by Mike Lupica
Jack had once been a pitcher himself, back when he was at Orville High. It turned out he knew what he was talking about, because Gabe popped right back up, waved off his coach and Cal, cleaned off the front of his pants, and then used his spikes to smooth out the area where he wanted to land in front of the mound.
When he got back to work, he struck out the batter on his next three pitches, then proceeded to strike out the next two batters after him to end the inning.
“Knee looks strong enough to me,” her dad said.
“Not as strong as his arm,” Alex remarked.
“Looks like the old Gabe is back.”
“Or the new and improved Gabe . . .”
Before the game, Gabe assumed the most he might pitch today was three innings. It wasn’t ideal baseball weather, it was his first start of the season, and he didn’t expect to throw more than forty pitches. But Alex was keeping count and knew it was still low after Tariq dropped a ball in centerfield that allowed the Bears to score two runs in the bottom of the second inning.
It was still 2–2 in the fourth when Gabe led off with a single and then, showing no fear about his knee, stole second base, sliding in there hard. Perry struck out after that. So did Liam Goldstein, their second baseman.
But then Cal singled sharply to left field, and Alex knew that with two outs, Gabe would try to go all the way and score the go-ahead run. She forgot about the blanket and stood up as Gabe rounded third, watching the Bears left fielder charge the ball and pick it up cleanly and come up throwing.
Then her eyes moved back to Gabe, closing in on home base, running as fast as if he were on a football field.
Good as new.
The play was right in front of her. She could see Gabe and caught sight of the ball, bouncing about twenty feet in front of the Seneca catcher but right on line.
Clearly it was going to be a close play at the plate.
The Seneca catcher readied himself to take the throw.
“He’s going to slide right into him,” Alex whispered.
She wasn’t talking to her dad, just herself. The throw had been wide when Gabe had stolen second, so there was no one on the base when he went sliding in there.
This was different.
And this was Gabe, going into his slide as the catcher reached up to glove the ball.
His bad knee hit the ground first, in what appeared to Alex like a perfect slide. Dirt sprayed everywhere as the catcher tried to block the plate with one of his knees and simultaneously put a sweep tag on Gabe.
The tag was late.
The home plate umpire signaled that Gabe was safe.
As he did, Gabe rolled over onto his back, but only for an instant.
Alex watched then as he sprung to his feet, a huge smile spread across his face.
He turned toward the stands and pointed at her.
She smiled and pointed back.
It was 3–2, Owls.
Gabe got to stay out there and pitch the bottom of the fourth, got three more outs before his coach brought in the Owls’ relief pitcher, another football teammate, Jake Caldwell. He pitched as well as Gabe did, all the way until the final out of the game.
Owls 3, Bears 2.
Final.
Gabe was the winning pitcher. Jake got the save. When it was over, after the two teams met in the middle of the diamond to shake hands, Gabe walked back over to Alex and her dad, who’d made their way down through the bleachers.
She gave him one more high five.
“Tell the truth,” Gabe said. “I scared you with that slide into home.”
“Who, me?” Alex said, trying to sound innocent. “Not even a little bit.”
Gabe gave her a little shove. “That run won us the game,” he said.
“Whatever it takes,” Alex said.
“I got my game,” Gabe said. “Now it’s your turn.”
43
It was just Alex and her dad for dinner on Friday night after they got home from Seneca.
Just the two of them, like most nights.
Except tonight wasn’t most nights.
When they sat down, Alex had just gotten off the phone with Lindsey, who’d spoken to Coach Cross just a few minutes earlier.
“Lindsey doesn’t think we’re going to make it to twenty-five thousand,” Alex said.
Even now, the number sounded odd to her. She’d never really thought about a sum of money that large in her life.
“She may think that,” Jack said. “But she’s got no way of knowing it.”
“She’s the one who called Coach, who’s got all the numbers, at least so far,” Alex said.
“No way Coach Cross would have said that to Lindsey.”
“She didn’t,” Alex said. “Lindsey sort of came to that conclusion on her own.”
He grinned. “I’m glad you and Lindsey are getting along now,” he said. “But that girl can be a little over the top.”
“She thinks we’re basically going to have to sell out everything tomorrow to get anywhere close,” Alex said. “Shirts, hats, snacks, beverages, everything.”
They were having turkey burgers tonight, a dish her dad had been perfecting all winter. He said they were healthier than beef burgers, which was fine with Alex because they tasted even better. For dessert, they’d stopped on the way home to pick up an apple pie at Babinksy’s, their local bakery famous for their pies.
“Let me ask you a question,” Jack said. “Is there anything else you could have done? And when I say ‘you,’ I mean all of you girls.”
Alex shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Nobody on our team could have worked any harder. Even Rashida’s still killing it on social media after coming down with strep.”
“Kind of knew the answer before I asked,” he said. “My point being, I know you all did your best.”
“With the number of players and opinions on our team,” Alex said, “it could have turned into a disaster. But everybody came together.”
“You worked hard, you acted as a team, and you had a ton of fun along the way,” he said. “That’s some season you’ve had right there.”
“Had?” Alex said.
“Slow down,” he said. “I’m not saying this thing is over. I’m just trying to tell you that whatever happens tomorrow, you’ve had yourself a time. And I don’t think any of you would have missed this ride for anything. Am I right?”
“You’re always right.”
He snickered. “Hardly.”
“I just don’t want it to end, Dad.”
“What do we always say? Control what you can control,” he said. “In other words, go out there tomorrow and have a blast knowing you’re playing in the most famous soccer match to happen in Orville, Pennsylvania.”
Alex nodded, taking a bite of her turkey burger.
“And think about this,” he added. “The day is almost here, and not once have we discussed winning or losing against the boys.”
Alex leaned forward. “Can I make a confession?”
“The floor is yours.”
“I sure am thinking about it!” she said.
“You wouldn’t be Alexandra Carlisle if you weren’t,” he said. “And I don’t say it as often as I should, but I’m proud of you, kiddo.”
“Dad,” Alex teased, “you tell me practically every day.”
“Well, that’s still not often enough,” he said. “And today I’m even prouder than usual. Because these girls were the ones who lined up against you last fall, and now here you are a few months later lining up with them, leading the charge.”
“It wasn’t just me.”
“I know that,” he said. “But whether it’s about playing quarterback for the football team or trying to save the girls’ soccer season, you set your mind on a goal and never let anything stop you.”
> “It worked out well for football,” Alex said. “But the jury’s still out on soccer . . .”
“If the worst happens and you don’t end up raising enough money,” he said, “then you might as well go out there and win the sucker and soak up all the glory.”
“You really think we have a chance?” she said.
“It’s like the great basketball coach Jim Valvano said the day before North Carolina State played in the championship game. People kept telling him they didn’t have a chance, and Jimmy V. said, ‘There’s only two teams left. I gotta have some kind of chance.’ And you know how that game turned out . . .”
She did know. North Carolina State won the game on a basket right before the buzzer.
Alex sighed now, releasing more air than she was taking in. “You never told me seventh grade was going to be this complicated,” she said.
“If I did,” he said, “I would have had to preface it with a spoiler alert.”
They ate their slices of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Once they’d finished, Alex’s dad told her he’d handle the cleanup so Alex could have some alone time.
“Am I that obvious?” she asked.
“Just to a veteran observer like myself,” he said, winking at his only daughter. “Sometimes seventh graders aren’t nearly as complicated as they think they are.”
She went up to her room and took a very hot shower. The chill from sitting through Gabe’s baseball game hadn’t totally worn off. But she was so happy for Gabe. On their way home, her dad had told her it was another game that might not have happened without her influence.
“He’s Gabe,” Alex had said. “He would have found his way there on his own.”
Her dad had peered at her through the rearview mirror. “But it pays to have friends who care about you.”
Alex flopped onto her bed, cuddling up with Simba, her lucky charm, and tried to read the new book assigned to her English class called Hoot by Carl Hiaasen.
As much as she’d been enjoying the book so far, she couldn’t wrap her head around the words tonight. They blurred on the page whenever she tried to concentrate, and her brain couldn’t focus on stringing the sentences together.
She slid off her bed, walked over to her dresser, and smiled at what was sitting on top.
The custom T-shirt and hat her mom had bought her for The Game, plus a copy of the program they’d worked on together.
She flipped open to the first page of the program and noticed something she hadn’t before.
A note addressed to her.
It was from her mom.
Alex could tell who wrote it just by the “doctor scrawl” handwriting that even on Liza’s best day was barely legible.
But it was legible enough for her daughter.
Us girls are allowed to have it all.
Love,
Mom
44
Coach Cross had a pretty cool opening line for them when the team gathered in the gym together an hour before The Game.
“For the next couple of hours,” she said, “you’re not salespeople, or editors, or social media managers. You’re soccer players.”
“ ‘Curadh’ is a word they use for a group like this back home,” Roisin said.
She looked around at her teammates’ blank faces.
“Warriors,” she explained.
The weather forecasters were right. It was a perfect outdoor day. For soccer or just about anything. But it was inside where the day was about to get even better.
Coach walked them over to two huge boxes set underneath one of the baskets and showed them their new uniforms.
They even had their names on the backs to go with the numbers.
“These,” she said, “are a gift from me and my husband to all of you. You’ve never asked for anything throughout this entire process. And whatever happens today, you deserve these.”
They were white with blue and red trim, modeled after the ones the US women’s national team had worn when they won their last World Cup.
As the girls tore through the boxes, finding their jerseys, Coach said to Alex, “Be a shame to only wear them once, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Totally,” Alex said.
* * *
• • •
The stands were already full by the time they got outside to warm up, everybody feeling fresh in their new jerseys.
Alex noticed Jabril near the gate, selling tickets as fans came pouring in. Sophie was working the concession stand with some of the cheerleaders, handing out hot dogs, lemonades, and sodas. Some of the soccer moms, all wearing The Game T-shirts, walked up and down the stands, selling game-day merchandise and passing out programs.
Alex took in the whole scene. It was like something out of an episode of Friday Night Lights. Fans crowding the bleachers, foam fingers waving in the air, the smell of popcorn wafting over the field.
The girls marveled at the spectacle, almost unbelieving that everyone was there to witness them play. To witness Orville history being made.
Somebody had set up signs on either side of the field, ones the girls hadn’t arranged. A bunch of local businesses. Sam’s and Bostwick’s Ice Cream and the Candy Kitchen Deli and Old Town Bagels. All wanting to show their last-minute support of The Game. Alex wondered when those deals had been arranged, but there wasn’t any time to concern herself with that now.
The Orville YMCA had the biggest signs of the lot, set up behind both goals.
They read this way, in huge letters:
GO TEAM(S).
There was no designated home side or visitors’ side in the bleachers. This was an all-Orville crowd today, whether they were rooting for the boys or girls or had just come to see a good game.
Despite what Coach had said about only needing to make $5,000 today to reach their goal, Alex found herself sneaking looks at the concessions booth and the table where Gabe and his mom were selling gear, just to see what the lines looked like.
First we’re going to have a final score on the field, she thought. Then the final tally when The Game is over.
At one point, Roisin nudged her in the side. “Quit lookin’ over there and get yer focus back here.”
“Roger that,” Alex said.
Coach gathered them around her on the sideline at five minutes to one.
“I’m going to tell you something that coaches have said to underdog teams for a long time,” she said. “Maybe the boys would beat us nine games out of ten. But we’re not playing them ten times. We’re playing them once. Just once. All we have to do is beat them today.”
Alex thought to herself: We can say the score doesn’t matter, but we’d only be fooling ourselves. In sports, everything changes when you’re keeping score for real.
“I don’t want you to dwell on our scrimmage against them all those weeks ago,” Coach continued. “But I do want you to remember how it ended. Because that, girls, is who we are.”
She put her hand out. They crowded close to her and put their hands in on top of hers.
As far as who would be starting, Coach Cross assured them they’d all get their minutes. But for today she was going with Annie, Lindsey, Roisin, and Alex up front.
“My fab front four,” she said.
Alex wore No. 13, Alex Morgan’s number on the national team and in the Olympics. Alex Carlisle hadn’t asked for the number, because she hadn’t known they were getting uniforms. Coach had come up with the idea herself.
“I gave you that number for a reason,” she said to Alex. “Now get out there and play like her.”
Alex ran out onto the field with her teammates and took midfield.
Then she took it upon herself before the teams lined up to go over and shake Chase’s hand.
“Glad you could make it,” Alex said.
“You know something?” C
hase said. “So am I.”
“May the best team win,” Alex said. “That’s a thing people say, right?”
Before Chase turned away, he said, “We already know who the best team is.”
It was classic Chase Gwinn, but the way he said it was friendlier. More in the spirit of a good rivalry. Alex caught herself smiling as she backed up into position.
Both teams were tight at the start. For the boys, it may have been because they didn’t dominate the first few minutes like they had during the scrimmage. The high school scoreboard towered over the field, showing four minutes in when Chase missed a wide-open shot, even with Carly out of position, blasting one wide off the far post.
Then, about a minute later, Alex blew her own chance to get the girls on the scoreboard first, despite a very fancy pass from Roisin. She had room in the near corner, plenty of room, because the boys’ keeper, Danny Stroud, had been playing Roisin to shoot. But Alex took too much time, Danny got back into the play, and when she finally did shoot the ball, he got a hand on it and deflected it over the crossbar.
Still 0–0.
They would hear it from the crowd every time someone on either team made a nice play on offense or defense. Or when the keepers made a good save.
Despite Afafa’s scoring skills, Coach had put her in as a defender today, and she was proving herself to be just as strong in that position, working together with Maria and Carly to protect the goal.
At one point Alex thought, This has to be the biggest crowd to ever watch a soccer game in Orville.
It was an amazing game so far. After all the trash talk leading up to today, there was hardly any of that now. They were all too busy trying to win a game.
The boys scored first.
It was partially Alex’s fault. Not because of the way the play ended, but the way it began. And the way it began was Chase taking the ball away from her without much difficulty.
Alex had just seen what she thought was an opening for herself down the right side, with both Roisin and Annie running down the middle of the field, slightly ahead of her. But then Alex made the one mistake she’d been telling herself all week she couldn’t make in this game: