The Only Game

by Mike Lupica

  “Now you’re just making stuff up.”

  “When did you ever hear her admit she’d made a mistake about anything?” Jack said.

  What came out of Teddy then came out as a whisper.

  “I wish I could have crossed that bridge,” he said.

  “So you will next time.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Teddy said.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you,” Jack said. “I’ve got more confidence in you than you have in yourself.”

  Teddy said, “Thanks for coming to find me.”

  “You would have done the same.”

  “Nah,” Teddy said. “Too much work.”

  “Wait a second!” Jack said. “Did somebody say work?”

  Teddy put his head down in mock agony. “Oh no. What have I done?”

  “Baseball or football?”

  “Football.”

  Teddy went home and got the new ball his mom had bought for him. They played until it was time for Jack to go home for supper, and for once, it was Teddy who wanted to keep going. Jack was the one who did get tired this time, because Teddy was playing quarterback, showing off his arm, and Jack was the one running one pass pattern after another.

  On the ride home, Jack was still thinking about everything that had happened today. Thinking how Teddy really wasn’t so different from him and Cassie and Gus.

  Thinking that Teddy was turning into more of a jock, a little bit at a time, than he realized.

  What he’d shown Jack today was that when he went down—the way he’d gone down in gym class that time—he could get back up.

  All Jack had done was give him a hand.

  A little help.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There was something different about Teddy the next couple of weeks. He was still the same funny guy. Jack just didn’t think he was trying to be as funny all the time. Teddy was quieter than when they’d first started hanging around, even when it was only the two of them.

  Jack didn’t bring up what had happened at the bridge, and neither did Teddy. Cassie had tried to talk about it with him one time when they were all having pizza in town, because nothing was off-limits with her. But Teddy finally told her to please stop trying to put a smiley face on what had happened.

  “I know you feel bad that you took me there,” he said. “But you make me feel worse every time you talk about it, like I’m standing there watching you guys all over again. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Jack and Teddy kept working out, every chance Jack got around his baseball schedule and Cassie’s softball schedule. Teddy kept showing up at Rays games, and even Cassie’s games sometimes. Jack and Teddy would text at night, and talk on the phone. There was no question, with either of them, that they really were friends now. And Teddy seemed just as comfortable when Cassie and Gus were part of the pack.

  And none of that was the big news in Jack’s life. The big news was that nobody could beat the Rays, who had climbed out of last place and begun to move up the standings. They’d become the team everybody had expected them to be at the start of the season.

  They’d played six games since Jack started to play again and won them all. After his first sketchy start against the White Sox, Jack had dominated in his next two, giving up a grand total of one run in seven innings. Coach Leonard let him go four innings his last time out against the Tigers because his pitch count was so low.

  Suddenly the Rays were 7–3 with four games left in the regular season, and only the White Sox and Mariners, both at 8–2, had better records. And the Rays were playing the Mariners tonight on the back field at Highland Park, with a chance to tie them for second place.

  Four teams in the Atlantic made the play-offs. Before the game, Gus was talking about what he had been talking about a lot lately, getting into first place and getting the top seed for the play-offs.

  “Let’s just get into the play-offs first and then worry about seedings,” Jack said. “It’s not like if we don’t end up first we have to go on the road.”

  Gus shook his head, as if he simply couldn’t believe how dense his friend was.

  “If it comes down to the last inning of the championship game,” he said, “I want us to have last ups. And so do you.”

  “Gotta admit,” Jack said, “you’re right.”

  “The season didn’t start the way it was supposed to,” Gus said. “But it’s going to end that way. Winning the Atlantic is the first step to us punching our ticket to the World Series.”

  “How about we just focus on winning the game tonight?”

  “I like the Rays’ chances,” Gus said. “I hear their starting pitcher doesn’t stink.”

  Jack left Gus then and walked down the rightfield line. He sat down in the grass, his back against the place where the wire fence ended and the green rightfield wall, the one with all the local advertisements on it, began. He had done this the last couple of starts, just spent time alone for a few minutes to get ready for the game.

  His dad was big on treating every pitch and every at bat of the game the same. He believed that if you could do that, if you had the same routine whether it was the top of the first inning or the bottom of the last, you took pressure off yourself.

  “It’s about process, not worrying about results,” Tim Callahan said. “You know how much I love golf, at least when I don’t hate it. Watch the pros on TV. It’s why they have the same routine before every shot.”

  Jack thought about that now, closed his eyes and pictured himself on the mound tonight in the top of the first, imagining himself throwing strike one.

  But he was also thinking about Brad.

  Even with the season going as well as it was, there were times when he missed his brother as much as he ever had.

  Sometimes more.

  As much as he loved sharing the success he was having right now with his teammates, as much as he loved sharing it with his parents and his friends, he still wanted to be sharing it with his brother.

  The brother who’d found a way to get him the Pedroia ball and who’d written him that note.

  He pulled the note out now, angling his body so nobody could see what he was doing or would want to ask him later what he was reading in the outfield.

  Then he read it all over again.

  It wasn’t the original. The original was in the top drawer of his desk. This was a copy he’d made on his printer, one he carried in his back pocket to every game.

  I love watching you play. Always have, always will.

  He didn’t have to read all of it, didn’t really need to read it at all. He pretty much had Brad’s words memorized by now. He still carried the words with him to his games. It was as much a good luck charm for him as the Pedroia ball sitting in its stand on top of his dresser.

  This way he could bring Brad to the games with him.

  He wasn’t sad all the time. He didn’t go through his days feeling sorry for himself. More than ever, he knew how happy baseball made him, how important it was to him. He was smart enough about himself to know he wasn’t really himself when he didn’t have a ball game to play, or one to look forward to, when he wasn’t part of a team.

  He’d tried to explain all that to his dad when they were sitting in the parking lot, before Jack had gotten out of the car, how he felt happy and sad at the same time.

  “I feel the exact same way,” his dad had said. “The trick for all of us is to find a way for happy to win.”

  “It’s hard sometimes.”

  His dad laughed. “No,” he’d said, “it’s impossible sometimes. But the thing I try to focus on, the thing I hold on to, is how happy your brother was in the short time we all had him in our lives. And I tell myself that the only thing that would have made him sad was if we weren’t living happy lives without him. Starting with you.”

  Then he’d pulled Jack toward him and kissed him on the forehead and said, “Now go play the way you can and make yourself happy.”

  “Process, not result
s.”

  “There you go.”

  Jack put the note back in his pocket and walked back to join his teammates. The Rays were the home team tonight. It meant Jack got the ball in the top of the first.

  He struck out the side.

  He did the same thing in the top of the second.

  The Rays were already ahead 3–0 by then. When Jack tripled home two more runs in the bottom of the inning, it was 5–0, then 7–0 after Gus hit a home run over the leftfield wall.

  He went to the mound in the top of the third and struck out the side again. Nine up, nine down. Six of the Mariners’ hitters had gone down swinging. Three had taken called third strikes. He’d never gone through the batting order like this in his life.

  It wasn’t a perfect game. He’d only pitched three innings. But it felt pretty perfect. Jack was ready to keep going, to see if he could keep his streak alive, but when he got back to the bench after the top of the third, Coach told him he was done for the night.

  “We don’t need to rub it in,” Coach said. “And we might face these guys in the play-offs. Let them just remember the way you punched them all out. You good with that?”

  Jack grinned at Coach and said, “Somebody’s always telling me it’s a long season.”

  He sat down and drank some Gatorade. Gus came over and sat down next to him.

  “You want to know how many pitches you threw outside the strike zone?” Gus said.

  “How many?”

  “Eight,” he said. “To nine batters. I just asked Mr. Sutter.”

  Scott’s dad kept the score book.

  “As soon as Scott threw me the ball back,” Jack said, “I was ready to go.”

  He was still pitching out of the stretch, he’d stayed with that after his first start. But he felt like he could have had the biggest windup and leg kick in the world and still have kept hitting Scott’s mitt tonight, putting the ball where he wanted to. Not thinking—or overthinking, the way he had in his first start.

  Just getting out of his own way and pitching.

  He was still two batters away from getting a chance to hit in the bottom of the third, when he heard Cassie yell, “Hey.”

  She was leaning over the fence. She’d come to the game with Teddy, but he was nowhere in sight. When Jack asked where he was, Cassie said, “He lost interest when he found out you weren’t getting to pitch anymore.”

  “Can’t lie, Cass,” Jack said, “that was fun tonight.”

  “Even I never struck out nine batters in a row,” she said.

  “You sound a little jealous,” Jack said. “Is something like that even possible for Cassie Bennett?”

  “No,” she said.

  But as she was walking back to the bleachers, she looked back over her shoulder, grinning, and said, “Maybe a little bit.”

  Jack looked to the top of the stands then and waved up at his parents. They waved back, his mom pumping her fist like a complete maniac. On this night, she was the one who looked happiest of all.

  Tonight, Jack noticed, Mrs. Morales wasn’t at the game, so the seat next to his mom, Brad’s old seat, was empty.

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Perfect night all the way around, until Jack’s catcher broke his ankle.

  TWENTY-SIX

  It happened in the bottom of the fifth. The Rays were ahead 8–2 by then, and Scott was the only guy in the original lineup who didn’t have a hit.

  But with one out he hit a loud line drive that seemed to split the centerfielder and leftfielder and get past them almost before either one of them broke on the ball.

  Because Scott was a catcher and always taking heat from the guys because of his lack of speed, you could see him busting it out of the box, like he wanted to show everybody he had jets if he needed them.

  By the time he rounded first, he could see that the centerfielder was just getting to the ball, a few feet short of the wall. Jack saw Scott put his head down now, sure he was thinking triple all the way.

  Maybe it was because he was running with his head down when he got close to second base. Maybe he was slightly off stride. Or maybe it was just bad luck. But instead of cutting the inside of the bag, the way Coach Leonard had taught them, his left foot came down hard right on the top of second base.

  Jack saw what they all saw in the next moment, saw Scott’s left ankle collapse underneath him, saw him go down.

  Even then he was a ballplayer, crawling back to put a hand on second, not wanting to get tagged out. He looked up at the field umpire and asked for time. Then he was curled up in the dirt, holding his ankle as Coach Leonard came running for him from the third-base coaching box and Scott’s dad came running from the bench, his score book still in his hand.

  They both knelt down next to him, Coach with his arm around him, talking to him, Scott nodding. Coach and Scott’s dad carefully helped him to his feet. Or foot, because Scott had his left leg bent underneath him, only touching air.

  They slowly walked him off. Players on both teams applauded. They didn’t even stop at the bench, kept walking right past it, to where Mr. Sutter’s car was parked in the lot. The rest of the Rays watched from behind the bench as they lifted Scott into the backseat so he could stretch out. Coach closed the door. Mr. Sutter got behind the wheel and the car pulled away. Coach came back and told them they were on their way to Lewisboro Medical Center for X-rays.

  The Rays scored three more runs the rest of the way and ended up winning 10–2. Nobody cared. By the end of the night they were all texting one another and Facebook-posting one another with the news that Scott’s ankle was broken and that their first-string catcher—their only catcher, really—was lost for the season.

  Gus’s second-to-last text of the night to Jack read this way:

  GUY WE CAN LEAST AFFORD TO LOSE OTHER THAN U WE LOSE.

  Jack’s response:

  U GOT THAT RIGHT.

  Gus:

  NOW WHAT?

  Jack:

  NO CLUE.

  It was because he didn’t have a clue. Good catchers were rare enough in their league. You were lucky to have one good one, much less two. Brett Hawkins was their emergency catcher, and Coach made sure to give him enough work during practice and would have put him into tonight’s game sooner if he hadn’t been rooting for Scott to get a hit.

  But they all knew that their real backup catcher was nobody.

  Now they needed a backup plan for that as they got ready to play their biggest games of the season, still as close to being in fifth place—and out of the play-offs—as they were to first, no matter how many games in a row they’d won.

  What had started out as such a perfect night for Jack, striking out those nine guys in a row, had ended as badly as it could for him and for his team.

  It wasn’t as if he needed any more reminders about how fast and easy it was to go from happy to sad, in baseball and pretty much everything else.

  But here it was for him again.

  For all of them this time.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Brett said he’d be happy to catch the rest of the way if it helped the team, even if the last time he’d been a regular catcher was when he was nine.

  Gus told Coach that he’d never caught in his life, but that he was a fast learner. “How hard is it to be a catcher, anyway?” he joked.

  This was at practice two nights later, and Gus was only saying that for Scott’s benefit, because Scott was there with the rest of the team even with his crutches and the soft cast on his left ankle.

  “Either Brett or Gus would be fine, Coach,” Scott said. “Especially Gus. After all, you told me they call catcher’s equipment the tools of ignorance, right?”

  Jack raised a hand.

  “Can I try?” he said. “I know I could do it. And think about it: You could move Hawk to short full-time, since he already plays there when I’m pitching. We all know T.W. can play anywhere in the infield, and he could move to third. And Andre is always saying he’s a born infielder.”


  Coach Leonard smiled when Jack was finished. “He pitches, he hits, he plays shortstop. Now he even coaches! Thanks for the offer, Jack. But no thanks. I’m not risking my best pitcher’s right hand behind home plate.”

  He nodded at Hawk. “Suit up, big boy. You get first crack at this, since you’re the one with the most practice.”

  To all of them he said, “We’re going to be fine.”

  But Jack wondered about that after watching Hawk move around behind the plate and just try to do basic catching stuff over the next half hour. He’d never really paid much attention when Hawk filled in for Scott before. Tonight he did. And didn’t like what he saw.

  It might have been a simple case of nerves, but Hawk was having trouble even catching the ball in the pocket of the mitt Scott had loaned him. It kept happening even when Jack was on the mound, trying to lay the ball in there so that Hawk barely had to move the mitt.

  When Coach told Jack to bounce a few in front of the plate, it was a total disaster. Hawk struggled to keep the ball in front of him, and most of the pitches just scooted through his legs and back to the screen.

  None of it would have mattered if this were the first day of practice. It wasn’t. They were a little over a week away from the end of the regular season, three games left, still not guaranteed a play-off spot even if they did still have an outside shot at first place.

  Jack could see how hard Hawk was trying. But the more he struggled, the more he pressed. It only made his mechanics worse, if you could even call them mechanics. When Coach told him to make some throws to second, the ball either bounced six feet in front of the bag or sailed over T.W.’s head and into centerfield.

  When he finally made a perfect throw to T.W., he raised both arms in the air in triumph, mocking himself.

  “Coach,” he said, “you think when guys are stealing I can make them keep going back to first and trying again till I get it right?”

  “Hawk,” Coach said, “I want you to stop being so hard on yourself. Scott’s been catching his whole life. You just concentrate on catching the ball. If you’re worried about guys stealing, hold the ball. It’s not like even the best catchers in this league throw out a lot of guys.”