Team Players

by Mike Lupica

  “I know most of the world’s capitals. Do you?” Sarah said suddenly, her voice rising in excitement.

  Cassie had noticed by now that Sarah either couldn’t or wouldn’t modulate her voice. The girl who hated loud noises often got loud herself, sometimes right before her voice would almost drop to a whisper.

  She began to recite some of the capitals now, Brussels and Paris and Helsinki and Budapest, London and Warsaw and Lisbon, almost as if Cassie wasn’t even in the room with her.

  “That is impressive, Sarah, not gonna lie.”

  Sarah ignored her and kept going. “Amsterdam,” she said. “Dublin. Athens. Reykjavik. Oslo.”

  She paused, looking right at Cassie now, and said, “Do you know what Riga is the capital of?”

  “Nope.”

  Sarah nodded. “Latvia,” she said.

  “The only thing I know about Latvia,” Cassie said, “is that one of the Knicks comes from there.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?

  “He comes from Liepaja,” Sarah said, and nodded. “I had to look that up. I know a lot of different things. If I don’t know them, I look them up. I like to look things up and then memorize them. If I close my eyes, I can see all the streets I took here and the ones I’m going to take back. It’s very important. Very, very important.”

  This was one of those times, Cassie thought, when Sarah looked more comfortable talking to herself, instead of going back and forth with somebody else.

  Sarah carefully turned the globe now, as if she were afraid that spinning it too hard might break it.

  “Do you think the other girls are being stupid?” she said. “I do. I think they’re being stupid.”

  “More stubborn than stupid, maybe.”

  “I think they’re being stupid and mean,” Sarah said, not acting as if she’d even heard Cassie. “My mom tells me all the time that sometimes other kids don’t mean to be stupid or mean, they just don’t know any better. But they barely know me. They know you. So why are they treating us the same?”

  “If you want to know the truth,” Cassie said, “sometimes I think they don’t know me at all. But it still makes them mad when I don’t go along with them.”

  “I hate when people get mad.” She gave the globe another small turn. If you looked at her, it was almost as if she were talking to it instead of Cassie.

  She stopped talking now and walked back over and sat down in her chair, as if she had run out of things to say. She folded her hands in her lap and finally said that it was probably time for her to go. Cassie checked her phone, saw what time it was, and remembered that the Cubs were practicing earlier than usual that afternoon, four o’clock at Highland Park, before their first game.

  “You mind if I ride with you?” Cassie said. “I know I won’t get lost.”

  “I never get lost,” Sarah said, her face serious. “I know the way.” And then once again she recited the streets that would take her past Highland Park and home. She looked at Cassie now and said, “Why do you want to ride with me?”

  “My friends Jack and Teddy and Gus are practicing in the park, and I thought I’d go watch.”

  “Can I watch too?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cassie said.

  Just one she hadn’t thought through as well as she might have.

  • • •

  They actually heard Coach Anthony before they parked their bikes near the bleachers on the home side of Highland Park.

  “Morales!” was the first thing they heard. “How many times do I have to tell you where the runner has to be before you decide to cut the ball off?”

  So, Cassie thought, it was Gus’s turn to be in the barrel, as her dad liked to say. If Sarah had heard, she didn’t let on. But Cassie sure had. She assumed that even moms and little kids at the playground in the distance could hear.

  “Great,” Cassie said.

  “What’s great?”

  “Nothing.”

  When they took their seats halfway up the bleachers, Cassie saw that the Cubs were doing a drill that had runners on the bases, and the outfielders trying to throw them out if they could.

  Gus was at first. Jack was at short. Mr. Anthony had a bat in his hands at home plate. Teddy was behind him. Sam Anthony, Cassie saw, was one of the base runners, at second. Brett Hawkins, who was playing both the infield and outfield this season, was on first. Gregg Leonard was in center today. Scott Sutter, who’d been the catcher last season before he’d gotten hurt and opened up the position for Teddy, was in left. Max Conte was in right.

  “Two outs, runners going as soon as I hit this ball,” Mr. Anthony called out to the guys on defense.

  “It will be hard to throw out the man at second on a single if the runners are running,” Sarah said.

  “Probably.”

  “Do you think I could do it?”

  Cassie grinned. “Definitely.”

  “You have to charge the ball,” Sarah said. “You have to go fast but not rush when you pick the ball up. Field it cleanly. Then come up throwing.” She nodded. “Then concentrate on squaring yourself up and not rushing the throw, because that’s when you make a wild throw.”

  “Did you get that from my dad?” Cassie said.

  “My dad,” Sarah said. “Over and over and over and over again. That’s how I get things down. You have to concentrate on the fundamentals. If you concentrate on the fundamentals, they’ll come naturally in a game. Fundamentals and repetition, those are the keys.”

  She sounded the way she had when she was reciting the capitals of Europe. Not just secure in this repetition, Cassie thought, but happy.

  Mr. Anthony hit a line drive over second base to Gregg Leonard, who did exactly what Sarah had said he should do: he charged the ball, gloved it cleanly, squared himself, and came up throwing. As he did, Cassie checked to see where Sam Anthony was and was surprised to see that he couldn’t have taken off when his dad had hit the ball, because he had just come around third base. If he hadn’t been running hard enough before, he was now.

  His father had gotten out of the way. Teddy wasn’t blocking the plate yet. In youth baseball they used the same new rules about blocking the plate that they did in the big leagues. Cassie knew that Major League Baseball had changed the rules after Buster Posey of the Giants had gotten crushed on a play at the plate and been lost to his team for the season.

  So Teddy held his position, holding his glove out, waiting for Gregg’s throw. Gus was the cutoff man. He was in perfect position, and Gregg’s throw went directly over him, and into Teddy’s glove on one bounce.

  “Wow,” Cassie heard Sarah say. “Wow, wow, wow.”

  When Teddy had the ball, he quickly moved to his left, Cassie once again admiring how good his footwork was, how far he’d come as a catcher in just a year. So now he was set up between Sam Anthony and the plate, and you could see that the play wasn’t even going to be close when Sam went into his slide—because you had to slide. Nobody was allowed to run over the catcher.

  Sam didn’t try to run Teddy over.

  But it wasn’t exactly a straight slide, either, because he was way too close to Teddy when he went into it, and went into Teddy with his feet way too high as Teddy put the tag on him.

  Sam’s lead leg caught Teddy in the middle of his chest protector, and sent him over onto his back, in a huge explosion of dirt at home plate.

  And now Cassie said, “Wow, wow, wow.”

  Teddy was up so fast, it was as if he had springs in his legs. The ball was still in his mitt, but with his free hand he pulled off his mask and tossed it behind him.

  “What kind of punk move was that?” Teddy shouted, pointing his mitt at Sam.

  By now Sam was on his feet too.

  “Just trying to knock the ball loose, like I was taught,” Sam shouted back at him.

  Cassie had seen Teddy angry before. Never this angry.

  “What class was that taught in,” Teddy said, his voice still hot, “the one about dirty pl
ay?”

  “You calling me a dirty player?”

  Teddy took another step closer to Sam now. Sam took a step back. Cassie wondered if Sam even knew he’d done it.

  “If you wanted to come in high, why didn’t you just try to run me over?” Teddy said.

  “Think I couldn’t?”

  “No,” Teddy said.

  He took another step forward. Sam took another step back.

  “No,” Teddy said. “I don’t.”

  Cassie wondered when Sam’s dad was going to step in and break them up. In the practices she’d watched so far, this was the longest he’d ever gone without raising his own voice.

  Jack appeared now, putting himself between Teddy and Sam. Jerry York had come down from third base to get his arms around Sam from behind.

  “You want to go?” Sam yelled, even though Cassie had a feeling, the way he’d thrown himself into reverse, that he didn’t.

  “So much,” Teddy said.

  “All right,” Coach Anthony finally yelled over both of them, “that’s enough, from both of you!”

  They all heard what came next.

  “Stop it! Stop it, all of you! Everybody stop being mean!”

  Sarah.

  “Stop yelling!”

  Louder than all of them.

  An amazing thing happened then.

  They did.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sarah didn’t wait to see what was going to happen now that the yelling had stopped. She just went down the bleachers two at a time without saying good-bye to Cassie and hopped onto her bike and rode away.

  Cassie stayed.

  The whole Cubs team was gathered around the home plate area. She couldn’t hear what anybody was saying now, just could see that Mr. Anthony was doing most of the talking. When he finished, she waited to see if Teddy and Sam were going to shake hands, make some kind of peace, at least for now. If they did, she didn’t see it happen.

  She quietly moved down out of the bleachers and up to the fence, in time to hear Mr. Anthony say, “See you tomorrow night. Batting practice at five sharp.”

  Cassie watched Mr. Anthony and Sam leave together and thought, Their team is just divided in a different way right now. It wasn’t just one new player. It was this new coach. But when he and his son were gone, the rest of the Cubs were still there, seemingly in no hurry to leave.

  Then an odd thing happened. Or maybe a cool thing. Jack went and grabbed a bat and gestured for the other guys to take their positions. Brett went out to short to take Jack’s place. And for the next fifteen minutes, Jack hit ground balls to the infielders and fly balls to the outfielders. Suddenly they were all chirping at each other and laughing sometimes, as if they all needed to remember why they were here, why they were ballplayers, maybe even why they loved baseball, before they went home.

  When they were done, Cassie came through the fence and sat next to Teddy while he took off his equipment. Jack and Gus sat in the grass in front of them.

  “So,” she said, “how’s the season going so far for all of us?”

  “Ours hasn’t even started yet,” Teddy said.

  Cassie said, “What did Mr. Anthony say about that play?”

  “Totally wimped out, for a guy who thinks he’s so tough,” Teddy said. “Said he didn’t have the best angle on the play, but it seemed like it just might have been overaggressive baserunning to him.”

  “Well, yeah,” Gus said, “only if you’re looking to start a bench-clearing brawl.”

  “Looked to me,” Cassie said, “as if he was trying to make up for the fact that he dogged it when the ball was hit.”

  “Emphasis on ‘dog,’ ” Teddy said.

  “Did you say anything to Coach?” Cassie said.

  “I don’t call him that,” Teddy said. “Not gonna call him that. I just think of him as that jerk’s dad. But, no, I didn’t say anything. No point. He was never going to go against Sam.”

  “How did you guys end it?” Cassie said.

  “He told us that not everybody on the team had to like each other to win with each other,” Teddy said. “Another one of his dopey sayings.”

  “Hey,” she said, “look on the bright side.”

  “There’s a bright side?” Gus said.

  “At least you guys don’t have almost the whole team mad at you like I do.”

  “Well, I feel better already,” Teddy said.

  “Looks like we’ve all got stuff to work through, basically,” she said.

  “You think?” Teddy said.

  “Cass is right,” Jack said. “We’re all gonna have to figure it out.”

  “The best part of the whole thing was when Sarah did what we all want to do with Mr. Anthony,” Teddy said, “and told him to shut up.”

  Gus said, “Can she come to all our practices? Please?”

  “I didn’t get the chance to tell her that, see, we aren’t the only one with a messed-up team,” Cassie replied.

  It was still early enough, and they all still had enough time before dinner, to make a run into Jamba Juice. It turned out that Jack and Teddy and Gus had all ridden their bikes to practice.

  Before they left, Jack said to Cassie, “I was surprised to see you and Sarah up there.”

  Cassie told Jack about Sarah’s ride over to her house, and the European capitals, and how Sarah had actually surprised her by wanting to come to practice.

  “Sounds like she’s keeping you off balance,” Jack said.

  “One big thing I’ve learned about Asperger’s,” Cassie said, “is that no matter how many common traits they say there might be, everybody’s different.”

  Jack grinned at her.

  “Sounds to me like Sarah’s mostly like herself,” he said. “You feel like you two are becoming friends?”

  Cassie shrugged.

  “No clue,” she said.

  The next day Cassie texted Sarah and asked if she wanted to go to the Cubs’ first game. Sarah said no, thanks, and didn’t offer an explanation. Maybe she’d just decided there was enough tension and drama on her own team. So Cassie went by herself and watched Jack pitch like a total star against Hollis Hills. He kept his pitch count down, shut them out for six innings, allowing just two hits, one a slow roller toward third that actually stopped before Jerry York could even try to make a play on the ball.

  Jack had three hits himself, Gus two. Teddy hit a double. The Cubs finally won 5–0. Mr. Anthony still made too much noise, as if he were somehow afraid that if he went more than a couple of minutes without barking out some kind of instruction, the kids playing the game and everybody watching the game would forget that he was coaching it. But at least there was no drama tonight. Sam, who was starting their next game on Saturday, didn’t even play until his dad gave him an at bat in the bottom of the sixth. Mostly Sam saw what everybody else did at Highland Park: what Jack Callahan could do with a baseball in his right hand.

  At least, Cassie thought, Sam saw that when he wasn’t checking his phone. Maybe it was just another form of his aggressiveness—aggressively checking the phone for messages.

  They’d have to wait a few more days to see what it would be like when Sam was the one with the ball in his hand and Teddy was the one catching him. For now, though, the rest of the players on the Cubs had to feel the way Cassie did the other day:

  A win was a win.

  The way things were going these days, you took what you could get.

  EIGHTEEN

  As soon as Cassie showed up for her own practice the next day, it was totally obvious that the shunning from Kathleen and the rest of the girls was continuing, in full force. There were times during practice, in fact, when the only noise was the sound of the bat on the ball.

  Kathleen and Greta and Allie didn’t even talk to one another very much when they were out in the field, as if they were afraid to drop their guards and actually act normal for a change.

  When Cassie and Sarah were standing in the on-deck circle together, the way they sometimes did dur
ing BP, Cassie quietly said, “You just keep doing your job. I can handle the rest of it.”

  Sarah turned and looked at her. Her voice wasn’t loud, but louder than Cassie’s.

  “I didn’t ask you to handle things for me,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Cassie’s dad had stopped pitching now and walked to the plate to show Lizzie something with her stance, or with her hands. She heard him say, “We need to get you driving the ball again.”

  “Definitely,” Sarah said. “Definitely what you meant. What you meant was that you’d handle things for you and for me both. But I never asked you to do that. Maybe you should just worry about your job.”

  Cassie wanted to ask her where this was coming from, but she didn’t. There was enough trouble on their team right now. She didn’t need to get into a debate with Sarah Milligan.

  Cassie just said, “Trust me. I’m sorry you took it the wrong way.”

  “I don’t trust people,” Sarah said.

  “I just thought because you wanted me to believe you on that play with you and Kathleen, that you did trust me.”

  “I don’t,” Sarah said.

  She was staring at the ground.

  “I want to stop talking now,” Sarah said. “There’s always so much talking. Like talking can fix everything. Talking never fixes anything.”

  Cassie said, “But—”

  Far as she got.

  “Please stop talking,” Sarah said. “Just go hit.”

  Cassie did. She didn’t say another word to Sarah for the rest of practice. She didn’t say much to Lizzie and Brooke, or even her dad, for that matter. Nobody else said anything else to her.

  When she got home, and even though she knew it was late in Barcelona, she Skyped Angela Morales.

  • • •

  It wasn’t that Cassie wasn’t getting good support and good advice from the guys. She almost always did. Nobody had better wingmen than she did. But they really were going through their own stuff right now. They were trying to figure things out on their own team. It didn’t mean they cared any less for her, or didn’t have her back, or wouldn’t have been there for her if she’d wanted to talk to any of them or all of them tonight. Jack, in particular, knew her as well as anybody could.