by Mike Lupica
With every pitch Sarah saw during BP, she went through all of her rituals, pulling at the shoulders of the blue Red Sox T-shirt with the red trim, tapping home plate, all of it.
All Cassie said to her, right before the game started, was “Good luck today.”
“Good luck today,” Sarah said back, and then went and sat at the end of the bench, glove already on her hand, waiting for Mr. Bennett to give them the signal to take the field for the top of the first. It was as if Sarah’s visit the other night hadn’t happened. She didn’t mention it. Neither did Cassie.
“You think Sarah’s gonna be okay today?” Cassie said to her dad.
“We’re about to find out,” he said. “But just so you know? Okay would be perfectly okay with me.”
“Okay, then!” Cassie said, and gave her dad a high five.
She turned then and saw Jack and Teddy and Gus, standing at the fence behind the Red Sox bench, waving her over.
“Well, you know what they say,” Jack said when Cassie got with them. “You’re only as good as your starting pitcher.”
“Yup,” Teddy said, “that’s what they say, isn’t that right, Gus?”
“That’s what they say,” Gus said, grinning at Cassie.
“All of you,” Cassie said, “please shut up.”
Jack put out his hand. Cassie put hers on top of it. Teddy and Gus put theirs on top of hers.
“Your team is the same as our team,” Jack said.
Cassie looked at him, and smiled. “I know that,” she said. “The home team.”
Gus said, “You are aware that you won’t have Jack or me to pass the ball to today, right?”
“I’ll try to manage,” she said.
“How we lookin’ with the new girl?” Gus said.
Cassie told him that it was the same as always. They were about to play the game and find out.
• • •
Cassie knew she was going to be on the same strict pitch count she’d been under last season. Eighty was the magic number. Her dad might let her go a couple of pitches past that, but just a couple and no more. He said that all young pitchers’ arms had to be protected, whether it was a Little League boy throwing overhand or his daughter whipping the ball in underhand.
Chris Bennett had shown Cassie the schedule. Teams in their league were going to play two games a week. The plan was for Cassie to pitch every other game. Brooke was the next best pitcher on their team, so she was going to be the team’s other starter. Allie was going to be their closer. Cassie’s dad had told her that once they got into the season, he wanted to give Sarah a shot too. But that was for later. He said he didn’t want to put too much on her plate too soon.
“It’s not just Sarah,” he’d told Cassie. “My job as a coach is to make sure every player on our team is in her comfort zone.”
Cassie was the one in the zone today, and making the Hollis Hills hitters extremely uncomfortable. She felt that good on the mound, almost as if she’d come from last year’s championship game to this game. By the time she was through the top of the second, she’d struck out five of the first six batters she’d faced. When the Red Sox were all back at the bench after the top of the second, her catcher, Brooke, said, “You know what the sound of the ball in my mitt is? Like my favorite song.”
But the Yankees’ starting pitcher, Sydney Ellis, was already pitching as if she wanted to match Cassie strikeout for strikeout. By the end of the fourth, the game was still 0–0. Each team had just one hit. Cassie got the first for her team with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, a double over first base and down the right-field line with one out. Sarah, who’d struck out her first time up, clearly nervous, came up behind Cassie and hit the ball really well, but the Yankees’ center fielder chased it down about six feet short of the fence. Cassie tagged up and went to second, getting herself into scoring position, but Brooke lined out to left, and the game stayed scoreless.
The only ball hit to Sarah so far had been a single to center by Sydney Ellis. There’d been no fly balls hit her way, no chance for her to show off either her speed or her arm. But Cassie wasn’t really fixed on what Sarah was doing. She was just in the game she was pitching, and the game they were all playing. You could try to practice the way you played as much as you wanted. But you couldn’t fool yourself. Real games were different. They just were. Even on the same field you practiced on, it was as if you were breathing different air. It was, Cassie knew, the rarefied air of competition, of doing something you loved, doing it as well as you could, your best against their best. Didn’t matter whether it was the first game or the last game, especially if you were pitching. It always came down to this:
Here it comes.
See if you can hit it.
The best part for her, once she got through the top of the fifth with another strikeout and a couple of weak ground balls, was that her pitch count was low.
“One more inning,” her dad said after she’d struck out Sydney Ellis to end the Yankees’ fifth. “You’re sitting on seventy pitches, and it’s only our first game.”
Cassie knew better than to debate him. She knew he was right about pitchers’ arms, and knew he was looking out for her.
“A deal is a deal,” she said.
“You’re the one who’s dealing today,” he said.
“All I need now is a run,” Cassie said.
The Red Sox didn’t get it in the bottom of the fifth, because Sydney was still dealing, setting down the Red Sox in order, two strikeouts, a foul pop-up to the first baseman.
Cassie knew she only had ten pitches, maybe a couple more, if she wanted to finish one more half inning. She stepped on it then with her fastball, doing the things the announcers always talked about pitchers doing when she’d watch a game on television: reaching back for a little extra. She struck out the first two batters in the sixth on six pitches, before going to 1–2 on the next girl up, the Yankees’ shortstop. She was sitting on seventy- nine pitches. Before she threw the next pitch, she managed to briefly catch her dad’s eye.
And wink.
Then she blew strike three past the shortstop, whom she’d heard the Yankees call Kendall. Big swing, much bigger miss, at a high fastball. Game still scoreless. Cassie knew she was a shortstop now, and that Allie was coming in to pitch the seventh. Ana Rivera would move from shortstop and replace Allie at second base.
They still needed a run, and almost got it in the bottom of the sixth. Greta singled with two outs. Cassie ripped a single to left behind her. First and second. Sarah was at the plate now, in a hero spot, a chance to knock in what might be the winning run in the first official softball game of her life.
It was also a chance for her to win over some skeptical teammates, show them she belonged and convince them that she did.
Cassie watched from first base as Sarah went through her routine. She didn’t look out at Sydney, still in there for Hollis Hills, until Sarah had gone through all her checks and tugs and little rituals, like she was checking off one box after another in her mind. And today Cassie had noticed she was doing one more thing: once she was in the batter’s box, she gave a quick look up into the bleachers behind the Red Sox bench to where her parents were sitting, and mouthed something. Cassie wasn’t a good enough lip-reader to know what.
Sarah didn’t take any pitches this time, something she had done her first two times up, passing up two right down the middle. Cassie had started to wonder if that was part of her routine too.
Not this time.
This time she swung at the first pitch she saw, and connected. Big-time. When Cassie heard the sound of the ball coming off Sarah’s aluminum bat, saw the flight of it over her head as she was flying toward second base, running all the way with two outs, she thought it looked exactly the same as the home run Sarah had hit to right to win the scrimmage.
From the time Cassie had started playing softball, she’d heard all the jokes about how you always put your worst fielder in right field. Only, there weren’t any worst f
ielders in All-Stars, and certainly not on the Yankees, whose right fielder had already made two dazzling plays, one a diving catch on a ball in front of her, the other on the backhand as she’d run into the gap in right-center to catch up with a ball Brooke had hit.
The catch she made now was better than both of them. The girl—Cassie would find out her name was Marcie Kincaid when she sought her out to congratulate her after the game—somehow caught up with a ball that had been hit directly over her head, a step from the wall. She reached up at the last moment, made another backhand catch. She put out her free hand to stop herself from running into the wall, or maybe through it, turned around, and showed everybody that the ball was still in her glove, while sprinting back toward the infield.
The game was still 0–0.
Sarah had come that close to a home run. Even if it hadn’t been a home run, the Red Sox had come that close to scoring two runs if the ball had just managed to get over Marcie Kincaid’s head. For now Marcie had saved the game for her team.
“Well,” Cassie said to Brooke when she jogged back to their bench, “that was aggressive.”
So now it was the top of the last, if one team could find a way to scratch out a run. If the game stayed 0–0, they would get just one extra inning to break the tie. Or it would end in a tie. That was the rule in All-Stars.
Nobody wanted a tie, not after a game like this.
Allie did the one thing you never wanted to do in the late innings of a close game: walked the leadoff hitter. Cassie could see how nervous she was, even though she’d been their closer last season too. Allie had the arm, anybody could see that. But suddenly she was acting as if she were outside her comfort zone, and outside the strike zone, as she tried to keep the game at 0–0, tried not to give up the run that might lose a lot of her teammates the first game they’d lost in two years.
She struck out the next batter. But gave up a single to Marcie Kincaid. First and second, one out.
She got another strikeout.
But then she walked the Yankees’ third baseman, loading the bases for Sydney Ellis, who had hit the ball hard every single time she’d come up against Cassie, even though she just had one base hit to show for it.
Allie had to be careful with her, obviously, just not too careful, or she risked walking in the go-ahead run and leaving them loaded.
Cassie called time and ran into the mound from shortstop, big smile on her face. She took the ball out of Allie’s glove and rubbed it up.
“You got this, girlfriend,” she said.
In a low voice Allie said, “No, you’d have this.”
Cassie kept her own voice low now. “If you’re gonna miss with her, miss inside. Trust me, you don’t want this girl to extend her arms.”
She put the ball back, hard, into Allie’s glove.
“These are the fun parts,” Cassie said.
Allie managed a small smile. “Thanks for reminding me.”
The count went to 2–2. Both of Allie’s misses had been inside. Now she put another fastball on the inside corner, the best pitch she’d thrown yet. Sydney took a big swing, and got her bat on the ball, but it sounded to Cassie as if she’d caught it closer to the handle, not getting all of it. Sydney had gotten enough to hit the ball between Kathleen and Sarah in left-center field.
From the night of tryouts, Cassie’s dad had been clear about something in outfield drills:
He wanted his center fielder to take charge on balls like this, like his center fielder was the quarterback of the outfielders, calling the plays, and calling for the ball.
Cassie could only turn and follow the flight of the ball, knowing there was nothing to do about the two base runners behind her. They were doing what she’d done on the ball Sarah had hit in the bottom of the sixth, running all the way with two outs.
She did hear Ana call out to her from second, “You take the cutoff if there is one,” both of them hoping there wasn’t going to be a cutoff throw, that either Kathleen or Sarah was going to make the catch.
If somebody made the call in the outfield, they made it as Ana had yelled over to Cassie.
The next thing Cassie saw was Sarah Milligan coming to a dead stop and Kathleen reaching in vain as the ball fell between them, and rolled all the way to the wall.
When it finally stopped rolling, Sydney was standing on third and it was 3–0 for the Yankees. Technically the game wasn’t over yet.
But everybody on the Red Sox knew it was.
NINE
The Red Sox got two runners on in the bottom of the seventh, to at least give themselves a chance to come all the way back. But Kathleen made the last out of the game, a routine fly ball to center.
For the first time since the summer after sixth grade, Cassie’s softball team had lost. She’d forgotten what that felt like. She had known she wasn’t going to keep winning games for as long as she played. As loaded as their team was, she hadn’t really thought they were going to win out again this summer. They’d all heard about how strong some of the other teams in All-Stars were.
It didn’t mean she had to like the feeling.
Her dad did what he always did after games, after they’d all shaken hands with the players on the other team: he gathered his own players around him in short right field. No parents. Just the team.
When all the players were out there, Chris Bennett had to walk back to the bench, where Sarah was seated, and ask her to come join them.
The other players were seated in the grass, in a circle. Sarah stood behind them.
“Well, that was some great game with a not-so-great ending,” Chris Bennett said. “But you’ll get tired of hearing me say this by the time our season is over. People always remember what happens at the end of a close game. But it’s never just one thing, even when it looks like it is. Sports is way more complicated than that. We had our chances today. And when we get those same type of chances on Tuesday night, we’ll convert enough of them to win the game.”
Tuesday night was their next game, against Moran.
Sarah was across from where Cassie was sitting. She wasn’t looking down. She seemed to be looking past Cassie and past the outfield fences, her eyes fixed on some distant point. Or maybe on nothing at all.
Cassie’s dad smacked his hands together. “So, we good?” he asked.
“No,” Kathleen said. “We’re not.”
It was like she couldn’t control herself any longer, couldn’t hold in everything she’d been holding in since she’d made the last out. Or maybe since Sydney’s ball had fallen between her and Sarah.
She got up now, and turned to face Sarah Milligan, who was still staring off, now shifting her weight quickly from one foot to the other.
“That was your ball,” Kathleen said to Sarah.
Sarah wasn’t looking at her.
“I’m talking to you, Sarah,” Kathleen said.
But Sarah didn’t look at Kathleen right away. She looked at Cassie, as if somehow Cassie could do something to help her.
As if Cassie could fix this.
Cassie’s dad said, “Not the time, Kath.”
“What would be a good time to say what we’re all thinking, Coach Bennett?” Kathleen said. “You always tell us that the center fielder is the one who’s supposed to take charge. It was her ball, and she knows it.”
Sarah spoke now, in a voice that Cassie could barely hear, one she wondered if Kathleen could hear, and Kathleen was standing right in front of Sarah by now.
But Sarah was looking back at Cassie.
“She said it was hers,” Sarah said.
“I did not!” Kathleen said, in a voice that Cassie knew was much too loud for Sarah. Cassie was worried it would spook Sarah and make her do something now with Kathleen that Sarah would regret. Like what she’d done to Cassie.
But she stood her ground as Kathleen said, “I did not call you off!”
Sarah was still looking at Cassie, as if Cassie in that moment was the one friend on the team she had. And maybe C
assie was.
“She said, ‘Mine,’ ” Sarah said. “That’s why I stopped.”
Kathleen said, “That’s a lie.”
Now Sarah said, “Yes you did, yes you did, yes you did,” her words all running together.
“Girls,” Cassie’s dad, trying to keep his own voice calm, “this needs to end.”
“You mean until she loses us our next game?” Kathleen said. “She’s the one who called ‘mine.’ ”
Then why, Cassie thought, did Kathleen keep running?
“I didn’t say anything,” Kathleen said.
Now Sarah Milligan was the one yelling, and starting to cry at the same time.
“YES YOU DID, YES YOU DID, YES YOU DID!”
She couldn’t stop the words from coming out of her this way, the way she couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face.
“YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME!”
She wasn’t addressing the whole team now.
Just Cassie.
But when Cassie hesitated just enough, not even knowing what she was supposed to say, not knowing what the right answer was, Sarah was on the run again. She didn’t run in the direction of her parents, waiting behind the bench with the other Red Sox parents. She just took off across the outfield at Highland Park, only stopping long enough to open the door in center field. Then she ran again, in the direction of town.
Cassie ran after her.
TEN
Cassie was fast, but Sarah Milligan was faster.
Cassie wasn’t sure what Sarah’s parents planned to do about their daughter taking off this way, or how concerned they were, or if they’d already gotten into their car. She didn’t know if this happened a lot with Sarah. But Cassie wasn’t waiting to find out.
Maybe Sarah took off all the time, and always ended up in the same place. Maybe this was a routine for her too. But Cassie didn’t care.