TWENTY-NINE
The game with the Hollis Hills Yankees felt like a play-off game, just because it mattered to both teams.
The Red Sox got first place if they won. The Yankees got into the play-offs if they won.
But Cassie wasn’t interested in knocking the Yankees out of the play-offs. This wasn’t about them. It was about her team. It was about her. She wanted to finish first. Keep fighting.
Cassie was starting today. And her dad had already announced that Allie would start the first game of the play-offs. He didn’t say it, but everybody knew that if Allie faltered, Sarah would be the first relief pitcher into the game. By now everybody had seen how much arm she had. Cassie’d even thought that her dad might start her in the play-offs. But when she asked him about that, he said he honestly believed that Sarah was more valuable to them—and more comfortable—in center field. She didn’t hate pitching. She actually seemed to like it. But being in center, that had become a part of her routine, the order she liked, as much as anything else.
“And,” he explained in the car, “I’ve coached Allie a long time. And whatever differences you’ve had with her, that we’ve had with her, she’s earned the right to get this start.”
“Fine with me,” Cassie said. “I’m just worried about my start today.”
Her dad said, “Don’t worry. Be happy.”
“You didn’t just say that.”
“Kind of.”
“Don’t be weird, Dad.”
He giggled. “Sometimes I crack myself up,” he said.
Last season Cassie might have said something to her teammates, as team captain, before a game like this. She would have told them that they needed to finish a job today, finish off the regular season right. She would have told them that if you treat every game like it’s important, then the moment will never get too big for you when the games get even more important.
Something like that.
But all of that stayed inside her own head today. From the time they showed up at the field at Hollis Hills, Kathleen and Greta and Allie acted as if yesterday had never happened, and avoided Cassie the way they had been all along. Cassie did what she always did, soft-tossed with Lizzie and Sarah after she’d warmed up for real with Maria, who’d remained the team’s regular catcher after Brooke had gotten hurt.
As Cassie and Sarah walked back to the bench, Cassie said, “Good luck today.”
“Why do people say that?” Sarah said.
“Good luck?”
“What does luck have to do with anything?” she said. “I don’t even think luck is a thing. Do you really think it’s a thing? I don’t.”
By now Cassie shouldn’t have been surprised that Sarah Milligan took things as literally as she did. Even something as innocent as a teammate wishing her luck.
“Have a good game, then,” Cassie said. “I guess that’s what I should have said.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Cassie thought: Maybe my teammates not talking to me isn’t always such a terrible thing.
“Not a clue,” Cassie said.
Then she put out her glove, and Sarah touched it lightly with her own, before she went to her usual place at the end of the bench, then walked over to the bat rack to make sure her bat was where it always was.
She didn’t believe in luck, obviously.
Just order.
• • •
Today there wasn’t much luck needed for the Red Sox, because Cassie kept setting down the Yankees in order.
She struck out the side in the first, gave up a hit in the second, struck out the side again in the third. Even the hit she gave up wasn’t much of a hit, a slow roller hit to Greta’s right. Cassie got over to first in plenty of time, but Greta was a little slow getting the ball out of her glove, and the girl from Hollis Hills beat the play.
It was 2–0 by then for the Sox, because Cassie had doubled in the first and Sarah had doubled her home and then scored on a single by Kathleen. And that’s really the way the game should have ended, because Cassie just kept rolling, into the seventh, her pitch count low, determined to finish what she’d started, the game, the regular season. All of it.
In the bottom of the seventh, though, with Cassie still out there, Lizzie kicked a routine ground ball. The next girl bunted, but even though Maria fielded the ball cleanly, she decided to try to get a force at second, and sailed the ball all the way into center field. By the time Sarah ran it down, the Yankees had runners on second and third, with nobody out.
Cassie looked around the bases and thought:
Okay, what the heck just happened here?
But she knew the answer. Sports had just happened. What did her dad like to say? You didn’t get to rent today’s game. It was her job to figure out a way out of the jam. Lizzie asked for time and started to walk over to the mound. Cassie met her halfway, covered her mouth with her glove, and said, “No worries, Liz. I got this.”
“Sorry I got you into this mess,” Liz said.
“Shut up,” Cassie said.
She went back to the mound and struck out the Yankees second baseman on four pitches. Then got the shortstop to hit a weak pop-up between the mound and first. Cassie waved off Greta and caught it herself.
Two outs.
The Yankee’s best hitter, their center fielder, Lexi Garcia, was next. Cassie felt as if she knew her fairly well, having faced her the past two summers. It meant Cassie knew how much power Lexi had and how the harder you pitched her, the better she liked it.
And Cassie knew full well that you had to stay away from Lexi’s sweet spot: balls down and in. It was that way with a lot of left-handed hitters. You didn’t see it as much with right-handed hitters. But that’s the way it was with Lexi. Allie had thrown her that kind of pitch last season, and Lexi had hit the
