A/N: This is a one-shot to celebrate the return of baseball, even in the altered form that COVID has brought us. In fact, I'm thinking about adding baseball one-shots to several of my stories here, as add-ons to the end of them, a little ode to America's favorite pastime. In the meantime, this is set about 5 years after the end of Pyrite. Enjoy.

Elena Rizzoli loved late summer in Boston, when little league was long over and preparations for fall ball were beginning. She especially loved late summer at Langone Park, right on the water - the sea breeze rang bells on the docked boats just across the walkway, just past center field, and it made the heat of the sun bearable against Elena's back.

Late summer was for the last few days before a new school year, the last few weeks before she competed again, the last few languid moments with her parents before life whisked them all away into brutal busy-ness again. Now that the orange-purple of the evening sky melded with the bright stadium lights, Elena's step got some pep, her feet got some juice - she always thrived here, under the fluorescents, cleats crunching in the now-uneven dirt.

She pumped her fist in her glove once, then twice, loving the sound of knuckles against leather. She peered in at home plate, body bent at the waist, waited for the ball to be batted her way. She blinked quickly, rolled her eyes once to reset her vision, and waited for the hollow ping of aluminum on the ball's white cover.

One-one thousand neck roll.

Two-one thousand neck roll.

Three-one thousand neck-

The batter swung and the ball came bounding through the infield dirt. It took a sharp, weird, hop, but Elena was ready: so ready that when the ball bounced right when it should have bounced left, she snickered to herself, turned the glove on her left hand over her torso, and watched the ball slide right into its pocket. She looked like the Jordan logo, but on the ground - legs spread wide, back to the batter's box, left arm long in front of her to scoop the ball about two feet to her side. It was easy, she thought, it must have looked dope. She crossed her body back around, leapt off the dirt between first and second, and then fired a laser to the imaginary first baseman - the Jordan logo in the air now, where it belonged.

It was perfect.

"No!" was the admonition from the right side of the plate, and Elena's deflation was instantaneous. "Absolutely not, Elena Giuliana." Maura Rizzoli dropped her bat and trotted out to her daughter's place at second. At 47, she looked older, a few lines around her eyes and at her mouth, but still devastatingly elegant - honey hair pulled back into a ponytail, lip gloss still perfect through a long day at work, lithe body outlined by black yoga pants and a black New Balance running hoodie.

"No, what, Mommy?" Elena sighed, head back so that her eyes touched the sky, her larynx bobbing up and down in a genetic mimicry of Jane. Maura tried not to smile at her annoyance, all gangly limbs and exquisite musculature at twelve years old. Elena stood almost as tall as her, but somehow, there was still a little deference and fear in the way she addressed Maura.

"If Mamma were here, what would she say?" Maura answered by way of asking, hands on hips. Her stare seemed severe, but light danced around the green in her eyes.

"Mamma's not here," Elena shot back. She toed the dirt at her feet, spikes of her cleat sending clay behind her.

"No. She got stuck at work," Maura said, "but if she can, she's going to try to make it before we finish. She's sorry."

"I don't mind," Elena said softly, dropping her arms and swinging her glove at her side, "I like when you work me out. You're usually less of a hardass. Usually."

"Language," Maura replied, "and I am working you out the exact same way she would. Who do you think taught me? You did not execute that play properly."

"It was flawless!" Elena shouted. Her curly black ponytail swished on her back through the opening of her Hill House LL snapback.

"It was reckless and that is not how you practice a grounder in the hole," Maura shook her head. Elena inherited her eye for elegance, and her feel for it, the way she could curate plays to look major league in execution. But, this made her reckless, and caused careless errors to take the place of routine outs on the diamond. "To the bucket," Maura pointed to the 5 gallon bucket of fresh baseballs near the first base dugout, already walking towards it.

"Really?!" Elena griped, sounding suspiciously like a teenager. She watched in disbelief as her mother waved her forward. "Mom, c'mon. I made the play!"

"You got lucky. Feet set…"

"Feet set, eyes wet, look the ball into the glove, yeah yeah," Elena finished Jane's mantra for Maura. "But she's not here."

"If she were, you'd be doing the same thing," Maura reasoned. "Do you want to be as good as her?"

Elena smirked in a way that had been passed down through Rizzoli generations. "I wanna be better," she said quietly, with an unruly amount of confidence.

She looked and talked so much like Jane that Maura shivered with delight. Maura delighted in the notion that this Rizzoli heir, Jane's descendant, came from her body. She squatted on her knees next to the bucket, still limber and strong, imbued with a little vitality at her previous train of thought. "Then on your knees," she commanded Elena, pointing to the grass across from her about ten feet away, "she would have said that you did not take that play seriously."

"She would've said I nonchalanted it," grumbled Elena, but she took her place anyway.

Maura curled her left eyebrow up, as if considering. "That's not a word, but you're right," she said, and grabbed about five baseballs from the bucket.

"All words are made up," said Elena, now squatting, the balls of her feet set. She popped her clear retainers off her teeth and then back on in habit, tongue quick and measured.

Maura wondered when her daughter became a linguist. They grow up so fast. "Glove in front of you, and open, Elena." She took one ball, and bounced it forcefully in the grass to her daughter. Elena played the hop perfectly, and as she should have - feet set, eyes looking the ball into the glove, which stayed between her legs, webbing facing Maura.

"I know how to do this," said Elena as she threw the ball aside and waited for the others. Maura continued to toss, and they fell into a vigorous rhythm.

"Then you should have done it," Maura quipped. "Out there is where it matters most," she nodded her head towards the diamond still under the bright lights.

"Why are you so hung up on this?" Elena wanted it to sound as if she were complaining, but she fell into the drill easily enough. She couldn't be too mad at her mother for working her hand-eye coordination.

"Do you know how many times I have had to do this drill? How many times I've been in your shoes? I didn't get to start for the homicide softball team just because I was sleeping with the captain," Maura began.

"Mom, gross," Elena made a gagging sound and blushed before her mother could continue.

"I got the starting position because the captain worked me into the ground," Maura said quietly, seriously. "And that's just a work league. You want your talent to take you places? Then you need to, as your Mamma might say, carve it with routine."

"I know," Elena acquiesced as she continued to field balls thrown her way. "Did you like baseball? You know, before all that?"

Maura thought for a moment, but didn't stop their workout. "Before your mother?"

"Yeah, before the work league."

"Not really. I didn't know much about it. But it was a way for the two of us to bond. I guess what matters is that I love it now, right?"

Elena chuckled. "Yeah, I don't know what you'd do if you lived with the both of us and hated baseball."

"You have to remember that you are just the latest in a long line of fanatics," Maura winked, "your Mamma and her brothers were obsessed long before I ever met them, long before you were ever a thought in my mind. I don't think I ever really had a choice."

Elena's preteen heart squeezed at the statement. She loved to think about her Ma, Mom, and uncles huddled around their living room, screaming and sighing and truly relishing the agony and ecstasy of the Sox. She had had no hope but to fit right in. And, she didn't know much about Maura's past, but she knew enough that for the Rizzolis to include her in that agony and ecstasy was a big deal for Maura. Elena was a Rizzoli by blood, she plugged into it all naturally - but her mother was a Rizzoli by marriage, and she plugged in, too. Elena's respect for Jane, Frankie, and Tommy grew as she thought about how much they loved her mother. Her love for them grew.

"Uh oh, Ballgame," as if on cue, a husky voice paired with the stomp of boot heels rang in Elena's ear. The girl said nothing but the grin she sported threatened to split her face. "Either you nonchalanted a play or it went right through the wickets," Jane Rizzoli finished as she leaned up against the short fence and twirled her car keys around her finger.

Elena sent a look Maura's way as if to say I told you so.

"That would be the former," said Maura, throwing one last ball and then standing, wiping her knees. She loved this part of the day: the first time she saw Jane and Elena together in the same place. Everyday, Elena resembled her mother more and more. Jane continued to lean forward, in a navy suit and black t-shirt, RayBan aviators still over her eyes from driving against the setting sun. There were gray streaks, thin but noticeable to a trained eye, emanating from the hair near her temples, but other than that, she remained unchanged from the time of Elena's early childhood. Still wild, dangerous.

Elena was beginning to grow into a danger of her own. She was awkward, but tall, destined to be at least as tall as Jane. She had the same curls as her mother, though she preferred them tamed by a ponytail or a braid, especially during sports. The only difference was Elena's green eyes, from her donor, but of course more from Maura, a little bit of Isles grace to temper the Rizzoli hurricane she was becoming.

Maura leaned her back against the fence in the opposite pose to Jane, legs out in front of her, posture lax. They found one another's lips easily in the contrast, kissed with the practiced sexuality of years behind it. "She turned her back to the plate."

"Yikes, kid," Jane responded.

"And made the play at least a foot and a half to her left," Maura said, in the appearance of scandal.

Jane shook her head theatrically. It quickened Elena's nervous heartbeat. The girl stood up.

"Then, she left the ground to complete her throw," Maura finished, and Jane winced sharply.

"Feet set, Elena, feet set!" Jane whined. She huffed loudly. She and Maura shared a wicked grin.

"Hey!" Elena jumped towards them, ready to defend herself, but Maura spoke again.

"It was a thing of beauty, Jane," she said with a twinkle in her eye as she looked at her daughter.

"I'll bet," Jane dropped the act and looked at Elena, too, who had reddened to the point of silence. She scratched her left calf with her right foot.

"The core strength, the pure athletic ability required to make an accurate throw from the air while the ball is moving away from you is…" paused Maura, looking for the words the way she would look for them with a masterpiece painting or an evocative opera, "wondrous. Enviable."

"Jeter-esque," said Jane, always able to find the perfect way to encapsulate sport. And Elena knew she meant it if she was evoking the perennial captain of the hated Yankees. Jane elbowed Maura's arm and pointed to their kid. "We made that," she wagged her eyebrows proudly.

"We did," agreed Maura, finally smiling warmly at Elena.

"It was perfect, Ma," the girl said as she approached them. "It felt amazing."

"I'm sure it did," said Jane, hopping over the fence and grabbing Elena's bat that had been laying next to the bucket of balls, "one time, when I played softball at BCC, I got turned around by a fly ball in the sun, but found it just as it was about to sail over the fence. I caught it - robbed this poor girl blind. Crowd loved it."

"Did it feel good?" Elena asked, stars in her eyes just like any time Jane talked about her own performance on the field.

"Sure," Jane shrugged, taking a ball in her hand and throwing it up into the air before catching it again, "but coach saw my flub and made me take fly balls from the machine the next day for like four hours."

"O…k…" Elena said, now confused.

"My point is, your Mom's good at a lot of things," Jane said, pointing with a thumb to Maura behind her. "She's good at science, she's good at yoga, she's good at back rubs, she's good at slapping the ball to all fields, she's good at being your Mom. The best, actually."

At this, Maura put her hand to her heart in a silent aww and fiddled with the pendant on a gold chain there. Elena smiled at her as if to agree with Jane, watched the glint of the diamonds of Maura's wedding ring harmonize with the softness of the metal at her neck - the perfect picture of her mother's refined nature.

It was always the foil to Jane's brusque and roguish femininity. Jane's rough and tumble took over as she spoke again. She marched toward home plate with the bat over her shoulder, the bucket of balls in her other hand. "But she's a soft coach. I'm gonna have you fielding grounders till morning for that stunt you pulled. Now get back out there so I can humble you."

"Ugh," Elena groaned noisily, but the pep in her step was back as she jogged over to second with her glove tucked to her body and her eyes on the bag.

Hardass.