Perfect Game

by Matt Christopher

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  The Little League® Pledge

  I trust in God

  I love my country

  And will respect its laws

  I will play fair

  And strive to win

  But win or lose

  I will always do my best

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  Liam McGrath, twelve-year-old catcher for the Ravenna All-Stars, had a lot to say to Phillip DiMaggio, the team’s top pitcher, but not a lot of time to say it. The first game of the Southern California South Sub-Divisional Tournament was scheduled to begin soon. So he got right to the point.

  “True or false: You look at Carter as your rival. So when you found out he and I talk all the time, you didn’t like it. That’s why you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder these last few days.”

  Carter Jones was Liam’s cousin. Closer than some brothers, they have shared a love for baseball since the time they could hold bats. Like Phillip, Carter was a talented pitcher. Up until last year, Liam had been his catcher. Then the McGraths moved from Pennsylvania to California. Even though the cousins no longer saw each other regularly, they still talked, texted, and video-chatted all the time.

  Phillip crossed his arms over his chest. “True or false,” he mimicked. “You guys talked about me.”

  Liam jabbed the toe of his cleat into the dirt and nodded.

  Phillip’s piercing black eyes narrowed. “Then the answer to your question is ‘true.’ I don’t like you talking to Carter, and I really don’t like you talking about me behind my back.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Liam said. “And I admit some of the stuff I said wasn’t very nice. But that was back when I was still bumming out about… this.”

  He touched his chest with his index finger, then touched his nose and pointed at Phillip.

  “There it is again!” Rodney Driscoll, right fielder for Ravenna, said as he trotted over to them, a perplexed look on his chocolate-brown face. Trailing behind him was his brother, Sean, and another boy named Owen Berg.

  Liam’s lips tightened a bit when he saw Owen. Owen had started out as Phillip’s catcher in the postseason. Then an emergency appendectomy sidelined him. Even though he couldn’t play, he still wore his cobalt-blue-and-white Ravenna team jersey. Today, he’d be sitting in the dugout with his teammates.

  Liam was pretty sure Owen resented him for taking his place at catcher. He didn’t really blame him, but he could have done without the cold looks the boy gave him.

  Liam turned his attention to Rodney. “There what is again?”

  “This.” Rodney imitated Liam’s chest-nose-point gesture. “I’ve seen both you and Phillip do it. What the heck does it mean?”

  “Yeah, I want to know, too,” said Sean. Unlike the other boys, Sean wasn’t wearing a Ravenna uniform. He hadn’t been selected for the All-Star team, nor had he expected to be. He was at every game, though, cheering for the players from the bleachers. “Is that move like a secret signal?”

  In a way, Sean was right. The gesture was a signal of sorts, and one only Liam, Phillip, and Carter knew about.

  Or so Liam thought until he heard Owen laugh.

  “Seriously?” Owen said. “You guys don’t know the story behind that? Well, I’ll tell it.”

  Phillip suddenly looked uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. “Yo, IceBerg, I don’t think—”

  Owen waved him off and addressed the Driscoll brothers. “So you know Liam’s and Phillip’s teams played against each other in the U.S. Championship at the Little League Baseball World Series last August. But I bet you didn’t know that two nights before that game, Liam played a prank on Phillip.”

  “You did?” Sean raised an eyebrow at Liam. “What’d you do?”

  “I pretended to see a stain on his shirt. When I pointed it out”—Liam tapped Sean’s chest to demon strate—“Phillip looked down and I did this.” He flicked Sean’s nose with his finger. “Then I pointed at him and said, ‘Made you look!’ ”

  Sean laughed. “That’s classic!”

  “What’s classic,” Owen cut in impatiently, “is how Phillip got back at him. Bottom of the sixth, Mid-Atlantic is down by one with two outs.” He thumped Phillip on the back. “DiMadge here is on the mound for West. Liam comes to the plate. He looks the first pitch into the catcher’s glove and fouls the second. The third comes in. He takes a monster cut—and misses completely! He swings so hard that he falls flat on his face!”

  Liam flushed to the roots of his brown hair. That strikeout was, hands down, the most humiliating moment of his life.

  “Yeah, yeah, we all know about that,” Rodney said. “But what does it have to do with that nose gesture?”

  “Just this. After Liam strikes out, DiMadge meets him at the plate and does the nose-bop to him. But get this”—Owen started laughing—“instead of saying ‘Made you look,’ he says, ‘Made you whiff!’ ”

  The Driscoll brothers met this statement with dead silence, and for good reason. Liam’s nose-bop was a harmless prank. But to mock someone whose strikeout had just ended his team’s chances of playing in the title game of the Little League Baseball World Series? Liam could tell that that didn’t sit right with Rodney or Sean.

  What didn’t sit right with Liam was the knowledge that Phillip had told Owen about the incident. He gave the pitcher a hard stare. “Guess I’m not the only one talking behind people’s backs.” He lifted his chin defiantly, waiting for Phillip to defend himself.

  But to his surprise, when Phillip spoke, his voice was full of shame. “Yeah, you’re right. And I was wrong, about a lot of stuff.” He met Liam’s stare. “Taunting you after your strikeout was a lousy thing to do. Bragging about it was even lousier. And intimidating you during the regular season by reminding you of it”—he repeated the nose-bop gesture—“was probably the lousiest of all. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.”

  Liam was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded, but happy. His embarrassment and resentment evaporated; hope bloomed in their place. Hope that he and Phillip might get back on track as pitcher and catcher. Hope that if they did, Ravenna would win the SoCal South Tournament, and continue on through the Western Regionals, and then to the greatest Little League event of all: the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. And he hoped that if they made it that far, they would go all the way to the title game and come back to California as champions.

  Feeling as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders, he punched Phillip lightly on the arm. “Like you could ever intimidate me.”

  Phillip’s mouth twitched into a half smile. “You saying I didn’t?”

  “Okay, maybe once or twice,” Liam conceded with a laugh. “But that’s in the past now, like everything else that’s gone down between us. Agreed?”

  Phillip’s half smile turned into a full-blown grin. “Agreed!”

  Rodney stepped between them, wrapped an arm around each boy’s neck, and pulled their heads together. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s play ball!”

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Carter Jones opened a drawer in the hotel dresser, took out his T-shirts, and shoved them into his duffel bag. Shorts, swimsuits, and socks followed. He’d just finished packing whe
n someone knocked on his door. He opened it to find his friend and Forest Park teammate Ash LaBrie on the other side.

  “Ready to get going?” Ash asked, sticking his foot in the door to hold it ajar.

  “Almost. I just need to do one last thing.” Carter took out his cell phone and sat down on the hotel bed.

  “Who are you calling?”

  Carter looked at him. “Who do you think?”

  Ash groaned. “Seriously? Why bother? He didn’t want to talk to you. What makes you think he’ll talk to you today?”

  Carter kept scrolling through his list of contacts. When he reached the one marked LIAM, he hit the call button.

  For the last few days, Carter, Ash, and their parents had been staying in a beautiful hotel with an enormous indoor water park. Now they were packing up to head home before going to the Pennsylvania State Little League Tournament. Forest Park was one of eight teams participating.

  Carter couldn’t wait to get going, although he’d had a great time at the hotel—until the other night, that is. That’s when he’d received an e-mail from his cousin Melanie, Liam’s sixteen-year-old sister. Attached to the e-mail was a video she had made of clips of Phillip DiMaggio. Melanie was making a documentary of Ravenna’s postseason run for a school project, so Carter wasn’t surprised she had footage of Phillip. What did surprise him was what the footage revealed.

  Ash had spotted it first. “You see that?” he exclaimed while watching the video for the third time. “He’s wiping his face on his shoulder.”

  Carter didn’t understand why Ash was so excited until Ash pointed out that Phillip wiped his face before throwing a changeup. Not just now and then, but every time. Anyone who knew what to look for would know what pitch Phillip intended to throw.

  Ash was convinced that that knowledge could help Forest Park beat Ravenna if the two teams ever met. “Imagine what our batters could do if they knew what pitch was coming!”

  Carter’s instinct was to tell Liam immediately. But he didn’t. For one thing, although it was eight thirty in Pennsylvania, it was only five thirty in the morning California time—too early for Liam to be awake. For another, a very small part of him liked the idea of having an advantage over Phillip.

  Carter and Phillip had a long and rocky history that had started two summers before during Little League Baseball Camp. Carter had mistaken Phillip DiMaggio for a descendant of the late, great Yankee Joe DiMaggio. Starstruck, he had asked Phillip to sign his camp jersey. By the time he remembered that Joltin’ Joe had no direct descendants, it was too late. Phillip had scrawled DiMaggio’s Number One Fan on the shoulder in permanent ink. Even worse, he had started calling Carter Number One Fan, much to his friends’ amusement—and Carter’s embarrassment.

  Despite this and the rivalry between their teams at the Little League Baseball World Series the next year, Carter’s conscience soon sent the pleasure in having the upper hand over Phillip packing. He called Liam as soon as he could. When he’d tried to explain what he and Ash had discovered, however, Liam cut him off.

  Carter had been confused at first. But now he suspected Liam had refused to talk to him because Ash had been in on the conversation.

  Liam didn’t like Ash. Carter felt bad about that, although he understood the reasons. After Liam moved, Ash had taken over his spot at catcher. Ash had also moved into Liam’s former house, played Little League with many of Liam’s former teammates, and hung out with Liam’s old hometown friends. Add it all up, and Carter guessed he’d feel the same way about Ash if their situations were reversed.

  Which, in a way, they were. After all, Liam was now catching for Phillip DiMaggio. Still…

  “I don’t think it’s fair to keep what we know about Phillip from Liam,” Carter informed Ash while he waited for Liam to answer.

  Ash stepped into the hotel hallway. “And I think you’re making a huge mistake.” The door closed after him.

  A second later, Carter’s call was answered, but not by Liam. “The person you are trying to reach is unavailable,” a recorded voice informed him.

  Carter left a brief three-word message: “Call me, doofus.”

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Liam and Phillip began warming up with some easy throws. Coach Driscoll, Ravenna’s manager and Sean and Rodney’s father, appeared outside the bull pen a few minutes later.

  “I saw you boys talking earlier,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping them on the corner of his jersey. “Everything okay?”

  Coach Driscoll sounded casual, but Liam wasn’t fooled. He knew the manager was checking on more than their pitching and catching mechanics; well aware of their past, Coach Driscoll was also checking that they were getting along.

  “Everything is great,” Liam assured him. Phillip echoed the sentiment.

  Coach Driscoll nodded with satisfaction. “I’m glad,” he said, “for a lot of reasons. Carry on.”

  The first game of the Southern California South Sub-Divisionals was set to start. The tournament consisted of two pools, SoCal South and SoCal North, each with five teams. It was a double-elimination format, meaning if a team lost twice, it was out. At the end of pool play, the top SoCal South team would play the top SoCal North team in a best-of-three series. The winner would be the Southern California champion and advance to the Western Regional Tournament.

  Before the game, the managers from Ravenna and Wheaton had tossed a coin to determine which would be the home team. Wheaton won. So when the game began, its players jogged out onto the field.

  In the dugout behind third base, Mr. Madding, Ravenna’s assistant coach, barked out the batting order. “Blackburn! DiMaggio! Finch!”

  Shortstop Dominic Blackburn was already wearing a protective helmet over his hair. Now he selected a bat and headed toward the plate.

  “Watch your step, Dom!” Rodney yelled to his teammate. Laughter rippled through the players on the bench.

  Dom, like many ballplayers, was a fervent believer in the power of superstitious rituals. Before every game, he ate the same “lucky” snack—apple slices with peanut butter—and listened to the same “lucky” song. He believed that it was bad luck to step on the foul line when heading toward the batter’s box. When playing defense, he tried to throw the “whammy” on the other team’s batters by touching the Little League patch on his left sleeve before every pitch.

  Grinning, Dom hopped nimbly over the chalk foul line, sending a new wave of laughter down the bench.

  “You believe in superstitions like that?” Liam asked Rodney.

  Rodney puffed out his chest. “The only thing I believe in is being awesome,” he said with mock bravado, then added, “although I do wear the same underwear every game.”

  Christopher Frost wrinkled his face in disgust. “Tell me you change them between games when we play a doubleheader. Please!”

  “If it makes you feel better, then yes,” Rodney said solemnly, “I absolutely change them between games.”

  Chris peered at him through his glasses and then shifted a few inches away from the right fielder, making his teammates laugh again.

  Crack! The laughter turned to cheers as Dom walloped the ball for a single. Phillip followed that hit with an attempted bunt. He missed for strike one. Coach Driscoll signaled for him to swing away. Phillip did and connected for a weak grounder. The Wheaton pitcher fielded the ball cleanly and underhanded it to first base. Phillip was out—and so was Dom when the ball sailed past him to the player covering second. Matt Finch ended Ravenna’s chances of getting on the board that inning by popping out to center field.

  Liam stood up to put on his catcher’s gear. Rodney helped him with the chest protector. “So do you have any rituals or superstitious stuff?” the outfielder asked.

  Liam thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Sort of. When I lived in Pennsylvania, Carter and I would fist-bump three times for luck.” He smiled. “Actually, we still do that when we video-chat. It’s kind of a special thing between the two of u
s.”

  He turned to grab his mitt and caught Phillip staring at him. “Everything okay?” Liam asked.

  “Um, yeah,” the pitcher replied. “It’s just, I remember you—”

  “Let’s go, boys,” Coach Driscoll called. “The umpire’s waiting.”

  Whatever Phillip was about to say was left in the dugout as he hurried onto the field.

  Liam suited up his catcher’s gear, trundled out to home plate, and assumed his crouch. His heart hammered in his chest but not with nerves. He was excited, ready, and raring to go.

  Bat in hand, Wheaton’s leadoff hitter trotted out of the first-base dugout and stepped into the batter’s box.

  “Play ball!” the umpire called.

  Here we go, Liam thought. He flashed the signal for a fastball, high and outside. Phillip gave a curt nod and then went into his windup. His pitch was powerful and thrown to the exact spot Liam had signaled for. The batter swung and missed.

  The umpire raised his arm and showed a clenched fist to indicate a strike. Phillip threw two more pitches. The umpire repeated his strike motion twice more.

  “One up, one down, two outs to go,” Liam said to himself as the Wheaton batter returned to the dugout amid a smattering of encouraging applause from his teammates.

  The second hitter watched the first pitch sail into Liam’s mitt. He lined the next between first and second. The ball struck the base path dirt before bouncing into the outfield. Rodney was already racing in. But as he bent down to scoop the ball into his glove, he tripped—and flipped over in a somersault! Somehow he landed on his feet, but the unexpected forward roll had left him off balance. The runner reached first safe and sound.

  One sacrifice bunt later, that same runner was at second. He didn’t reach home, however. The fourth batter in Wheaton’s order popped out to end the inning.

  Rodney was up first for Ravenna. “Time to be awesome,” Liam called to his friend.

  Rodney responded with a sizzling liner to the left of the mound. Wheaton’s pitcher made a valiant attempt to nab the ball in the air but missed. The ball landed between short and second. The Wheaton shortstop snared it as Rodney raced to first.