Oh, man. This was fantastic, which I always think your stories are and rudely (and shyly!) never get around to commenting to tell you so. The pacing is great, I like the theme of realisation and epiphany weaving through and the characterisation was very... emotionally truthful. That is to say, it always feels like that your characters are acting and reacting in a realistic way and you show this rather than spell it out. It makes your Rodney and John very real to me and I really like it. A lot.

Um, I'm not sure if that makes any sense outside my head. :) (4. almost made me cry until I remembered that there is no crying in baseball.) I'll stop rambling now, thank you so much for sharing this!