“Are you serious?” Cassie said. “Have you seen that Cassie Bennett pitch? I love her.”
“Tell us about it,” Greta said. But she was smiling too.
From the time Sarah arrived at the field, there was just something about her body language that made it seem as if she were keeping even more distance from her teammates than usual. Something that told Cassie to keep her distance. Sarah looked more anxious than she had at tryouts, more locked in to her routines. She set her bat bag in the same place she always did under the bench. She stood in her spot in the outfield during batting practice. Cassie’s dad made sure that everybody hit in the same order during BP as they had at the last couple of practices, the same batting order he was going to use in the game. Cassie was ahead of Sarah, with Brooke Connors behind her.
With every pitch Sarah saw during BP, she went through all of her rituals, pulling at the shoulders of the blue Red Sox T-shirt with the red trim, tapping home plate, all of it.
All Cassie said to her, right before the game started, was “Good luck today.”
“Good luck today,” Sarah said back, and then went and sat at the end of the bench, glove already on her hand, waiting for Mr. Bennett to give them the signal to take the field for the top of the first. It was as if Sarah’s visit the other night hadn’t happened. She didn’t mention it. Neither did Cassie.
“You think Sarah’s gonna be okay today?” Cassie said to her dad.
“We’re about to find out,” he said. “But just so you know? Okay would be perfectly okay with me.”
“Okay, then!” Cassie said, and gave her dad a high five.
She turned then and saw Jack and Teddy and Gus, standing at the fence behind the Red Sox bench, waving her over.
“Well, you know what they say,” Jack said when Cassie got with them. “You’re only as good as your starting pitcher.”
“Yup,” Teddy said, “that’s what they say, isn’t that right, Gus?”
“That’s what they say,” Gus said, grinning at Cassie.
“All of you,” Cassie said, “please shut up.”
Jack put out his hand. Cassie put hers on top of it. Teddy and Gus put theirs on top of hers.
“Your team is the same as our team,” Jack said.
Cassie looked at him, and smiled. “I know that,” she said. “The home team.”
Gus said, “You are aware that you won’t have Jack or me to pass the ball to today, right?”
“I’ll try to manage,” she said.
“How we lookin’ with the new girl?” Gus said.
Cassie told him that it was the same as always. They were about to play the game and find out.
• • •
Cassie knew she was going to be on the same strict pitch count she’d been under last season. Eighty was the magic number. Her dad might let her go a couple of pitches past that, but just a couple and no more. He said that all young pitchers’ arms had to be protected, whether it was a Little League boy throwing overhand or his daughter whipping the ball in underhand.
Chris Bennett had shown Cassie the schedule. Teams in their league were going to play two games a week. The plan was for Cassie to pitch every other game. Brooke was the next best pitcher on their team, so she was going to be the team’s other starter. Allie was going to be their closer. Cassie’s dad had told her that once they got into the season, he wanted to give Sarah a shot too. But that was for later. He said he didn’t want to put too much on her plate too soon.
“It’s not just Sarah,” he’d told Cassie. “My job as a coach is to make sure every player on our team is in her comfort zone.”
Cassie was the one in the zone today, and making the Hollis Hills hitters extremely uncomfortable. She felt that good on the mound, almost as if she’d come from last year’s championship game to this game. By the time she was through the top of the second, she’d struck out five of the first six batters she’d faced. When the Red Sox were all back at the bench after the top of the second, her catcher, Brooke, said, “You know what the sound of the ball in my mitt is? Like my favorite song.”
But the Yankees’ starting pitcher, Sydney Ellis, was already pitching as if she wanted to match Cassie strikeout for strikeout. By the end of the fourth, the game was still 0–0. Each team had just one hit. Cassie got the first for her team with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, a double over first base and down the right-field line with one out. Sarah, who’d struck out her first time up, clearly nervous, came up behind Cassie and hit the ball really well, but the Yankees’ center fielder chased it down about six feet short of the fence. Cassie tagged up and went to second, getting herself into scoring position, but Brooke lined out to left, and the game stayed scoreless.
The only ball hit to Sarah so far had been a single to center by Sydney Ellis. There’d been no fly balls hit her way, no chance for her to show off either her speed or her arm. But Cassie wasn’t really fixed on what Sarah was doing. She was just in the game she was pitching, and the game they were all playing. You could try to practice the way you played as much as you wanted. But you couldn’t fool yourself. Real games were different. They just were. Even on the same field you practiced on, it was as if you were breathing different air. It was, Cassie knew, the rarefied air of competition, of doing something you loved, doing it as well as you could, your best against their best. Didn’t matter whether it was the first game
