State Showdown

by Matt Christopher

  “It’s like catching for a pitching machine,” he told his mother in exasperation after Monday’s brief practice, “except the machine at least goes thup when it releases the ball.”

  Mrs. McGrath smiled. “And what sounds do you make?” she teased.

  “Ha, ha,” he replied sarcastically.

  “What I mean is, are you talking to him?”

  Liam huffed out a huge sigh. “What am I supposed to say?”

  She patted him on the hand and stood up to start fixing dinner. “I’m sure when the time is right, you’ll find the words.”

  Despite his mother’s confidence, silence still reigned between Liam and Phillip going into Tuesday’s game. After warm-ups, Liam took his place behind the plate and Phillip hustled to the mound without exchanging much more than a “good luck.”

  The game that morning was against Malden again. Since its loss to Ravenna, Malden had crushed Seaport and Yorkshire, racking up scores in the double digits in both games while giving up fewer than six total runs. Sam, Tony, and Ed proved they hadn’t been bragging about their hitting abilities. Together, they were responsible for more than half of Malden’s runs.

  Liam had no doubt they were happy with their performances—and that they’d be happier still to sweeten their tallies with strong showings against Phillip.

  But not as happy as I’ll be if we send you back to the dugout without a single hit among you! he thought.

  Last game, Tony batted second. This time, he was first in Malden’s batting order. A classic leadoff batter, he was speedy enough to outrun the throw to first if he got even a weak hit. That’s just what he got, nicking a low fastball that bounced and then rolled toward short.

  Dom rushed in, glove low and ready. Somehow, though, the ball dribbled between his feet! By the time he’d spun around and nabbed it out of the grass, Tony had sprinted safely to first. He stayed there for less than a minute before his teammate sacrifice-bunted him to second.

  With one out, runner on second, the third Malden batter came to the plate. Liam remembered him clearly from their previous meeting—not because he’d done anything outstanding, but because he was constantly chewing bubble gum. Liam liked gum as much as the next kid, but listening to the hitter work the pink wad over and around in his mouth made him a little queasy. Luckily, he didn’t have to listen for long. The boy grounded out on the first pitch.

  Sam came up next. He’d been friendly to Liam when they first met and the few times they’d seen each other since. Now, though, he didn’t even glance at Liam. Liam understood—it was game time, after all.

  Sam settled into his stance. Liam flashed the signal for a changeup. Phillip rubbed his face on his shoulder and then reared back and threw. Many times, the off-speed pitch fooled the batter into swinging too soon.

  Not Sam. He connected and sent the ball sailing toward left field. It would have been a solid single if it hadn’t flown foul. He fouled the second one as well, and then watched as Phillip’s next three pitches went wide of the strike zone.

  Liam’s heart started racing. It was a full count, three balls, two strikes. Unless the next pitch was an obvious ball, Sam was likely to swing.

  Phillip twirled the ball behind his back, his stare dark and intense. He took the signal, wound up, and threw.

  Crack!

  Sam’s bat found the ball. The white sphere soared straight up into the air above home plate. Liam leaped up and ripped off his mask in one smooth motion.

  “I’ve got it!” he cried.

  The ball was almost invisible against the cloudy sky. He kept his eyes locked on it. Then, suddenly, the clouds parted. A ray of bright sunlight shone through like a laser beam and hit Liam right in the face! Momentarily blinded by the brilliance, he blinked rapidly, trying to clear away the afterimage and follow the ball’s trajectory at the same time.

  But it was no use. A split second too late, he realized the ball was falling behind him. He whirled and lunged, glove outstretched.

  Plop!

  The ball fell in the dirt just behind home plate. Instead of being out on a caught pop-up, Sam was still alive. He made the most of his unexpected chance, belting Phillip’s next pitch. Tony scored and Sam was safe at second. He was stranded on base when the fifth Malden batter struck out, but the damage was done. Malden was on the board first.

  In the dugout, Liam was busy taking off his gear when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He glanced up and saw Phillip staring at him through narrowed eyes.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your buddy Sam sure got lucky, huh?” Phillip said, and then walked away.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Carter’s cell phone chimed. Even with the volume at its highest setting, he almost didn’t hear it. That’s because his hotel room was crammed with noisy boys.

  Allen had shown up soon after the rain delay was announced. “I’m bored,” he said when Carter answered the door. “The pool’s closed because of the storm and another bunch of Little Leaguers are using the Ping-Pong table.”

  “So hang out here,” Carter said, stepping aside so Allen could enter.

  Charlie Murray and Charlie Santiago arrived a few minutes later, having received a text from Allen. Charlie M. flopped down on Ash’s bed. “Hey, Carter, how’s Liam doing?”

  Carter waved his phone in the air. “I’m going to be getting a play-by-play of the game in just a little while,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Awesome. All right if I tell the other guys about it?”

  Before Carter could object, Charlie M. had texted the rest of the team. Now the Forest Park players were draped over every available surface of Carter and Ash’s room—floor, beds, the chair someone had dragged in from the Joneses’ adjoining room. The Joneses had provided lunch—deli sandwiches, chips, cookies, and drinks—and the air was ripe with the smell of pickles and potato chips. Some of the boys were watching a ball game on television while others played head-to-head video games on their portable devices. Ash sat with his back against the balcony door, his binder propped up on his knees. Carter was at the desk, phone in hand.

  “Hey, guys,” he said loudly when it chimed. “I got the first message.”

  “Read it out loud, man,” Charlie M. said, muting the TV, “and pass me those cookies.”

  Carter handed over a sleeve of Oreos and then relayed the message: T1: L misses pop-up at plate. Batter RBIs. Malden 1.

  Ash looked up. “Liam flubbed a catch?” When Carter confirmed the miss, Ash nodded and then made a mark in his notebook.

  “Aw, no big deal,” Raj said, waving dismissively. “The game just started.”

  That was true, but Carter knew that Liam would hate himself for making an error like that, especially in the top of the first inning—or T1, as Sean called it. He could picture Liam’s face perfectly: stony and tight with disappointment.

  Shake it off, he silently urged.

  The updates from Sean came fast and furious after the first one.

  B1: 4 at bats, no score. M 1, R 0.

  T2: Walk. Steal—wait, no! Liam gets him!

  Several players whooped at Liam’s pickoff at second. “Made up for his error pretty quick,” Charlie M. said.

  Carter was a little puzzled over the message that followed. “:D, 1, 1, DP? What does that mean?”

  Freddie and Luke Armstrong helped him interpret. “That’s an excited face,” Freddie said, pointing to the colon and capital D. “Must be for the pickoff.”

  “And those number ones are singles,” Luke put in, “and since the inning ends after that DP, I bet that’s double play.”

  “Makes sense,” Carter agreed.

  He got the hang of Sean’s shorthand after that. When the next text came, he deciphered it quickly. “Liam led off with a double,” he reported, eliciting more whoops from Liam’s former teammates. “Then someone singled. The next batter popped out, and the guy after him grounded out.”

  “But the runners are
still on base?” Allen asked.

  Carter nodded just as his phone chimed again. “Yeah, and now the bases are loaded because someone singled!”

  “Blast it out of the park!” Charlie S. cried.

  The room fell silent as they waited to learn what happened next.

  “What’s taking so long?” Craig asked impatiently.

  Carter’s phone finally alerted him that he had a message. He read the text and the one that followed immediately after. “RBI single, Liam scores! But then the person after him struck out.”

  The players let out groans of disappointment. “That guy must be bumming,” Peter Molina said quietly. “Who was it?”

  “Not sure.” Carter’s thumbs roved over the phone’s tiny keyboard. “Okay, I just asked Sean to send me the batting order.”

  Ash pushed off from the floor and moved to a spot behind Carter. “Good idea,” he said. “Now we can track who their best hitters are.”

  He flipped to a blank page at the end of his binder and wrote Ravenna in block letters across the top. Then he jotted a column of numbers from one to nine, with four extra spaces for the subs.

  Carter’s phone chimed. “Here we go.” He read off Ravenna’s batting order: Dom, Phillip, Matt, Rodney, Liam, Mason, Cole, Elton, Nate.

  “Too bad we can’t see what they look like,” catcher Ron Davis said.

  Carter grinned. “Actually, we can.” He opened his laptop, typed in his password, and then clicked the photo icon. A second later, the Ravenna District Champs team picture popped up. Listed under the photo were the players’ names. He turned the laptop so everyone could see. “Ta-da!”

  “You’re like a spy,” Raj said, gesturing to the laptop and cell phone. “The way you put that all together so fast, it was like something out of a James Bond movie.”

  Carter struck a debonair pose, chin in hand and a single eyebrow lifted. “The name’s Jones. Carter Jones,” he said in his best English accent.

  “Dum duh-duh-duh-duh dum-dum, dum duh-duh-duh-duh dum-dum.” Several of the boys intoned the opening notes to the classic Bond theme song.

  Ash, meanwhile, was rapidly adding the last names of the Ravenna players to his list. “So if Liam doubled,” he said, tapping the paper, “that means Mason Sykes singled, Cole Dudley popped out, and Elton Sears grounded out. Then Nate Solis and Dom Blackburn singled and”—he looked up at Carter with a glint in his eye—“Phillip struck out.”

  Carter had been about to text Sean that he was disappointed for Ravenna. But the news that Phillip had struck out made him pause.

  So the great DiMaggio ended their chances, huh?

  The moment the thought crossed his mind, he felt guilty. This was Liam’s team, and it had just missed a golden opportunity to add a run to its side—maybe more than one, given that the bases were loaded and Matt Finch, one of Ravenna’s heavy hitters, was next in the order. He should be feeling bad for Liam, not happy that Phillip made an out.

  Better luck next inning, he texted to Sean.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  I should say something to him.

  That was the thought running through Liam’s mind as he caught Phillip’s warm-up throws at the top of the third inning. If it had been any pitcher but Phillip, he would have told him to put the strikeout behind him, remember that they had a run on the board, and focus on preventing Malden from adding to its score.

  But because the pitcher was Phillip, he hesitated. They had barely spoken the whole tournament. What would he even say to him?

  Then out of nowhere, his mother’s voice came back to him. “When the time is right, you’ll find the words.”

  At that same moment, the umpires announced there would be a brief delay while first base was fixed more securely to the ground.

  Liam’s heart skipped a beat. What if now was the right time and he missed his chance? He couldn’t risk it. He ran out to the pitcher’s mound to talk to Phillip.

  Phillip frowned when he saw him. “What’re you doing out here?”

  “I just wanted to tell you to shake off that strikeout,” Liam said, ignoring the hint of animosity in Phillip’s tone. “Because these Malden guys can hit and they are gunning for you. So—”

  Phillip interrupted him with a derisive snort. “Geez, McGrath, you think it’s big news that these batters want to hit off me? Well, it’s not. Hitters have been looking to tee off me all season. Getting a blast off the World Series–winning pitcher is like winning the lottery, right?” He leaned in. “That’s what you’ve been talking about with your Malden buddies, isn’t it? About how great it was to make me eat my pitches during the regular season.”

  Liam stared at Phillip for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “You know what? You’re right. That’s exactly what I was trying to do whenever we faced each other. Know something else? It cost me my spot on the All-Star roster. You and I both know I’m only here because some other guy decided not to play. And I’m your catcher today only because Owen got sidelined.” He let out a long sigh. “The thing is, I’m actually a good catcher. I’d have to be to have been in the World Series, wouldn’t I?”

  With that, Liam started back to the plate. Then he turned around. “You think it’s hard facing batters who want to hit off you? Try pretending you don’t hear people whispering that you’re the guy whose strikeout lost his team the World Series. Or moving across the country to the town where the pitcher who struck you out lives. Oh, and then try changing everything about the way you play your position in the hope that it will make things work with that very same pitcher. Yeah, that’s fun.”

  The words spilled out of his mouth before he could stop them. He instantly wished them back. He’d gone out to the mound to reassure Phillip. Instead, he’d gone on a rant about how hard his own life was. Face flaming with embarrassment, he hurried back to the plate.

  Malden was at the top of its batting order. Tony, up first, struck out swinging. The next two grounded out. In all, Phillip had thrown just six pitches. Ravenna 1, Malden 1.

  Back in the dugout, Liam and Phillip sat at opposite ends of the bench. Liam sensed Phillip looking at him at one point, but when he turned his head, the pitcher looked away.

  Four of Ravenna’s batters got up in the bottom of the third. Matt grounded out, but Rodney got on base with a double. Liam hoped to start a rally with a crushing hit of his own, but he popped out. Mason struck out to end their chances. Neither Malden nor Forest Park crossed home plate in the fourth, so going into the top of the fifth, the board still showed them with a single run apiece.

  Coach Driscoll conferred with his assistant coaches before Ravenna headed to the field. They made some substitutions, but to Liam’s surprise and delight, he was still in the game. So was Phillip.

  Guess we must be doing something right, Liam thought as he located his mitt.

  Malden was at the bottom of its order. The hitter didn’t look particularly strong, but Liam knew looks could be deceiving. Sure enough, he sent Phillip’s first pitch toward third base. James Thrasher, in for Cole, jumped to make the catch. He was one of the taller players on Ravenna’s roster, but he would have needed a six-inch vertical leap to land the ball in his glove. By the time Luis, now playing left field, scooped up the ball, the batter was standing safely at first.

  James slapped his glove against his thigh, clearly disgusted with himself. Liam wanted to yell something encouraging to him. But he hesitated, remembering how Phillip felt about chatter. When James scuffed his cleat through the dirt, though, Liam decided the third baseman needed noise more than Phillip needed quiet.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right, shake it off, Thrasher!” he called. He pounded his fist into his mitt. “Here we go, Ravenna, play is to first or second! Or better yet—first and second!”

  The comment brought laughter from the stands. More important, it made James smile. When Tony slugged a bouncing grounder toward third, James was ready. He snared the ball on a hop and relayed it to Matt at second. One out
—and then Matt whirled and hurled a pinpoint throw to Mason at first for out number two!

  “Yes!” Liam celebrated the double play with a quick fist-pull by his side.

  The celebration was short-lived, however. After throwing well for most of the game, Phillip gave up his first walk.

  Ed, one of the three Malden players Liam had met, came up to bat. Sam had said Ed was a threat at the plate, but, so far, Liam hadn’t seen much from him.

  He should have paid closer attention.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  GTG, Carter texted Sean hurriedly. My game’s on.

  Carter and his Forest Park teammates had been cheering for Ravenna’s double play when there was a loud knock on the hotel door. Ash opened it to find Coach Harrison and Coach Filbert on the other side.

  “Nice to find you all together,” Mr. Harrison said, looking amused. “Now stash all your electronics in your rooms and get yourselves in gear. The sun’s out, the fields are drying, and we’re due to play Calder in less than two hours.”

  There was a mad scramble as the boys hurried off to their own rooms to change. Carter and Ash took turns in the bathroom. Carter had just enough time to send the text to Sean before racing to join his teammates.

  The earlier thunderstorm had whisked away the humidity that had hung over the ballpark for much of the tournament. The temperatures were in the high seventies when the game began. But without the oppressive mugginess, the air felt fresh and clean.

  On the mound, Carter closed his eyes, took a deep lungful of that air, held it, and then let it out slowly. When he opened his eyes, he felt focused and ready to face Larry Miller, the first Calder batter.

  Three pitches later, Larry returned to the dugout with his bat dragging behind him. Jarvis Greenaway took Larry’s place in the batter’s box. Carter mowed him down with three straight pitches, too. Calder’s third batter fared no better.