by Mike Lupica
“I give up,” Coach said, throwing up his hands. “Sometimes when we have these little debates, it’s like trying to get a hit off you.”
“Grab a bat,” Nick said.
“No thank you.”
* * *
• • •
The Orioles already had two losses. If they wanted to give themselves any shot at making the championship game, they had to beat Nick and the Blazers tonight.
“This is like a playoff game for them,” Diego stated before the Blazers were set to take the field for the top of the first. They were the home team tonight.
“So what?” Ben said. “Every game is like the playoffs for us.”
“The Orioles still have to play like there’s no tomorrow.”
“You always hear that,” Ben said. “But if they lose, does that mean they have to skip Sunday?”
Diego frowned. “Don’t play your mind games with me.”
“Wouldn’t be much of a game,” Ben said.
The three of them sat together on the bench, Ben in the middle. He stretched out his hand, and Nick and Diego put theirs on top. It was one of those small moments that reminded Nick of how big their friendship was. Bigger than the tournament, even bigger than baseball.
It was time to take the mound then. Nick and Diego ran onto the field together, and Ben took his spot behind home. Now all Nick needed to do was find out how much life he had in his fastball tonight.
A lot, as it turned out.
* * *
• • •
He struck out the side in the top of the first, on eleven pitches. Then he struck out the first two batters in the second before the sixth guy in the Orioles’ order, their catcher, managed to bloop a single over Ronnie Lester at second and into short right field on what the announcers call an “excuse-me swing.”
The catcher, Harold Rosario, had been lucky to get a piece of the ball. Nick gave Ben a shrug and a so what? look and struck out the next guy on three pitches. Good morning, good afternoon, good night. This wasn’t just going to be a good night. It was going to be a great one. Seven batters so far, six strikeouts.
Let’s do this.
The Blazers were already ahead, 2–0, because Ben hit a two-runner home in the bottom of the first. The ball had rolled all the way to the infield on the adjoining field closest to River Avenue.
Nick’s mom was here tonight with Amelia. His dad had to work late at the restaurant, which was busiest on Saturday nights. Sometimes, he wouldn’t come home until well after midnight. Marisol was playing the final round of her tournament in New Haven tomorrow, bringing her own kind of heat up there.
Nick was bringing his.
He was throwing his best fastball of the whole tournament. Broadcasters would occasionally talk about pitchers having an extra yard on their fastballs. Nick was experiencing that tonight. Every once in a while, Ben would mix in a changeup, just for the fun of it—to freeze a hitter, or get him swinging wildly before the ball even reached the plate.
But mostly it was the pitch Ben had taken to calling “number one.” Heat and more heat. Nick knew his pitch count was decent, because of all the strikeouts. Maybe this was the night he could talk Coach into letting him finish what he’d started.
After he struck out two more guys in the top of the fourth, Ben mimicked Coach. “We having any fun yet?”
They were ahead 5–0 by then.
“Maybe we should save some of this good stuff for another day,” Ben said.
Nick looked at him as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I never kid about your arm.”
Nick wished Ben didn’t have to be so practical all the time.
“Well, you must be kidding if you think I’m asking out of this game.”
“Nick’s right,” Diego said to Ben. They were sitting on the bench with their water bottles out. “Say you’ve got three hits in a game, with a chance to go four-for-four your last time up. Would you ask Coach to take you out so you could save your swing?”
“Not the same thing,” Ben said.
“But it kind of is,” Diego pressed. “When you’re going good, you wanna keep going. When a shooter gets hot in basketball, he wants to keep shooting.”
Ben was quiet for a moment and then said, “You know what I hate?”
“What?” Diego said.
“When you’re right.”
Diego beamed and high-fived Nick. “Man,” he said, “that has got to sting!”
Before they went back out for the top of the fifth, Coach informed Nick it would be his last inning.
“But I haven’t thrown that many pitches, Coach,” Nick said. “I checked the book.”
“And after you throw a few more, you’re coming out of the game, and we all go home happy,” Coach Viera said. “Except maybe the Orioles.”
“No, think about it, Coach,” Diego said. “Even the Orioles will be happy.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because Nick will be out of the game!”
Diego turned to Ben, put up his hand for a high five. “I’m on a roll,” he said.
By the time Nick was back on the mound, the Blazers’ lead was 7–0.
He struck out the Orioles’ third baseman to start the fifth, making it ten strikeouts for the game. He didn’t typically check the book for his strikeout total, but tonight he had. Ten was the most he’d had the whole tournament. Two batters to go if he wanted to beat that and get to eleven. Two more chances. His pitch count was sixty-eight coming into the inning, well short of eighty.
The next batter was Benny Alvarez, the Orioles’ first baseman. Possibly the biggest kid in the Dream League, Benny was a left-handed hitter with a ton of power who led the league in home runs. Nick thought he had a pretty good shot at MVP.
But Benny hadn’t hit any home runs tonight, because Nick had struck him out twice already.
And it looked as if Nick might do it a third time, getting ahead of him oh-and-two. Ben set up on the inside corner then, since they’d struck out Benny his first two times up with inside fastballs.
Nick took a deep breath. This was the fun part. Trying to finish a hitter off.
He nodded at Ben, went into his motion, and put the ball exactly where he wanted it. Benny took a huge swing, but only managed to tip the ball off the handle, hitting a slow roller up the first baseline.
Very slow.
Head down, Benny busted out of the box, thinking he might get himself an infield hit, at least something to show for his night at the plate.
Nick broke off the mound, knowing he had to book it himself, because Benny was fast.
He could see the play in his head as he closed on the ball. See himself reaching down, barehanding the ball, sidearming it to Darryl in one smooth motion.
All of which he did.
Small problem: Big Benny Alvarez.
As Nick bent down to swipe the ball, Benny sprinted headfirst, trying to leg out a hit.
And went crashing into Nick just as he released the ball, sending him helicoptering through the air.
When Nick came down in the grass between the first baseline and the mound, he landed on his shoulder.
His right shoulder.
His pitching shoulder.
Landed hard.
25
Ben got to Nick first, barely beating Coach Viera.
Rolled over onto his back, Nick lay, knees up, with his feet flat on the turf, cradling his arm. He’d gotten the wind knocked out of him from landing the way he did, unable to break his fall. It was as if he got sucker punched by the ground.
But that wasn’t what had him worried. He knew he would be breathing normally in a minute.
Nick wanted the pain behind his shoulder to go away. It hurt back there, a lot. But he wasn’t going
to admit that out loud right now.
Somehow Diego had made it over from center field already, and was standing over Nick, beside Ben. So were the Blazers’ infielders. The home-plate umpire stood behind Coach Viera, who was kneeling next to Nick.
Nick faked a smile, and in a weak voice said, “I’m okay.”
“Can you sit up?” Coach asked, a hand placed gently on Nick’s shoulder.
“Sure, no probs,” Nick said.
Ben reached down to help, and Nick used his left hand to grab Ben’s, not wanting to cause any further damage to his shoulder.
He didn’t say anything, but Nick could see that Ben had noticed. Ben never missed a thing, at least not where Nick was concerned.
“That’s what I get for trying to learn to fly in the middle of a ball game,” Nick said, trying to do his part to lighten the mood. And the tension.
“It looked to me like you landed pretty good on your right side,” Coach said. Nick sensed a hint of alarm in his voice.
“Felt like I landed on my whole body at once.”
Diego, being Diego, tried to lighten the mood, even though Nick could see the concern on his face.
“Like they say in the Olympics,” he said, “at least you stuck the landing.”
Nick resisted the impulse to rub his shoulder. There was an old expression in baseball about how batters weren’t supposed to rub the spot where they’d just gotten hit by a pitch. The idea was not to let the other guy know it hurt.
Nick wasn’t going to let anybody know, at least not for the time being.
Now up in a sitting position, he could see his mom and Amelia had come down from the bleachers and were standing up against the fence behind first base. They were trying not to interfere in the game, but were listening in to make sure it wasn’t anything serious.
“Your arm okay?” Diego asked.
“Perfect,” Nick said.
Nick insisted he could stand up by himself. Ben picked up his glove and Diego grabbed Nick’s hat, which had gone flying off during the fall. The fans in the bleachers applauded. So did the Blazers and the Orioles.
Nick grabbed his gear from Ben and Diego and started walking in the direction of the mound. Coach caught up with him and gently put a hand on Nick’s arm, wordlessly guiding him in the direction of the Blazers’ bench.
As they got to the baseline, Nick called over to Darryl at first base.
“Did we get the out?”
“Got Benny by a step,” Darryl said.
When Nick was sitting on the bench, Benny came over to him, red in the face.
“Dude,” he said, “I am so sorry.”
Nick put out his fist so Benny could tap it with his own.
“We were both just trying to make a play,” Nick said. “No worries.”
Yeah, right, Nick thought. No worries?
Darryl’s mom, who came to every game, volunteered as an emergency medical technician. She was mostly concerned about Nick’s ribs. But when she pressed down on the area, Nick told her he didn’t feel any pain. Then she asked him, just to be on the safe side, to lift his right arm over his head. When he did, the pain wasn’t as severe as he’d expected.
But the pain was there nonetheless. The best thing would be to start icing it now, but asking for an ice pack would be the same as announcing to everybody that something was wrong. So he would power through until the end of the game, and figure out a way to ice his shoulder when he got home.
One more secret.
* * *
• • •
After Darryl’s mom finished examining him, Nick and Ben sat down together on the end of the bench. Ben had made the last out of the previous inning, which meant he wouldn’t be hitting this time unless the Blazers batted around. So there was no need for him to remove his catcher’s gear.
Staring straight ahead, he said in a soft voice, “How bad?”
“Not as bad as I thought when I landed,” Nick said.
“Nick . . .”
“It hurts behind my shoulder. Like somebody whacked it with a bat.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Get some ice on it when I get home and hope it feels better,” Nick said, as if to say, What else can I do?
“Maybe you need a doctor.”
“Doctor” was like a four-letter word, to be avoided at all costs. He thought of how hard it was to find the right health center when Amelia was sick; he didn’t want to be a burden on his family.
“If I see a doctor, that means I’m really hurt,” Nick said.
“And you can’t be hurt.”
Nick could feel some tears coming, but squeezed them back. No crying in baseball.
“I know,” Nick said.
“This was your best game.”
Nick sighed. “Yeah.”
“This isn’t fair,” Ben said.
“What is anymore?”
* * *
• • •
On the walk home after the Blazers’ 8–2 victory, Nick’s mom kept chattering on about what a fright he’d given her. Nick promised her the next time he tried a belly flop, he’d make sure it was in a swimming pool.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” Graciela García asked, neurotic mother kicking in.
“Sore,” Nick said. “Not hurt. There’s a difference.”
“Sore where?”
“Everywhere!”
He knew he would have to tell Amelia the truth when they got home. He’d need an accomplice to help him with the ice and, of course, to keep their mom from finding out. Nick’s mom had plenty to worry about. He didn’t want to add to the pile.
As soon as they were inside the apartment, Graciela asked if Nick was hungry. She thought food could cure just about anything. But Nick said he wasn’t, and just wanted to relax and listen to the Yankees on the radio.
“Me too,” Amelia said, following Nick to his room.
“Wait, you want to listen to baseball?” Graciela García asked, suspicious.
“What?” Amelia said. “I can’t like baseball?”
Graciela gave her a look. “Well, enjoy,” she said. “I’ll be in my room reading if you need me.”
As soon as they were in Nick’s room, Amelia closed the door and said, “What is it?”
“Was I that obvious?”
“You were even carrying your arm funny on the way home,” she said. “Mom didn’t notice because she was blabbing away like she always does when she’s nervous.”
“I think I did something to my shoulder,” Nick said, finally allowing himself to rub it, “and need to get some ice on it.”
Without another word, Amelia left the room, and came back a couple minutes later with a plastic sandwich bag full of ice.
“Did Mom hear you?” Nick asked.
“I told her I was getting an iced tea.”
Then she asked if she could look at his shoulder. Nick took off his jersey and sat on his bed while Amelia surveyed the damage. “There’s a bruise forming back there, but not a big one.”
Nick pulled his Bronx Bombers T-shirt out of his dresser drawer and put it on, placing the ice bag over his shoulder. Before he could lie down, Amelia asked him to imitate his pitching motion so she could check his range.
Nick couldn’t help it; he laughed at how seriously she was taking all this.
“I know you spend a lot of time with doctors,” he said, “but now you think you are one?”
Nick stood near the head of his bed, next to the Michael Arroyo poster. He stepped toward his sister with his left foot and brought his arm up and forward.
It still hurt.
But didn’t kill.
“So?” Amelia said.
“Not excruciating,” Nick said.
“So now we ice,” she said.
Ice, Nick tho
ught.
Tonight, it was his friend.
26
A few hours later, Nick was jolted awake by the sound of his father’s keys in the front door. Nick still had the ice pack. He got up, muscles screaming, and tiptoed quietly down the hall to the bathroom, where he emptied the bag of ice-turned-water into the sink.
He heard his parents murmuring in Spanish in the kitchen, and could only assume his mom was filling his dad in about Nick’s collision with Big Benny Alvarez.
Nick was shuffling back to his room, when his father intercepted him.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“I thought we had agreed you would avoid contact sports,” he joked.
“Tell that to Benny Alvarez. He contacted me before I contacted the ground.”
“I gotta keep you in one piece so you can make it all the way to the big leagues,” his dad said.
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’m like you. Built to last.”
“You’ll feel better in the morning,” his dad said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. Mercifully, the left one.
Nick got back into bed. His shoulder still ached, but not the way it had on the field. Lying on his left side seemed to help. He thought about sneaking some more ice after his dad went to bed, but decided against it. It wasn’t worth getting caught.
He wedged a pillow next to him so he wouldn’t roll over onto his right side during the night, and let his eyes droop closed.
In the gap between awake and sleep, Nick hit the instant-replay button on tonight’s encounter. The moment he came crashing down on his pitching shoulder, he’d actually thought his season might be over.
For now, though, he was still in the tournament.
Still in the game.
* * *
• • •
The area behind his shoulder was stiff and sore in the morning, but didn’t feel any worse than last night. Or was that just Nick brushing it off, when he might have a serious injury? To check, he stood up carefully and brought his right arm behind him, lifting it over his head and bringing it forward.