Here it comes.
See if you can hit it.
The best part for her, once she got through the top of the fifth with another strikeout and a couple of weak ground balls, was that her pitch count was low.
“One more inning,” her dad said after she’d struck out Sydney Ellis to end the Yankees’ fifth. “You’re sitting on seventy pitches, and it’s only our first game.”
Cassie knew better than to debate him. She knew he was right about pitchers’ arms, and knew he was looking out for her.
“A deal is a deal,” she said.
“You’re the one who’s dealing today,” he said.
“All I need now is a run,” Cassie said.
The Red Sox didn’t get it in the bottom of the fifth, because Sydney was still dealing, setting down the Red Sox in order, two strikeouts, a foul pop-up to the first baseman.
Cassie knew she only had ten pitches, maybe a couple more, if she wanted to finish one more half inning. She stepped on it then with her fastball, doing the things the announcers always talked about pitchers doing when she’d watch a game on television: reaching back for a little extra. She struck out the first two batters in the sixth on six pitches, before going to 1–2 on the next girl up, the Yankees’ shortstop. She was sitting on seventy- nine pitches. Before she threw the next pitch, she managed to briefly catch her dad’s eye.
And wink.
Then she blew strike three past the shortstop, whom she’d heard the Yankees call Kendall. Big swing, much bigger miss, at a high fastball. Game still scoreless. Cassie knew she was a shortstop now, and that Allie was coming in to pitch the seventh. Ana Rivera would move from shortstop and replace Allie at second base.
They still needed a run, and almost got it in the bottom of the sixth. Greta singled with two outs. Cassie ripped a single to left behind her. First and second. Sarah was at the plate now, in a hero spot, a chance to knock in what might be the winning run in the first official softball game of her life.
It was also a chance for her to win over some skeptical teammates, show them she belonged and convince them that she did.
Cassie watched from first base as Sarah went through her routine. She didn’t look out at Sydney, still in there for Hollis Hills, until Sarah had gone through all her checks and tugs and little rituals, like she was checking off one box after another in her mind. And today Cassie had noticed she was doing one more thing: once she was in the batter’s box, she gave a quick look up into the bleachers behind the Red Sox bench to where her parents were sitting, and mouthed something. Cassie wasn’t a good enough lip-reader to know what.
Sarah didn’t take any pitches this time, something she had done her first two times up, passing up two right down the middle. Cassie had started to wonder if that was part of her routine too.
Not this time.
This time she swung at the first pitch she saw, and connected. Big-time. When Cassie heard the sound of the ball coming off Sarah’s aluminum bat, saw the flight of it over her head as she was flying toward second base, running all the way with two outs, she thought it looked exactly the same as the home run Sarah had hit to right to win the scrimmage.
From the time Cassie had started playing softball, she’d heard all the jokes about how you always put your worst fielder in right field. Only, there weren’t any worst fielders in All-Stars, and certainly not on the Yankees, whose right fielder had already made two dazzling plays, one a diving catch on a ball in front of her, the other on the backhand as she’d run into the gap in right-center to catch up with a ball Brooke had hit.
The catch she made now was better than both of them. The girl—Cassie would find out her name was Marcie Kincaid when she sought her out to congratulate her after the game—somehow caught up with a ball that had been hit directly over her head, a step from the wall. She reached up at the last moment, made another backhand catch. She put out her free hand to stop herself from running into the wall, or maybe through it, turned around, and showed everybody that the ball was still in her glove, while sprinting back toward the infield.
The game was still 0–0.
Sarah had come that close to a home run. Even if it hadn’t been a home run, the Red Sox had come that close to scoring two runs if the ball had just managed to get over Marcie Kincaid’s head. For now Marcie had saved the game for her team.
“Well,” Cassie said to Brooke when she jogged back to their bench, “that was aggressive.”
So now it was the top of the last, if one team could find a way to scratch out a run. If the game stayed 0–0, they would get just one extra inning to break the tie. Or it would end in a tie. That was the rule in All-Stars.
Nobody wanted a tie, not after a game like this.
Allie did the one thing you never wanted to do in the late innings of a close game: walked the leadoff hitter. Cassie could see how nervous she was, even though she’d been their closer last season too. Allie had the arm, anybody could see that. But suddenly she was acting as if she were outside her comfort zone, and outside the strike zone, as she tried to keep the game at 0–0, tried not to give up the run that might lose a lot of her teammates the first game they’d lost in two years.
She struck out the next batter. But gave up a single to Marcie Kincaid. First and
