference team.”
That caused more whoops of approval.
“Finally, I just got word that we have an All-State Player in our presence. David is the first player at Lincoln Hight to be All-State in both football and baseball in the same year in our state,” Moose said with a big smile.
I had absolutely no idea that I even had a chance at All-State. Moose showed me my final stats. I’d hit for a .435 average, an on-base percentage of .558, and a slugging percentage of .741. That was accompanied with 17 home runs. I’d only struck out 8 times and had 9 stolen bases.
Moose and Coach Haskins both offered to work with me until I left for my movie to help me get ready for Under-18 USA Baseball tryouts. I really appreciated their offer.
◊◊◊
When I got home, Caryn was there, along with Mom, Dad, and Fritz. They were ambushing me with a conference call with Frank, Ms. Dixon, and Tom. In a way, I was glad for the ambush because I hadn’t spent any time worrying about it before it happened.
“David,” Ms. Dixon started, “we’ve all been through every video and audio recording we have from yesterday, and we walked through it with Fritz and with your parents. We have some ideas, and a couple of ways we can prepare, but a lot of it depends on the strategy we go with.
“Tom and Frank have different ideas on how we set ourselves up to handle this situation. I have my own thoughts, but I want them to present theirs first,” she said.
I sat back with Mom and Dad. We listened as first Tom, then Frank outlined their approaches.
Tom essentially wanted us to sit on the information and let them publish, then take them to court and surprise them with our own recordings. He wanted an airtight judgment against them.
Frank was more concerned with the PR aspects, and with the impact to my image and reputation. He recommended releasing everything right away. Frank wanted to get the media on board with our message, which was that unscrupulous independent journalists were manipulating the facts so they could get a big payday. He wanted to be sure they didn’t close ranks and try to protect these women as members of the press.
Then Ms. Dixon chimed in.
“David, I want to preface this with a little more information. I’ve done some digging and had a comprehensive background check done on the two women involved. The videographer who called herself ‘Bridget Anderson’ is, in reality, Hillary Stamford. She has been very active in the radical wings of the feminist movement for several years. More important, though, is that she has a criminal record. That may account for her using a different name. Specifically, she’s been arrested for two criminal assaults and has one conviction as a result of a plea bargain. She’s currently on probation for one of them. Her latest stunt, if we can turn it into a criminal action, would violate the terms of that probation.
“Stamford also has two restraining orders against her. One of those is on behalf of a rather engaging couple who were targeted because of the wife’s outspoken belief in a strong family structure. I have arranged to get copies of Stamford’s criminal records, as well as her mug shots.
There was the sound of some papers rustling over the phone, and Ms. Dixon cleared her throat.
“I believe our strategy should be based on our overall long-term objective to maintain your good reputation. There will be negative consequences if they misrepresent you or try to manipulate a situation to portray you in a bad light. I can’t see where legal action, or the threat of same, even comes into play. You’re certainly not going to get money out of an independent video journalist. Almost all of them operate on shoestring budgets.
“Our best guess is that they will portray you as someone who denigrates women’s rights and the feminist movement. They’ll want to portray you as abusive to females.
“What I suggest it that we prepare for some contingency plans and have them ready for when they release the video. When Frank is called for comment, we’ll find out for which particular issue the comment is requested. We’ll then reply with a clip showing the question she asked and the answer you actually gave. In addition, we’ll send them the video and audio recording of the women’s conversation by their car. That will clearly show malicious intent to defraud. And next, we’ll send them information on the videographer’s arrest record and mug shot.
“At the same time, they’ll be politely informed that they now know the information in the video is false. Deliberately publishing it with that knowledge would be libel on their part, even if David is deemed a ‘public figure.’ And we’ll politely let them know that we will go after them if our hand is forced,” Ms. Dixon outlined.
Frank piped up at this point.
“David, if you’re okay with the approach Ms. Dixon sketched out, leave it to us to polish it up. We’ll turn the message into ‘See what some unscrupulous independents will do’ and try to get the media on our side. I’m a little leery of threatening lawsuits, and the media tend to circle the wagons to protect their own. But I have some ideas for a few carrots we can offer to get our story out there fairly. Let Ms. Dixon and me work on this. It’s what you pay us for, and we won’t let you down.”
“Give us a second,” I said, then hit the mute button and turned to Mom, Dad, and Caryn.
“I agree with Ms. Dixon about the priorities, and I agree with the strategy. I’m a bit miffed at Frank for not doing some background on these two to begin with, but now’s not the time to say it. He’s got to realize how I feel about this, and I expect he’ll bust his butt to make this turn out right. Are we agreed?” Dad asked.
Mom and I both nodded. I unmuted the speakerphone.
“Ms. Dixon, Frank, go ahead with your planning on this and work together to fine-tune everything and to be prepared to respond quickly to whatever comes up. We agree with the objectives and with the basic strategy. It’s going to be up to you to make it work, and I’m counting on you,” I said to get this moving forward.
“Frank, because the PR concerns are the biggest ones, you have the lead. But we need you and Ms. Dixon to be working closely together on this to craft the best responses possible. If you can’t agree on something, let me know, but please try to work through disagreements or to find a way around them,” Dad added.
Mom piped up, startling me.
“David’s got a lot on his plate and doesn’t need this distraction. Keep me in the loop on what your plans are, and on what’s happening as it happens.”
She turned and saw Dad and my raised eyebrows. In the past, she’d allowed Dad to take the lead for business-like stuff.
“What?” she asked. “You always call me ‘the mama bear protecting her cubs.’ This time I get to act the part.”