Cut

He throws 82 mph from the left side. Every coach in Southern California knows his name. Nobody knows what's happening at home.

Grant Lane is thirteen years old, left-handed, and the best pitcher on the SoCal Raptors travel ball team. A Perfect Game showcase invitation means college scouts will finally see what his radar gun numbers have been promising. But Grant's parents are finalizing an ugly divorce, his Marine-pilot father just received PCS orders to Okinawa, and his mother is disappearing one glass of wine at a time. The $649 showcase fee his dad promised to cover? The check bounced. Now the loudest parent in the bleachers -- the one whose son wants Grant's spotlight -- is the one writing the checks. And a custody evaluator is walking through a house that Grant scrubbed clean at midnight because no thirteen-year-old should have to, but this one does.

Grant has spent his whole life believing that if he performs well enough -- on the mound, at home, in every room -- he can hold everything together. The showcase will prove whether that belief is a lifeline or a lie. Because the kid standing on the rubber with his eyes closed, squeezing the ball until the seams bite into his calluses, is trying to find the pitcher who has no problems. And for the first time, that pitcher might not show up.

Cut is baseball fiction with real mechanics, real travel ball economics, and a protagonist whose biggest opponent isn't across the diamond -- he's sitting across the dinner table.

In Cut, you'll find:
- Authentic travel ball culture from the inside -- $649 showcase fees, parent politics, radar guns behind every backstop, and the invisible cost of a scholarship roster spot
- A first-person voice so sharp and honest it'll make you like sports books even if you can't generally stand them
- A family story where neither parent is the villain and the hardest pitch Grant throws is the one he never sees coming -- choosing which parent to leave behind

If you love Jason Reynolds's Ghost, Mike Lupica's Heat, or Kwame Alexander's The Crossover, you'll love Ty Buckner.