Team Players

by Mike Lupica

  “How so?”

  “I think it’s been about me, Dad. I thought Sarah was the one who had to figure out why she was playing and what it really meant to be part of a team. But guess what? It turned out to be me.”

  “I know it’s been a challenge, kiddo. But who loves a challenge more than you do?”

  “Nobody,” she said. “Even when nobody’s talking to me.”

  “I’m talking to you,” he said, reaching over now and mussing her hair.

  “I’ve kind of turned into Sarah.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, I’m not an idiot, Dad.”

  “Noticed.”

  “What I mean is, I’ve had to focus even harder on just playing my game than I ever did before. And it has helped me, watching her, because nobody focuses the way she does.”

  “She controls what she can control,” her dad said. “Except for those times when she lost control.”

  Cassie took her cup and his, walked over, dropped them into the trash bin closest to them, and came back.

  “You know what the best thing that’s happened is?” she said. “I understand better why I play.”

  “You didn’t before?”

  “Oh, I always knew that I loved playing and competing and doing well,” she said. “But before this season, I’d look at girls on losing teams, ones who didn’t have a chance at winning the title or even competing for one, and wonder what kept them going.”

  “There’s all sorts of ways to win in sports,” he said. “If I’ve learned anything, playing and coaching, I’ve learned that.”

  “You sound like Jack again.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that Jack might sound like me?” he said, grinning at her.

  She grinned back, and bumped fists with him.

  “Kathleen said that I started the fight,” Cassie said. “But you know what I’ve been thinking since I saw her? I’m not fighting with her. I’m just fighting harder than I ever have before, trying to do something great.”

  “That’s my girl,” her dad said.

  He’d been saying that to her for her whole life. He used to say that when he’d push her on these swings and she’d keep telling him she wanted to go higher. But there was something about the way he’d just said it—that’s my girl—that made her eyes start to well up.

  She stood up. So did he. She put her arms around him and held on tight.

  “I’ve never been prouder of you than I have been this season,” he said. “However it comes out.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

  “You’re still my little girl. You know that, right?” he said.

  “I do,” she said. “But we need to keep that between the two of us.”

  She didn’t let go, and neither did he.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The game with the Hollis Hills Yankees felt like a play-off game, just because it mattered to both teams.

  The Red Sox got first place if they won. The Yankees got into the play-offs if they won.

  But Cassie wasn’t interested in knocking the Yankees out of the play-offs. This wasn’t about them. It was about her team. It was about her. She wanted to finish first. Keep fighting.

  Cassie was starting today. And her dad had already announced that Allie would start the first game of the play-offs. He didn’t say it, but everybody knew that if Allie faltered, Sarah would be the first relief pitcher into the game. By now everybody had seen how much arm she had. Cassie’d even thought that her dad might start her in the play-offs. But when she asked him about that, he said he honestly believed that Sarah was more valuable to them—and more comfortable—in center field. She didn’t hate pitching. She actually seemed to like it. But being in center, that had become a part of her routine, the order she liked, as much as anything else.

  “And,” he explained in the car, “I’ve coached Allie a long time. And whatever differences you’ve had with her, that we’ve had with her, she’s earned the right to get this start.”

  “Fine with me,” Cassie said. “I’m just worried about my start today.”

  Her dad said, “Don’t worry. Be happy.”

  “You didn’t just say that.”

  “Kind of.”

  “Don’t be weird, Dad.”

  He giggled. “Sometimes I crack myself up,” he said.

  Last season Cassie might have said something to her teammates, as team captain, before a game like this. She would have told them that they needed to finish a job today, finish off the regular season right. She would have told them that if you treat every game like it’s important, then the moment will never get too big for you when the games get even more important.

  Something like that.

  But all of that stayed inside her own head today. From the time they showed up at the field at Hollis Hills, Kathleen and Greta and Allie acted as if yesterday had never happened, and avoided Cassie the way they had been all along. Cassie did what she always did, soft-tossed with Lizzie and Sarah after she’d warmed up for real with Maria, who’d remained the team’s regular catcher after Brooke had gotten hurt.

  As Cassie and Sarah walked back to the bench, Cassie said, “Good luck today.”

  “Why do people say that?” Sarah said.

  “Good luck?”

  “What does luck have to do with anything?” she said. “I don’t even think luck is a thing. Do you really think it’s a thing? I don’t.”

  By now Cassie shouldn’t have been surprised that Sarah Milligan took things as literally as she did. Even something as innocent as a teammate wishing her luck.

  “Have a good game, then,” Cassie said. “I guess that’s what I should have said.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Cassie thought: Maybe my teammates not talking to me isn’t always such a terrible thing.

  “Not a clue,” Cassie said.

  Then she put out her glove, and Sarah touched it lightly with her own, before she went to her usual place at the end of the bench, then walked over to the bat rack to make sure her bat was where it always was.

  She didn’t believe in luck, obviously.

  Just order.

  • • •

  Today there wasn’t much luck needed for the Red Sox, because Cassie kept setting down the Yankees in order.

  She struck out the side in the first, gave up a hit in the second, struck out the side again in the third. Even the hit she gave up wasn’t much of a hit, a slow roller hit to Greta’s right. Cassie got over to first in plenty of time, but Greta was a little slow getting the ball out of her glove, and the girl from Hollis Hills beat the play.

  It was 2–0 by then for the Sox, because Cassie had doubled in the first and Sarah had doubled her home and then scored on a single by Kathleen. And that’s really the way the game should have ended, because Cassie just kept rolling, into the seventh, her pitch count low, determined to finish what she’d started, the game, the regular season. All of it.

  In the bottom of the seventh, though, with Cassie still out there, Lizzie kicked a routine ground ball. The next girl bunted, but even though Maria fielded the ball cleanly, she decided to try to get a force at second, and sailed the ball all the way into center field. By the time Sarah ran it down, the Yankees had runners on second and third, with nobody out.

  Cassie looked around the bases and thought:

  Okay, what the heck just happened here?

  But she knew the answer. Sports had just happened. What did her dad like to say? You didn’t get to rent today’s game. It was her job to figure out a way out of the jam. Lizzie asked for time and started to walk over to the mound. Cassie met her halfway, covered her mouth with her glove, and said, “No worries, Liz. I got this.”

  “Sorry I got you into this mess,” Liz said.

  “Shut up,” Cassie said.

  She went back to the mound and struck out the Yankees second baseman on four pitches. Then got the shortstop to hit a weak pop-up between the mound and first. Cassie waved off Greta and
caught it herself.

  Two outs.

  The Yankee’s best hitter, their center fielder, Lexi Garcia, was next. Cassie felt as if she knew her fairly well, having faced her the past two summers. It meant Cassie knew how much power Lexi had and how the harder you pitched her, the better she liked it.

  And Cassie knew full well that you had to stay away from Lexi’s sweet spot: balls down and in. It was that way with a lot of left-handed hitters. You didn’t see it as much with right-handed hitters. But that’s the way it was with Lexi. Allie had thrown her that kind of pitch last season, and Lexi had hit the longest home run Cassie saw all year.

  It was here that Cassie made the only mistake she’d really made all day. One of the biggest she’d made all season.

  She missed her spot completely.

  Threw Lexi a pitch that was down and in.

  And Lexi crushed it, pulling it to left-center.

  Right between Kathleen and Sarah.

  Cassie could hear Sarah yelling for the ball all the way from the pitcher’s mound, no doubts on that this time. The ball might have been a little closer to Kathleen. But even though both of them had started out running hard for the ball, Sarah had clearly taken charge, as if she were sure the ball was going to end up in her glove, and end this game.

  Kathleen then played it exactly the way you were supposed to when you’re giving way to the center fielder. She veered to her left, giving Sarah plenty of room, but ready to back her up if somehow Sarah couldn’t make the play.

  Except.

  Except that as she did angle herself to get behind Sarah, Kathleen’s right leg buckled underneath her in a sickening way, Kathleen grabbing for her right knee as soon as she hit the ground.

  As she did, Sarah stopped, for a far different reason than she had on the same kind of play in the first game of the season.

  She stopped because she was looking at Kathleen and not at the ball, stopped because she was hearing what everybody on the field was hearing: the sound of Kathleen crying out in pain.

  As Sarah did, the ball fell underneath her glove, and began rolling all the way to the outfield wall.

  Sarah wasn’t even watching it. She was already kneeling next to a teammate in trouble, even though it was the teammate who had started all of Sarah’s troubles on the Red Sox.

  THIRTY

  By the time Nell Green came all the way from right field to collect the ball and throw it back toward the infield, Lexi was all the way around the bases with an inside-the-park homer that won the game for the Yankees, and handed Cassie her first loss as a starting pitcher in two full seasons of softball.

  Yankees 3, Red Sox 2.

  Lexi’s teammates, not really focused on what was happening in the outfield, mobbed her as soon as she crossed the plate with the winning run. As they did, the Red Sox players, and Cassie’s dad, and Kathleen’s mom and dad, were running toward left-center, where Sarah and Kathleen were.

  Cassie beat them all out there.

  “Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move,” she heard Sarah telling Kathleen. “You’ll only make it worse if you do. I hurt my knee one time in basketball and even had to have surgery, and they told me afterward that I only made things worse because I tried to put weight on it. So don’t put any weight on it, okay? Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.”

  “It hurts so much,” Kathleen said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Please don’t cry,” Sarah said. “I hate when people cry.”

  Cassie’s dad, and Kathleen’s parents, were there by now.

  “Where does it hurt, honey?” Kathleen’s dad said.

  “Everywhere.”

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just don’t move.”

  “I told her that,” Sarah said. She looked at Cassie. “You heard me tell her that, right? I told her not to move because it would only make things worse.”

  “I did,” Cassie said. “You did good.”

  Kathleen’s mom was behind her daughter, gently patting her back. She said they were going to get her to the car and take her to Walton Hospital, which Cassie knew was twenty minutes away, tops.

  Cassie’s dad and Kathleen’s dad asked the girls from both teams, because all the players from both teams were out there by now, to please give them some room. Then the two men helped Kathleen up, as Kathleen kept her right leg completely off the ground. She had stopped crying by now. Her eyes were still red. Cassie’s dad asked where their car was, and Kathleen’s dad said, “Right behind home plate. Got here late, and had to risk a foul ball busting my windshield.”

  Cassie’s dad always said that only inexperienced softball parents parked that close to the field.

  One careful step from Kathleen at a time, the two dads half walked and half carried her toward the infield. As they did, the girls from both teams applauded. Sarah didn’t applaud, just stared, wide-eyed, at Kathleen. Cassie thought Sarah might cry too, as much as she said she hated crying.

  Then, as Kathleen and the dads got to second base, they stopped. Kathleen turned around, and called out, “Sarah?”

  Sarah took a couple of steps forward, as if she’d just been called on in class.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Thank you for taking care of me,” Kathleen said, and then continued on toward her parents’ car.

  “Why’s she thanking me?” Sarah said, almost to herself. “I don’t know what she’s thanking me about. All I did was make an error so we lost.”

  “No,” Cassie said. “No, we did not lose.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Cassie remembered the last time she got an L as a starting pitcher.

  She was eleven. Their team was called the Dodgers. It was the second-to-last game of the regular season. She gave up three runs in the top of the first inning. Nobody’s fault but her own. Four hard hits around a walk. She got mad after that, and never gave up another run that day. But the Dodgers lost 3–2.

  But she wasn’t angry today. She was disappointed that they’d lost, of course. She was always disappointed when she lost, and she was now, because she hadn’t finished the job. Lizzie could blame herself all she wanted for making an error. Maria, too. Sarah could blame herself for attending to Kathleen while the ball and the game were rolling away from her. But none of them had put that pitch to Lexi in the worst possible place.

  No, this was on her.

  Kathleen’s dad had said he’d call Chris Bennett when he knew something at the hospital. But just the way Kathleen’s knee had twisted and collapsed underneath her made Cassie believe that the news had to be bad. She knew enough about sports by now, all sports, to know that non-contact injuries were hardly ever good.

  It was a half hour after the game had ended. Cassie had packed up her gear, but she was in no big rush to get out of here, knowing she still had plenty of time to get back for the start of the Cubs’ game against the South Haven Mets.

  She thought Sarah had left a few minutes ago with her parents. But now Cassie looked up and saw her walking back from the parking lot, past Cassie’s dad and the Hollis Hills coach, whom Chris Bennett had once played in high school ball.

  “I forgot to tell you something,” Sarah said.

  “Okay,” Cassie said.

  “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I know how much you hate to lose, and I was the reason why we lost today. So I’m sorry for that. I let you down. I hate letting people down, the way you hate to lose. Sometimes I feel like I’m always letting people down, even ones who I know have gone out of their way to be nice to me. And I know you have, even if I don’t always show I do or not. I’m not good at showing people what I’m feeling, mostly because sometimes I don’t know how I’m feeling.”

  There was a lot to unpack here, Cassie knew. It was one of her mom’s favorite words: “unpack.” Sarah was telling her a lot of things at once. Cassie decided to start with the easiest one for her to handle.

  “I’m the one who made us lose today, not you,” Cassie said. �
�I’m the one who threw that pitch.”

  Sarah was staring out to the outfield. “I should have caught the ball.”

  “You were distracted.”

  “I lost my focus.”

  “You had a reason.”

  “My parents always tell me that my best thing is my focus. It’s why nobody ever has to tell me to do that. To focus. It really is my thing. Sometimes I focus so much that I do it too much. But mostly I’m better at focusing than almost anything else. Other than remembering. You know how good I am at remembering things, right?”

  “I remember,” Cassie said. “And what I’m going to remember about today is that you did exactly what you should have done: you looked out for a teammate. And by the way? Probably one who’s never thought of looking out for you.”

  Sarah didn’t say anything.

  “I would have done the same thing,” Cassie said.

  “It doesn’t mean we’re alike,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe not. But maybe more than you think.”

  Sarah ignored that. Cassie was used to it. Sometimes Sarah responded to what you’d just said, sometimes not. When you had a conversation with her, she was the one making the rules, whether she understood that or not.

  Cassie said, “My mom says that just because everybody thinks, it doesn’t mean they think alike.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And getting back to what you said a few minutes ago? I don’t hate losing as much as I love winning.”

  “That sounds like the same thing.”

  “It’s not.”

  Cassie looked across the field and saw her dad shaking hands with the Hollis Hills coach. Time to go.

  “The only thing I really hate,” Cassie said, “is meanness.”

  “That’s another thing we are alike on,” Sarah said.

  “My dad and I are gonna head back to Walton for the Cubs game. You want to come watch later?”

  “Maybe.”

  She was still staring out at center field. Now she turned and looked at Cassie, with all the focus she’d just been talking about.