But even with all that, even though their team had now splintered like an old wooden baseball bat, they were all supposed to have the same common goal, which meant trying to win the game, trying not to start the season 0–2, trying to keep their eye on the same prize, making it to Fenway Park, getting to play what would feel to them like a softball World Series, getting to play some games on TV. It suddenly seemed to Cassie like a pretty long time ago that they were worried about being the best team in their league, maybe even going undefeated the way they had last summer.
Cassie had always believed that one of the big keys in sports was just getting out of your own way. And even if some of her teammates couldn’t get out of their own way tonight, she wasn’t going to let them get in hers. If they wanted to obsess about stuff that had nothing to do with winning the game, let them. She wasn’t wired that way. She was here to do what she always had: Play her own game and try to win her team’s. That was it and that was all.
She was here to play, not talk.
If Kathleen and Greta and Allie and the rest of them didn’t want to talk to her, their choice. She wasn’t going to push it, or push them. She’d read somewhere once about an old Boston Celtics coach who talked about how different basketball and baseball were, starting with the fact that there were only five players on the court for your team in basketball.
“In baseball,” the coach said, “it doesn’t matter whether the left fielder knows the catcher’s name.”
Cassie didn’t agree with him. She loved being on teams, loved the relationships, hated what was happening with the Red Sox. But she understood what the guy was talking about. Once the game started, she just hoped that everybody would figure it out. If everything was less social than it used to be, well, they were all just going to have to deal.
Do your job, she told herself.
She told Sarah the same thing before they took the field. Brooke was pitching tonight, so Cassie was back at shortstop. Maria was catching. Other than that, their team looked pretty much the same, even though it wasn’t.
“I always try to do my job,” Sarah said.
“I know,” Cassie said.
“I don’t think of it as a job,” Sarah said.
It occurred to Cassie again how literally Sarah could take the simplest comments.
“Well, I’m giving you one job tonight,” Cassie said. “If there is a ball between you and one of the other outfielders, call for it so loudly, they can hear you in Moran.”
“Okay,” Sarah said.
They took the field then, Cassie leading them out the way she always did. When she took her position between second and third, Kathleen ran right past her, not looking at Cassie, not slowing down.
Cassie said to herself, “Go, team.”
Cassie had the feeling that before they went a lot deeper into the season, Sarah was going to become one of their starting pitchers, just having seen her pitch from the mound a few times in practice. And if she could bring it in a game the way she did in practice, it would just make the Red Sox stronger, because Brooke wasn’t just the best catcher they had, she was the best catcher in their league.
Brooke liked being a catcher more, but she was a pretty good softball pitcher, too, and through the early innings she was pitching beautifully, shutting out the Mariners through the third. Cassie’s dad had tweaked their batting order just a little tonight, putting Lizzie at leadoff, following her with Kathleen, then Cassie and Sarah and Greta and Brooke after that. And it worked out right away, bottom of the first. Lizzie singled, Kathleen walked, Cassie doubled home both of them, Sarah singled home Cassie. It was Sarah’s first hit of the season. When she got to first base, it was almost as if she didn’t know what to do with herself, or how to act, until Lizzie’s dad, who was helping out by coaching first tonight, reached over and gave her a low five. From the bench Cassie could only see Sarah’s face in profile. But she thought Sarah was smiling.
Just like that it was 3–0. After the way they’d struggled offensively against Hollis Hills, they’d come out swinging tonight. In the third Brooke helped herself by hitting her first home run of the season and the team’s first home run.
For these few innings, this season looked an awful lot like last season. It just didn’t sound like last season, especially in the bench area. Everything was just much quieter than it used to be. When Brooke got back to the bench after her home run, only Cassie and Sarah and Lizzie were up to greet her. Before they went back out onto the field for the top of the fourth, Cassie’s dad pulled her aside and said, “Okay, what’s going on here?”
As softly as she could, Cassie said, “Some of my friends have decided to freeze me out. And freeze out anybody who’s still talking to me.”
“C’mon,” he said, “we can’t have that and be a real team.”
“Dad,” Cassie said. “Leave it alone. Or it will become a bigger thing than it already is. And they’ll think I went running to you because they’re being mean to me.”
“But this is ridiculous.”
“I know,” she said. “Let me handle it.”
It made him grin. “Gee,” he said, “never heard that one before.”
The Red Sox kept their lead into the fifth, but barely. Brooke walked the first two batters and then gave up back-to-back screaming doubles, and the 4–0 game was 4–3, in what felt like a blink. The Mariners finally ended up with the bases loaded, but with two outs Cassie dove to her left for a ball hit hard up the middle by the Mariners’ first
