by Mo'ne Davis
The state tournament was held in this town called Skippack. Because all the teams were from Pennsylvania, everyone had a lot of family and friends there to cheer them on. This was a double-elimination tournament—you lose twice and you’re out.
When we played the team from Warwick, Eli got hit in the head while he was batting and was dizzy and had to come out of the game. Zion told him he was going to hit a home run for him, and he hit a homer to center field with the bases loaded. We won.
We played this team called Collier, from Pittsburgh, three times. The first time, we won 13–10.
The second time we played it was the first game of the championship round. Since we had beaten them earlier, they would have to beat us twice to win the tournament.
The coach’s son was pitching that game. He is a lefty—left-handed pitchers are harder to hit off because you don’t face them that often. My first time up, he started by throwing a strike. The second pitch, I laid into it and hit a home run. Little did I know, it would be my last home run of the season.
Without Scott and Jahli, we lost 7–2. We were really upset.
Fortunately, we won our other games. Coming out of the winner’s bracket, we had to play against Collier again for the championship.
“It was the night before the championship game, and we think, ‘We’d have a much better chance of winning with Scott and Jahli,’” says Squirt.
So Coach Steve made a phone call to the camp. Jahli’s dad, Jared’s dad—he is also one of our coaches—and Squirt were driving up to get Scott and Jahli. The game was at eight the next morning.
So the dads drove up to camp and then back through the night, while Scott and Jahli slept. They got to the field right before the game started.
The Collier team protested the game because they said that Scott and Jahli weren’t on our roster.
I was on the mound for the Dragons. It was do-or-die for both teams.
Scott returned to the top of the batting order.
“I got plunked on the first pitch of the game,” says Scott. “It was a hard slider, and it hit me in the butt.” He took his base.
I was back to batting number two. I hit the ball up the middle, but it bounced off the rubber and the shortstop turned it into a double play.
We were down 4–1 in the fourth inning, but then Jared hit a home run to make it 4–2. In the sixth inning, there were two runners on and two outs. We were on the brink of elimination, but then Zion hit a three-run homer to give us the lead, 5–4.
The game turned into a nail-biter—and I would know, since I was pitching, and biting my nails is the main thing I do when I’m nervous. Jahli’s hands were sweating, which is what happens when he’s nervous. Scott was really quiet.
The crowd was getting pretty large, and a lot of the kids from other teams had started cheering for us.
Going into the last inning, we were behind. But we loaded the bases, again. And Scott got a hit with the bases loaded, and we went up by two.
But Collier had one more at bat.
In the bottom of the inning, Jahli really came through defensively, even though he had sweaty hands.
The first out was a routine slow ground ball to him. He threw the runner out at first. The second out was a hard grounder, hit to Jahli also. He handled it. Two outs! The next batter hit a short fly ball.
“It blew over my head into shallow right field,” says Jahli. “I ran out for it, and caught it. After I caught it, I just kind of held on to it afterward, knowing that we were going to regionals.”
The final score was 6–4.
Everyone contributed to our win that day. Jared went three for three that game, with a single, a double, and a homer. I had an RBI single with the bases loaded. And Zion hit the game-winning home run.
After the game, Scott and Jahli went back up to New Hampshire and Squirt drove me up to the Pocono Mountains, where I had signed up for a basketball camp. The camp was supposed to be two weeks long, but because we were headed to the regional championship, I could only stay for four days. The camp was a competitive camp, and I had already won some awards and trophies. They weren’t happy when Squirt came and took me out. I felt really bad when I left.
So the Taney Dragons traveled to Bristol, Connecticut, to play in the Little League Baseball Mid-Atlantic Regional Tournament. Bristol is about twenty miles southwest of the state capital, Hartford. On top of being a place where, back in the olden days, they used to make a lot of clocks, Bristol is the home of ESPN.
We knew that if we won the regionals, we wouldn’t be able to go home. When the tournament is over, the winning team leaves straight from there and goes to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, home of the Little League Baseball World Series.
At the regionals, it was the first time there was a lot of security. There were guards around the outside of the compound, and people couldn’t get past a certain point, not even our parents. You had to go through a wooden gate, and you couldn’t pass unless you had a badge. Only the players and coaches got badges.
Inside, there were teams from Maryland; Delaware; Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; New Jersey; and New York. The New England regionals were being held there at the same time. We played on alternate days. The night we got there, there was a big grand-slam parade and festival down the streets of the city, and we got to meet everybody on the other teams. Scott ended up with this orange ball that turned out to be good luck for us for the rest of the tournament.
The teams stayed in dorms that circled all around the field. The dorms looked like little houses. Each house had the team’s name on it. Inside, when you looked to the right, was the room where the team stayed, in bunk beds. To the left was the coach’s room, which had three beds in it. The Dragons shared a bathroom with another team from DC. This is where being a girl in a sport of almost all boys gets complicated.
“Mo’ne couldn’t stay in the dorms with the boys, so one of us had to stay up there in a hotel with her,” my mom says.
Squirt, who works in construction, had hurt his back and couldn’t work, so he was out on disability. He went to Bristol with me. My mom, she had to work and go to her college classes, so every few days she was traveling back and forth with Qu’ran, Maurice, and Mahogany, and some of my cousins. Her job was really nice to her so she could see me play. And she was packing up our house because our family was going to move to the suburbs. She made it to all the games when I pitched. I could hear her yelling, “Go, Mo!” from the stands.
On the first day of the tournament, the Dragons got a day of rest, while some of the other teams were playing.
“There wasn’t anything to do in Bristol but eat, so on the first day, I watched all the games. And I’m like, ‘Y’all can beat all of these teams,’” Squirt says. “The parents of the Taney kids looked at me like, ‘Whatever, I have to go back to work on Monday.’ I think they thought just getting to the regionals was a big accomplishment for the kids. But they hadn’t seen the Monarch kids play before, so they thought the tournament was going to be so much harder than it was.”
On Saturday, August 2, we played West Salisbury, Maryland. We beat them 11–1. Jared pitched and hit a two-run home run. The umpires called the game after four innings because of the mercy rule—after we got up on them by ten runs.
After the Maryland game, we played Newark National, from Delaware. They pitched Jack Hardcastle, this big kid who is their ace.
That game, I pitched and I played first base. While I was pitching, I was kind of in the zone. I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I got ten strikeouts. I had seen a lot of people swing and miss, so striking kids out, it didn’t really shock me. But I had never gotten that many strikeouts before. We beat Newark National 8–4.
After that, a lot more people started to remember my name.
“That’s when reporters started calling me,” Mom says. “I don’t know how these people got my phone number. I told them, ‘I’m not there, I’m in Philly.’”
“After that first weekend, a lot
of the parents were like, ‘Okay, we’re stuck here,’” says Squirt.
Next up: Colonie, New York. That was a Friday, and it was a pretty crazy game. I played first and third base. We started out winning, but then we started losing. I think it’s because we were in the opposite dugout from what we are usually in. We’re usually in the home dugout one game and then the away dugout the next time. This game that didn’t happen—we were in the away dugout two times in a row. There are a lot of superstitions in baseball, and for us, during the regionals, that was one of them.
We lost the game against New York, 5–3, but the game got a lot of attention. The word was spreading like wildfire that the Taney Dragons had a girl on their team and she was striking boys out.
The next game, we beat Northwest Washington, DC, 7–1.
After that, we went into the tournament bracket, and played New York again. The pressure was on because if we lost again, we would have to go home.
That game was pretty crazy, because we were down by three, and then we caught up. Then the next inning, we went ahead by three runs. Then in the last inning, they hit a home run to put them down by one run. I pitched at the very end of that game. Their number-three hitter was up, and we grounded him out. We won it 6–5.
Since it was so hot that day, after our game was over, I watched the other semifinal game, between Delaware and Toms River, in the rec room of the complex with Zion and Erik. We thought that we were gonna have to play Toms River, New Jersey. It seems like Toms River’s always in the finals.
Toms River has a girl, and she’s fast and can really hit.
“Everyone wanted to see that game, with her and Mo’ne on the field,” my mom says.
I knew that if we played Toms River, I would have to be throwing well, because they can field and hit and pitch. We would have to go out there and bring our A-game. But Toms River would have to make it past Delaware. Delaware had played them earlier in the tournament. It was a good game, even though Delaware lost. But after they lost, I think they realized they could beat them.
At one point in their rematch, Delaware got down 4–0. They brought in their ace, but Toms River was getting hits off of him, too. So it was pretty nerve-racking.
Near the end of the game, I got very superstitious. It seemed like every time I was lying on the floor, Delaware would get an out or score a run, and when I sat up, Toms River would score.
“Just lie down,” Zion and Erik kept telling me. They wanted us to play against Delaware, since we had been hanging out with them a lot.
So I stayed lying down nearly the whole last inning, which was when Toms River brought in their hardest pitcher. Delaware started hitting off him and scored three runs, and they pulled through, and won 4–3.
Now we were gonna play Delaware in the championship, which was pretty exciting for us. The Delaware kids were the defending champs. Five of the kids on their team had gone on to Williamsport the year before. But they didn’t get a lot of hits off of us the first time we played. Coach thought we would be okay as long as we were getting our bats on the ball.
Hitting was starting to be a problem, though. We had gone into a little slump.
The next day, we got a day off, so we practiced like we normally would. When we were hanging out together later on, some of the Delaware kids told us that in their practice, they had been preparing to hit against me.
On Sunday, August 10, at 6:00 p.m., we played against Delaware for the regional championship. The game was going to be nationally televised on ESPN. There were a lot of people in the stands and on the hill behind the stadium, supporting us. They believed we could make it to the Little League World Series.
Coach Alex wanted me to pitch. The pressure was on—a win would take us to the World Series, and help Jack and Jared fulfill their dream, which had now become the dream of everyone on the team.
Before the game, one of our coaches told us, “You gotta come out and score runs, and pile them on, and don’t let them get anything.”
We had to score more than two runs in the first inning, or we’d be off to a bad start. If we start out fast, we’re pretty good, although sometimes we kind of get too upbeat, because we think we’re gonna win.
I was a little bit nervous when the game started. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
The first batter came to the plate. I threw one pitch and he grounded to the shortstop. One out. I got out in front of the second batter, then walked him. Then I struck the third batter out with a curveball. The cleanup hitter hit a grounder to third, forcing the runner out at second. Whew! Made it out of that inning.
“I was at home watching on ESPN,” says Destiny. “I was like ‘Go, Mo! Go, Mo!’”
Our at bat started out great, when Scott laid down a perfect bunt.
I flew out to center, but when Jahli singled through the middle, Scott was able to advance to third base. Jared ripped the first pitch he got all the way to the wall. Scott and Jahli scored, and Jared made it to second with a double.
Next up, Zion. Zion hit a grounder to third. But Zion’s really fast. He beat out the throw. Jared scored.
All told, we scored four runs in the first inning, which we needed. Then we scored two in the next inning, and in the fifth inning, we scored two more. We were hitting well that game.
“And it was like no one could stop Mo’ne,” says Zion. “Her curveball was working.”
“A lot of people who I know from Philly were blowing up my phone—‘I see you on TV, your little sister is pitching,’” says Qu’ran.
I had six strikeouts.
We ended up winning 8–0.
After we won, a lot of reporters wanted to interview us.
“I didn’t know she was famous until she won that game,” says Qayyah. “When she threw that last strike, it was crazy. A lot of reporters were interviewing us. I was tearing up, that’s how excited I was.”
A couple of reporters told me to challenge Clayton Kershaw to a “pitch-off”—whatever that is. Everyone was congratulating us, and people started asking me for my autograph and telling me they would remember my name and look for me in pro baseball.
“I was sitting on my couch and the news came on. There was a huge picture of her on the screen and she was the first story,” says Abby. “That’s how I found out she was going to the Little League World Series.”
At that point, we had been in Bristol for ten straight days.
But after the championship, we took the bus straight to Williamsport, home of the Little League Baseball World Series.
CHAPTER 13
LIVING THE DREAM
ON MONDAY MORNING, AUGUST 11, 2014, THE TANEY DRAGONS boarded a bus to Williamsport for the Little League World Series. Little League was invented in Williamsport, in 1939. Every summer, two million kids play in eighty countries all around the world. And every summer, about seven thousand teams compete to try to get to the Little League World Series. Only sixteen elite US teams make it. The Taney Dragons were now one of those teams. We were the last team to get there, but now we were all experiencing our wildest dream, and we had gotten there together.
I had heard through the grapevine that I wouldn’t be the only girl at the Little League World Series. When our bus first pulled up, the other girl, Emma March, was waiting at the gate.
“Hi, I’m Emma,” she said, and she extended her hand. It turns out Emma was from Canada, and, since we were the only girls, we would be living in the same house. Over the week, we got to know each other. That was kind of cool.
Since the other teams had had to fly in from all over the country, they had gotten there earlier than we did, and they had been watching our game. Everyone was telling us, “Good job! Good job!”
We dropped off our stuff, then went straight to get our ID tags made. You need credentials to get into the complex, which they call the Grove and is kind of like an Olympic Village. No parents or friends or fans are allowed inside. You have to swipe a card and walk through a metal detector to get in and out. We were
told not to check any social media or post pictures on Instagram, because our location would come up. If we wanted to take a picture, we could. But they told us not to post it until after we left. The security was very tight.
Right after we got our IDs, we went to get our uniforms. Since we were now representing the Mid-Atlantic Region, they replaced our navy-and-white Taney uniforms with medium-blue jerseys with burgundy on the shoulders that said Mid-Atlantic Region across the chest in burgundy script. We wore those with long white pants, and burgundy baseball caps with a medium-blue rim. The uniforms were nice, and blue is my favorite color. But the number on my shirt was no longer eleven. Now I was number three.
After that, we got our baseball bags, cleats, helmets, and batting gloves.
We thought that after we were done, there would still be some time to do our summer reading for school. But by the time we finished, it was dark, and everyone was excited, so no one could be quiet. Nobody read anything. Jahli played Nico and Vinz’s song “Am I Wrong?” He played it a little too much in Williamsport.
The next morning, we met with the bat company Easton, to try out new bats, and we got our Oakley sunglasses. After that, we did the ESPN interview that they use to introduce you before each game.
“My name is Mo’ne Davis, and my favorite player is Chase Utley.”
When they tape you, you never know if they’re going to do something funny, like drop a fake spider on you while you’re talking. They tried to drop the spider on me. I saw it when it was falling, so it didn’t really scare me. But they got Zion good. We heard him screaming.
During the series, they showed all the kids who had a reaction to it. One kid from Chicago, he fell off the stool.
Dinner was served every day at four o’clock, which was really early, so sometimes we got hungry later. We didn’t always want to go down to the night games to eat, because the lines were super long. So at night, the coaches would order us pizza and buffalo wings.