by Cecilia Tan
“Tyler Hammond,” she said, taking his hands which still held the ring, “yes. The streak that matters most to me is a lot longer than a baseball season, or a baseball career.”
He squeezed her hand, then slipped the ring onto her finger and stood up to hug her, then pulled her over the wall as he swung her around. “She said yes! She said yes!” he shouted as he spun in a circle, Casey’s legs flying out as he did so.
When he set her on her feet, the entire crowd was standing and applauding, and then he kissed her, just a quick one this time, and then held up her hand like a prize fighter’s. “Wave to the crowd!” he urged her. She did as she made her way back to the stands and Travis helped her back over the wall into the aisle, then hugged her himself.
She pulled the microphone off and handed it to the poor PA who was looking nervous. “Here you go,” she said. “Sorry, I think your station got enough of me for one day.” He fled back up the aisle just as Missy was coming to hug her, too, and Lila Gutierrez, and even Shayna and Michaela.
It was a few minutes before she got back into her actual seat, by which time Tyler had retired both Franco and the batter after him, and the Robins’ first batter had already gotten a hit. Missy made her hold up the ring so it sparkled in the stadium lights. “Damn, that’s pretty,” she said.
“It is,” Casey agreed.
“Now, here, your purse has been vibrating like crazy.” Missy handed her the purse and Casey dug her phone out.
She had voice mail and text messages from her mother, her brother, her boss, Kim, Ken, and a half-dozen other numbers she didn’t even recognize. She turned the phone off. “I’ll call them back later. Right now, there’s four innings to go.”
“Damn straight,” Missy said, crossing her ankles and settling back in her seat.
“Campbell’s going to hit a home run,” Casey said.
“You think?”
“Yeah. So when should we have the wedding?”
“If you want soon, your best bet is in January, or maybe the first week of February. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training usually on February fourteenth.”
“Valentine’s Day?”
“Yep. Go figure.” Missy clapped her hands. “Here comes Campbell now. So Tyler must have totally put Franco up to that, don’t you think?”
Casey looked around the ballpark, so brightly lit and full of happy people. It had reminded her of the circus that first day and it still did. “He must have. And the ESPN guys. And Mad Dog knew, obviously.”
“Oh yeah, I think he actually had the ring on him and slipped it to Tyler. I’ll have to ask him later.”
“Yeah. And Travis totally knew, too. He was grinning like a fool when he saw me, I just didn’t know why at first.” She smiled. “Now Ken is finally out of the doghouse for good. He told me last week he wants to write a book about us, about me and Tyler. He says he’s got a publisher interested, but they really only want it if The Streak breaks the record. But that if he does, and if they win the World Series this year, then they are all over it.”
The crowd gasped as Campbell clobbered a ball but it went foul. “Come on, you big palooka,” Casey said under her breath. “I know Tyler will want Mad Dog to be the best man, but you think Campbell will be a good groomsman?”
Missy thought about it for half a second. “Yes.”
“You’re going to be my maid of honor, right? Or, matron of honor, I guess it would be? God, I don’t know these things,” Casey groaned.
“You betcha,” Missy said with a grin. “Didn’t your parents say they wanted to go to Aruba for Christmas? We could totally do it down there and fly everyone in, you know. White sand, beach wedding. That’s of course if you want to get it done in the off season. There’s always the ballpark wedding, too, you know, where all your teammates hold up bats to make the aisle and you walk from the mound to the plate and get married at home plate.”
Casey thought about that for all of half a second. “Hmm. It has some charm, but Aruba sounds better. Where did you get married?”
“In Montgomery, Alabama, where he was playing minor league ball for almost no money,” Missy said. “Home plate was all we could afford. I’ll show you the pictures some time. It was really nice and charming, but… yeah. Aruba.”
And suddenly there was a loud crack and Casey found herself jumping to her feet along with the rest of the crowd. It meant a two-run homer, a nice three-run lead for Tyler, and a new record nearly guaranteed. But at that moment, all Casey felt was pure excitement and wonder as she watched that tiny ball sail away into the black velvet of the night, pushed higher and higher by fifty thousand cheers.
THE END
Acknowledgments & Notes
Special thanks to Ed Hooper, Matthew B. Tepper, and Michael Cavallo, who helped me research the consecutive win streak records for pitchers. All of the facts about Carl Hubbell and Johnny VanderMeer are real. (The rest of the ballplayers mentioned, well, except for Babe Ruth, Cy Young, and Tommy John, are all inventions of my own.) I don’t know if I’m the first member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to write a baseball romance novel, but I thank the organization profusely for their support.
Thanks to Jean Roberta, Patrick Weekes, and Claudia Mastroianni, who all provided feedback on the first draft.
They say every romance novel has some elements of wish fulfillment, and for me, a huge baseball fan living in Boston, this book has some elements of that, for sure. Putting a National League team here is a pure fantasy of mine, too.
About the Author
Cecilia Tan is the author of several books on baseball as well as numerous works of erotica and romance. She is the perennial editor of the Maple Street Press Yankees Annual and author of The 50 Greatest Yankee Games. Her erotic short stories have been collected in the books Black Feathers, White Flames, and Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords. Her previous romance for Ravenous Romance was entitled Mind Games, and some of her erotic baseball stories have also appeared on the site, Baseball Blues and Soft Hands.
-The End-
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