Team Players

by Mike Lupica

  “How come you’re not acting nervous?” Cassie said. “How come you never act nervous?”

  “I do,” he said. “I just don’t let you see it.”

  “Same.”

  “You know when I’m really nervous? Watching you,” he said. “It’s way worse when you have to watch.”

  “Same,” she said again.

  He put out his fist. She reached over with her own and tapped his lightly.

  “For now,” he said, “let’s play one.”

  After that Cassie watched as Jack tried to take all the nerves out of her, and his teammates, and the size of the game. What she was really watching, she knew, was Jack Callahan just being Jack Callahan. He was going up against the Hollis Hills ace, Logan James, a big lefty who could throw as hard as Jack, if not with the same kind of precision. And Logan was good today.

  Jack was just better.

  He gave up a single to Logan in the top of the fifth. He’d walked a guy back in the second. Those were the only two base runners for the Yankees. Teddy threw out the guy Jack had walked when the guy tried to steal second. Logan got erased by a double play. So the Yankees still hadn’t gotten a runner to second through their fifth inning.

  The Cubs finally got to Logan in the bottom of the fifth. Two singles, a double from Jack, a home run from Gus, who was hotter now than he’d been all season. It was 4–0. Cassie never liked getting ahead of herself. But she knew that every single player from Hollis Hills had a better chance of becoming an astronaut before the game was over than they did of getting four runs off Jack.

  He was slightly past his pitch count by the top of the seventh. Jerry York’s dad was keeping the book today, and keeping track of Jack’s pitches, and told him he was sitting on seventy- five, usually his limit.

  “I’ve got a whole year to rest,” Jack said.

  Mr. York smiled. “You’re the coach,” he said.

  Cassie was with them. “This coach only looks this good because of the guy he’s got pitching,” she said.

  Jerry’s dad said, “Go finish in style.”

  Jack did, striking out the side. When the last out was finally in Teddy’s glove, Teddy ran out from behind home plate, tossing away his mask, and nearly knocked Jack to the ground when he jumped into his arms.

  “I just always wanted to do that,” he told Cassie after the trophy presentation.

  By then the parents were all on the field and the Cubs were posing with the trophy. When that was finally over, Cassie said to Jack, “You did it.”

  “We did it,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, get back to me the next time a player-coach wins the championship of this league,” she said.

  “Repeat: we did it,” he said. “It’s never just one guy. It’s never supposed to be one guy. At least not when sports work the way they’re supposed to.”

  “You know something?” she said. “You’re right.”

  “You want to know something?” he said. “I never get tired of hearing you say that.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  Jack said, “Where you gonna hang out until your game?”

  She pointed at him, then over at Gus and Teddy, who were posing for their parents with the trophy.

  “Where do you think?” Cassie said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Cassie didn’t think of it as trying to pitch her way to Fenway Park. She didn’t think about making the sixteen-team tournament and giving the Sox a chance to win the three games that would put them in Fenway.

  She just wanted to win this game.

  She wanted to win this season.

  She wanted to win that.

  Greta and Allie were talking to her again the way Kathleen was; the way they all were. They weren’t being overly friendly. Things obviously weren’t the way they used to be, and might not ever be again. She got that. She even got that no one had apologized to her. Teddy joked that it was clear now that Cassie must have been giving herself the silent treatment.

  Cassie didn’t even know if today’s game mattered as much to the other girls as it did to her. But that didn’t matter to her either.

  The game did matter to her. As much as any she’d ever played in her life. During basketball season she’d kept telling herself that she wasn’t trying to prove some point by playing point guard on the boys’ team. But today she knew she was trying to prove something to herself.

  Mostly about being strong.

  She’d always prided herself on her strength, in sports and everything else. She’d always thought she was strong.

  Now she knew.

  The last thing to do was win the game.

  • • •

  She had a quiet moment to herself, about five minutes to three. She went down the right-field line and sat in the grass with her back against the wire fence that separated the field from the parking lot. The other players knew enough to leave her alone. So did her dad.

  And then Cassie thought about Sarah Milligan. The night before, she’d read up a little more about athletes with autism and Asperger’s. She hadn’t done it for a couple of weeks. It wasn’t as if she thought she would find some big secret that would help Sarah today or help the team, or make things easier. She still wanted to learn. She was still looking for a way to break down the barriers between them, whether it helped in softball or not.

  And she’d found this story from Sports Illustrated about a basketball player with autism who’d once played for Michigan State. In the story he talked about how much sports mattered to him, and why it mattered.

  “You might want to work hard,” the player said, “to get better at something you like to do. Sports rewards all that. Trust me, it does.”

  With everybody, Cassie thought. One more time she’d looked for some truth about Sarah and found one for herself instead. The other thing that jumped out at her from the story was the player talking about the sense of “community” you got from sports.

  They’d lost that on the Red Sox, for too much of the season. Now she hoped they’d gotten it back, just in time. She hoped but didn’t know for sure.

  All she knew was that they were about to find out.

  She heard her dad calling to her now, telling her that it was going to be practically impossible to start the game without her.

  When she got to him, she said, “Let’s do this.”

  Their season in the league was ending with Hollis Hills, the same as the Cubs’ season just had. And the Red Sox season had begun with the Hollis Hills Yankees, a game that had been decided when that ball had fallen in between Kathleen and Sarah. So now they had come full circle. Even the starting pitchers were the same: Cassie and Sydney Ellis.

  It was still 0–0 in the bottom of the fifth. With one out, Cassie thought she’d gotten every bit of a Sydney fastball, but their left fielder made a great catch, running toward the line. Then Sarah did catch all of one and hit it into the gap in left-center. Their center fielder tried to make a hero play, diving to her right, but missed. Sarah had pulled a ball over third for a double her first time up, and the left fielder was shading her too close to the line this time up. So she was nowhere near the play. By the time the right fielder came all the way over from the other side of the field to chase the ball down, Sarah Milligan was flying between second and third.

  As she got near third, Cassie’s dad was windmilling his arms like a crazy person, telling her to try for an inside-the-park home run.

  Sarah cut the bag perfectly, not taking a wide turn. She was halfway home when the shortstop’s relay throw was on its way to the catcher, Kendall Meany. It was a good throw too. One bounce.

  Sarah went into her slide. The ball was just a little bit to the first base side of home when Kendall caught it. Sarah slid neatly away from her, the hook slide that Cassie’s dad had taught them all during the first week of practice.

  When the tag came, high up on her leg, Sarah was already across the plate.

  Safe.

  “Out!” the home plate umpire, a man
, yelled, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  Cassie had gotten behind the screen to have the best look at the play. She could clearly see that it was a terrible call. But there was going to be no replay review at Highland Park. There were no television cameras. If the ump said Sarah was out, she was out, even if she was safe.

  And Sarah knew she was safe better than anyone else. Maybe Kendall Meany, too. But Sarah knew.

  Now Cassie watched and held her breath as Sarah got to her feet, still breathing hard after her dash around the bases, her face still flushed.

  Hands balled into fists, same as they’d been on the day when she got tagged in the face.

  Cassie didn’t move. She saw her dad start to walk quickly toward the plate from the third-base coaching box. But Cassie yelled, “Dad!” and put a hand in the air, telling him to stop.

  He stopped. Cassie felt as if everything had stopped. Time. Her heart. Minor stuff like that.

  The next thing she saw was Sarah turning away from home plate, picking up her bat, and walking in the direction of the Red Sox bench.

  She hadn’t said a word.

  By the time Cassie caught up with her, Sarah had put the bat back into the rack and was collecting her glove.

  “You were safe,” Cassie said.

  “I know that.”

  No change of expression, no emotion.

  “But you didn’t say anything,” Cassie said.

  “I know that, too.”

  Black and white to the end, in her black-and-white world.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  If Sarah actually smiled, it was there and gone. But when she spoke, she pretty much repeated what Cassie had told her at the mound the game before.

  “It’s too big a game and I’m too good a player to get thrown out of it,” she said.

  She ran out to center field. Cassie ran out to pitch the top of the sixth. Game still 0–0. Cassie walked the Yankees’ second baseman to start the sixth, then struck out the side after that. She was dealing now. She knew it. They knew it. The Sox threatened in the bottom of the inning, but then Ana Rivera, in right today, fouled out to first with two runners on. It was still 0–0. It felt like the same game they’d played on opening day. Cassie knew her pitch count was starting to get up there. She didn’t care. She was going back out there for the seventh, knowing she was going to be an at bat in the bottom of the inning.

  Control what you can control. Isn’t that what Jack always said?

  Well, she was in control of the story now.

  She only needed eight pitches to get the Yankees in order. Two ground balls. One strikeout. Time for last ups.

  Allie walked to start the seventh against Sydney, who was still in there. The count had gone full on Allie, and it looked to Cassie as if she’d taken a called third strike, because she didn’t see a single thing wrong with the 3–2 pitch. But the ump called it a ball. Bad call. One that went their way this time. Sometimes things evened up. Not all the time. Sometimes.

  Lizzie put down a perfect sacrifice bunt and moved Allie up to second. Now the winning run was in scoring position. Cassie was about to leave the on-deck circle when Sarah joined her there.

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah said. “If you don’t get her home, I will.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Cassie said. “But I got this.”

  Jack was who he was. Cassie was who she was. Now she was exactly where she wanted to be. Maybe where she was supposed to be. As she came around behind the catcher and the ump, she gave a quick look up into the stands where Jack and Teddy and Gus were. Teddy and Gus nodded at her.

  Jack smiled.

  Everything Cassie was thinking, he knew.

  Sydney threw her another fastball. This time Cassie got all of it. This time the ball was over the left fielder’s head before the girl even had time to turn for it. As Cassie was rounding first, she threw her right fist into the air. Allie could have moonwalked to home plate. By the time Allie did cross the plate with the winning run, Cassie was standing at second base watching the celebration, alone one last time.

  When she finally started walking across the infield, Sarah came out to meet her. They met at the pitcher’s mound.

  Sarah was frowning.

  “I don’t know how to act,” she said. “Sometimes I imagine how things are supposed to look inside my head, almost like there’s a picture I’m looking at. But I don’t have a picture for this.”

  “You can try being happy,” Cassie said.

  “I’m not very good at that.”

  “It’s like a lot of things,” Cassie said. “You can learn.”

  Then they went to join their teammates.

  AFTER THE SEASON . . .

  THIRTY-SIX

  It was the week before school started, which meant the week before ninth grade was starting for Cassie and Jack and Teddy and Gus.

  So the last week of summer felt a little different this time. As excited as they were to be making the move to Walton High, they weren’t ready for summer to end.

  At least not yet.

  They were high up on their side of the Walton River, the west side, overlooking Small Falls, noisier than usual before them. There was a good breeze up today, which had the suspension bridge over the water swaying gently in the wind.

  “I can’t believe that bridge used to make me scared,” Teddy said.

  “Nobody gets to pick the things that make them scared,” Jack said.

  Cassie saw just the hint of a smile from him.

  “I mean, who knew,” he said, “how scared Cassie was going to get pitching at Fenway Park.”

  “Was not,” she said, and leaned over and pinched his arm. Then she smiled herself and said, “Well, maybe a little bit at first.”

  “Maybe a lot at first,” Gus said. “I thought you might have been greener than the Green Monster.”

  Now Cassie pinched him. Teddy moved away from her.

  “Who cares whether it was a little or a lot?” she said. “Did we win the title or not?”

  “You did,” Teddy said.

  “Did we get to play on television, thank you very much?” she said.

  “You did,” Jack said. “Thank you very much.”

  The Red Sox had won the two games they’d needed to get to Fenway, one in Hartford, Connecticut, and one in Providence, Rhode Island. Then the games at Fenway were on Saturday and Sunday, before the real Sox returned from a West Coast trip the next day. And the last two games of the tournament had been just like the last two games of their league season. Allie had started in the semis; Sarah had finished. Then in the finals it was Cassie going all the way again, this time against a team from Newton, Massachusetts. She struck out ten batters. The Red Sox won 3–0. Two of the runs had come when Sarah had hit a double off the bottom of the Green Monster.

  “Maybe it’s the way it had to end,” Teddy said. “It was like the two of you against the world one last time.”

  “She never thought of it that way, trust me,” Cassie said.

  “How are things now with you guys?” Jack said.

  “Pretty much the same,” Cassie said. “I forgot to tell you guys that after the championship game was over, she came over and told me she thought I had done a very good job. But that I should remember that the team couldn’t have won without her.”

  “Like you kept saying,” Gus said. “Black and white.”

  “What did you say to her?” Jack said.

  “What could I say? I told her she was right. And I told her that even though she thought I talked way too much—”

  “You?” Teddy said.

  Now he got pinched.

  “That even though she thought I talked way too much, I had to tell her that I’d learned more about how to be a friend and a good teammate than I ever had before in my life.”

  “You think you guys will stay in touch?” Jack said.

  “She’s going into ninth along with the rest of us,” Cassie said. “You know what? I hope so. Sarah says she tries
to picture things the way they’re supposed to be inside her head.” Cassie nodded. “I can see that,” she said. “But it’s pretty much up to her.”

  “Wait, something’s not up to you?” Gus said.

  “Guess what?” Cassie said. “Even though you guys are always telling me how controlling I am, I learned something else this summer: Sometimes not being in control isn’t such a terrible thing. Sometimes you just gotta let go and make a leap.”

  “Like into ninth grade,” Jack said.

  They were all quiet for a moment.

  “It’s gonna be the same kids, basically,” Gus said.

  “Still gonna be different,” Teddy said.

  “But one thing won’t be,” Cassie said. “We’ll still have each other.”

  She smiled at all three of them.

  Then she pointed across the water.

  “Just the next bridge to cross,” she said.

  “Together,” Jack said.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Taylor McKelvy Lupica

  MIKE LUPICA is the author of multiple bestselling books for young readers, including QB 1, Heat, Travel Team, Million-Dollar Throw, and The Underdogs. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, he writes for the New York Daily News, appears on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, and hosts The Mike Lupica Show on ESPN Radio. You can visit Mike at mikelupicabooks.com.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.