Sliding into Home

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  “You ready?” Leah asked as she tossed the ball back and forth between her hands.

  Joelle got into position. “Yeah.”

  Leah pitched a high fastball and Joelle swung hard.

  Crack! The ball sailed over Mandi’s head, straight toward a girl who was standing near the fence, watching them.

  “Heads up!” Mandi shouted.

  Instead of ducking, the girl reached up and caught the ball with one bare hand.

  Joelle’s mouth dropped open. “That’s two perfect reflex catches for the day so far,” she said to Elizabeth. “Yours and hers.”

  “Weird,” Elizabeth agreed. “But just luck on my part.”

  “Sorry about that!” Mandi called to the girl. She ran toward the fence, holding out her glove for the ball.

  But the girl didn’t throw to Mandi. She stepped forward, brought her right arm back and threw to Leah.

  “Wow,” Elizabeth said in awe as the ball arched over their heads and slammed into Leah’s glove.

  “That girl can really throw, too,” Joelle said.

  “That’s some arm,” Leah called as she took off her glove and massaged her hand.

  “Thanks,” the girl called back. She pushed her short, shaggy blond hair out of her eyes and began to walk away.

  “Hey, wait up!” Joelle shouted, running after the girl. The others were right behind her. “What’s your name?”

  The girl stopped and gave them a wary look.

  “Where did you learn to catch and throw like that?” Leah asked.

  The girl wiped her nose with the sleeve of her faded flannel shirt. “I don’t know. My dad, I guess,” she said, looking toward the road.

  “What’s your name?” Joelle asked again.

  The girl narrowed her eyes. “Who wants to know?”

  Joelle was a little taken back. “Uh, I’m Joelle,” she said. Then she introduced each of her friends.

  “We all like baseball, so we’re just hanging out,” Mandi explained.

  “You could join us if you want,” Elizabeth offered.

  The girl hesitated. “Yeah?” she said. Joelle knew the girl was interested. She could see it in her eyes.

  “We could really use another outfielder,” Mandi said.

  “But you don’t have to stay in the outfield,” Leah added quickly. “We rotate after each play.”

  The girl shrugged. “Okay,” she said.

  They all walked back to the diamond together.

  “So what is your name?” Joelle asked.

  “Tara.”

  “Tara what?” Mandi wanted to know.

  “Just Tara,” the girl said.

  “Well, ‘Just Tara,’” Mandi said, “I’ve got an extra glove in my bag over there.” She pointed at the equipment bag by the fence. “Help yourself.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t need a glove,” Tara said.

  Didn’t need a glove? Joelle frowned. What was she talking about? Everyone needed a glove.

  Mandi jogged over to her bag and dug out the glove. “Here you go,” she said, tossing it to Tara.

  The girl didn’t answer. But she put it on.

  They all took their positions. Elizabeth stepped up to the plate and adjusted her batting helmet. Mandi squatted behind her and held out her glove. Joelle went into her windup and pitched a low fastball.

  Elizabeth swung and missed.

  “Strike one,” Mandi called, throwing the ball back.

  Joelle waited while Elizabeth took a couple of practice swings. Once her friend was back into position, Joelle pitched again. This time she tried a curve ball. But she wasn’t very good at curves yet.

  Crack! Elizabeth hit a line drive right between Joelle and Tara. She dropped the bat and ran for first base.

  Tara retrieved the ball and threw it all the way home. Elizabeth stopped at second base. Then she went to take a turn on the pitcher’s mound and Joelle rotated to the outfield.

  “Do you want to play catcher now?” Mandi asked Tara.

  “Sure.” Tara jogged over to home plate.

  Tara was an okay catcher. But once she got up to bat, she blew everyone away. She could blast the ball even further than Joelle.

  “Wow, you guys,” Leah said finally, glancing at her watch.

  “It’s one o’clock already!”

  “It is?” Elizabeth asked.

  Joelle checked her own watch. “Uh oh. My parents are probably wondering where I am.”

  “Mine too,” Mandi said as she headed in from the pitcher’s mound. “But this was really fun, huh?”

  Joelle helped Mandi pack up her equipment bag. “Yeah, it was. We should do this again next Saturday.”

  “How about before that?” Mandi asked. “Like after school sometime this week?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Can’t. I have softball practice.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot,” Mandi said. She turned to Tara. “You play, too, I bet.”

  Tara shook her head. “My school doesn’t have a softball team.”

  Elizabeth, Mandi, and Leah all looked confused. “Where do you go to school?” Mandi asked.

  “Across town,” Tara said, her eyes lowered.

  What other school was across town? Joelle wondered. Wasn’t there just Hoover and Greendale Academy?

  “You go to Metro?” Elizabeth asked, wide-eyed.

  Mandi and Leah stared at Tara as though she had suddenly grown an extra head.

  “What’s Metro?” Joelle asked.

  “It’s a school for kids who have problems getting along at regular schools,” Tara told her.

  “Oh.” Joelle blinked. She sort of wished she hadn’t asked. “Well, we don’t care where you go. Do we?” She turned to the other girls.

  “No,” Elizabeth said quickly.

  “Of course not.” Mandi smiled a little too big.

  Tara raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you guys want to know what I did to get sent to Metro?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip.

  Mandi and Leah looked away.

  Joelle didn’t want to ruin a good thing here. It was almost as if Tara was challenging them somehow. “You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” she said carefully.

  Tara shrugged. “I didn’t do anything. Things aren’t so great at home, that’s all. I’m not actually from Greendale. I’m from Fairmont. I’m living with a foster family here.”

  “That must be hard,” Elizabeth said gently.

  “No big deal,” Tara said. “My foster family’s okay. But I miss my brother.”

  Joelle nodded. She sure could sympathize with that.

  “Well, I’d better get going now,” Tara said. “Are we doing this again next Saturday or what?”

  “I’m in if the rest of you are,” Mandi said.

  “Me too,” Leah added.

  “Okay,” Joelle agreed. She looked at Elizabeth, who hesitated, then agreed. “It’s settled, then. We’ll all meet here next Saturday, ten o’clock?”

  “Great,” Leah said. “Maybe we could even try to find a few more girls who’d want to play.”

  “Yeah. Like I said before, we’ve already got half a team right here,” Mandi added.

  “A whole team would be even better,” Joelle said.

  “A girls’ baseball team? Right,” Tara said. “And who would we play?”

  “There’s always the Hoover boys’ team,” Mandi said with a grin. “The Hawks, right?” She nudged Joelle.

  Joelle had to smile back. She could just imagine Coach Carlyle’s reaction to that. “Nah,” she said. “Not enough of a challenge for us.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Later that afternoon, Joelle couldn’t stop thinking about a whole team of girl baseball players. Was that really such a crazy idea?

  But like Tara had said, who would they play?

  When the Colorado Silver Bullets was formed, there were no other professional women’s teams. So who did they play? Joelle wondered.

  She went into the den, powered up the comput
er, and logged onto the Internet. The Silver Bullets had to have a web page. Sure enough, they did. Joelle read about the team’s history. It looked like they started out playing against men’s minor-league, semiprofessional, and college teams.

  There were a lot of other interesting baseball links on that site, too, including a page on women’s baseball leagues and another one on girls’ baseball leagues. Joelle could hardly believe her eyes. In Rhode Island there was a whole league just for girls ages five to eighteen. It was called the Pawtucket Slaterettes Girls Baseball League. Joelle soon found there were leagues in Canada, Japan, and Australia, too.

  But definitely not in Greendale.

  Joelle sat back and drummed her fingers on the desk. Well, why not? she thought. If they could form an all-girls’ league in Rhode Island, why couldn’t they form one here?

  Joelle jumped into action. It was such an amazing idea, she had to call Jason. Right that second.

  But as usual, her brother wasn’t home. Joelle was getting used to his annoying answering machine by now.

  She cleared her throat and tried to make her voice sound older. “Hello, I’m with the U.S. Census Bureau,” she said after the beep. “I’m calling to see whether Jason Cunningham is still alive! You’re never there when I call and you never call me back, either!” Then she rushed on, “Hey, there’s a website I want you to check out. It’s www.womenplayingbaseball.com and it’s got a whole bunch of information on baseball leagues for girls. Hey, Jason, do you think I could try to start one here in Greendale? I was—”

  Beeeep!

  The answering machine had cut her short. Joelle glared at the receiver. “Call me!” she shouted into it. She knew Jason wouldn’t hear that part, but it still made her feel better to yell at him.

  Joelle hung up the phone and sighed. She couldn’t just sit around and wait for her brother to call her back. Maybe Mandi knew something about women’s leagues. Her aunt had played in one, right? She pulled the scrap of paper with Mandi’s number from her jeans pocket.

  “Hey, Joelle,” Mandi answered. “I’m really glad you called. Leah and I had fun this morning.”

  “So did I,” Joelle replied. “Listen, I was just on the computer, looking at the Women Playing Baseball website. Did you know that there’s a whole baseball league for girls our age in Rhode Island?”

  “No. Really?”

  “Really. So what would you think about trying to start one around here?”

  There was silence on the other line. “Are you serious?” Mandi asked finally.

  “You said you’d play baseball if you had a chance, right?”

  “Well, yeah. But—”

  “But what? They won’t let girls play on school baseball teams in this town and they put the girls on separate teams in the summer league. So why not start our own league? That way, we can make the rules.”

  “Joelle, we’re kids. None of us has a clue how to do something like that.”

  “So? Maybe we can find out. I can e-mail the Slaterettes president in Rhode Island and see how they got started.”

  It was a long shot, Joelle knew. But no more of a long shot than getting on the Hoover Hawks.

  “Well, okay,” Mandi said slowly. “I guess it’s worth a try.”

  In the background, Joelle heard Mandi’s mom calling her to set the table for supper. Joelle quickly said good-bye to Mandi and started typing her e-mail right away.

  Dear League President, she wrote. She chewed the inside of her cheek, trying to figure out what to say next. It was almost as hard as her letter to the newspaper. But that had worked out okay, right? Short and to the point, Joelle told herself.

  Hi! My name is Joelle Cunningham, and I live in Greendale, Iowa. I want to start a girls’ baseball league, but I don’t know how. How did you get the Slaterettes started? Could my friends and I do something like this by ourselves? We’re thirteen.

  Please e-mail me back.

  Thanks.

  By the next morning, Joelle had received a response.

  Dear Joelle,

  Sure, you can start a baseball league. Ours began about thirty years ago because a nine-year-old girl wanted to play baseball. What you need to do is start talking to people. Get other girls interested. Get their parents interested, too. You’ll need coaches, managers, sponsors, and a place to play. Good luck and let us know what happens!

  Nancy Powell

  “You want to start a whole new baseball league?” Elizabeth stared at Joelle in disbelief.

  It was Sunday afternoon. Elizabeth and her father were cleaning up the lunch dishes while Joelle sat on a bar stool at their kitchen counter.

  “Sure. Why not? If they won’t let girls play on the boys team, why not start a league that’s just for girls?”

  “A baseball league that’s just for girls?” Mr. Shaw turned to face Joelle. He had on gray sweats and a navy T-shirt that said World’s Greatest Dad. “That sounds interesting.”

  Joelle told the Shaws about the Pawtucket Slaterettes Girls Baseball League and the information she’d found on women’s baseball.

  “Hmm.” Mr. Shaw put his towel on the cabinet. “I wonder if there would be interest in a girls’ baseball league here in Greendale.”

  “I bet there would!” Joelle cried. “If it was really an option. The thing is, most girls just play softball. They don’t even think about it. Girls play softball and boys play baseball. But it doesn’t have to be that way!”

  “Joelle’s right.” Mr. Shaw turned to Elizabeth. “I bet you never even considered playing baseball until she moved here, did you, honey?”

  “Nope,” Elizabeth replied. Her back was to them as she wiped the table.

  “But you could.” Mr. Shaw was beginning to sound excited now. “There are probably other girls around here who’d play if they had a chance.” He crossed his arms and thought for a moment. “I wonder what we’d have to do to get started.”

  “We?” Joelle said eagerly. “You mean, you’d help us?”

  “Are you kidding?” Mr. Shaw’s eyes were all lit up like a little kid’s at Christmas. “Baseball has always been my game. In fact, when Elizabeth was five or six, I coached her T-ball team. Right, honey?” He gave his daughter a nudge with his elbow.

  Elizabeth seemed to be wiping the table extra-hard. “Yep,” she mumbled, keeping her head down.

  “You’d definitely need coaches,” Mr. Shaw said. “I could help out there.”

  “Really?” That morning Joelle’s parents had promised to help with the league however they could, but her dad had told her he was too busy right now with his new job to coach.

  “That’d be great, Mr. Shaw!” Joelle said. “I talked to a girls’ league president in Rhode Island and she said we’d need managers and sponsors, too.” Joelle’s dad had said maybe Bear Foods could sponsor her team.

  “You’ve already talked to a girls’ baseball league president?” Mr. Shaw asked. He pulled out the bar stool beside Joelle and sat down.

  “Just by e-mail,” she said.

  Joelle filled him in on the message she’d received from the Slaterettes president. He listened intently to everything she said. Elizabeth went to rinse her sponge in the sink.

  “Do you have any of those e-mail addresses?” Mr. Shaw took a pad of paper and pencil from a kitchen drawer.

  Joelle shook her head. “Not on me. But I printed them out at home. And I know you can get them from the Women Playing Baseball website.”

  Mr. Shaw wrote the information down. “Have you talked to your P.E. teacher about any of this?”

  “Well, no,” Joelle answered. “Actually, I just came up with the idea yesterday.” She glanced at Elizabeth. “Besides, I think Ms. Fenner’s kind of busy with softball. I doubt she’d have time to help with a baseball league, too.”

  “You never know,” Mr. Shaw said. “Maybe you should talk to her. Even if she can’t help, she might know other people who can. Don’t you think so, Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth turned off the water
faucet. “What?” she asked. “Oh. Ms. Fenner? Yeah, she’d probably help out.”

  Joelle frowned. Her friend was acting kind of weird. What was wrong?

  “Well, the first order of business is to find out how many girls we might be talking about here,” Mr. Shaw said.

  “We could set up some sort of meeting for anyone who’s interested,” Joelle suggested.

  Mr. Shaw nodded. “You’d have to do some advertising for that,” he said.

  Joelle turned to Elizabeth, who seemed to be busily buzzing around the kitchen, putting away stuff in cabinets. “Maybe we could get together with Mandi and Leah and Tara to make some fliers or something,” Joelle said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Elizabeth replied.

  “Well, great. While you girls figure all that out, I think I’ll go do some Web surfing.” Mr. Shaw grabbed his notepad, kissed the top of Elizabeth’s head, and bounded into the den off the kitchen.

  “Wow. Your dad’s really into this, isn’t he?” Joelle said with a smile.

  “Yeah. I guess.” Elizabeth lowered her eyes as she slid onto the stool beside Joelle.

  Joelle stopped smiling. “Elizabeth, what’s wrong? Don’t you think a girls’ league is a good idea?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Sure. But I told you, Joelle, I’m not a baseball player. Not like you and Mandi and the others.”

  “But you can play. I’ve seen you. You’re good.”

  “Not really. But that doesn’t matter. You went and got my dad all excited about the idea, so now I pretty much have to play, whether I want to or not. I’ll end up making a fool out of myself.”

  “You will not!” Joelle argued. “Besides, I’m sure there’ll be lots of girls who’ve never even played at all. That’s the point. To give everyone a chance to play.”

  Elizabeth picked up a pencil and doodled in the margins of the newspaper that was lying on the counter.

  “You’d like baseball if you gave it a chance, Elizabeth. I know you would,” Joelle insisted.

  “Maybe,” Elizabeth said.

  “Didn’t you have fun at the park yesterday?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”