He was slightly past his pitch count by the top of the seventh. Jerry York’s dad was keeping the book today, and keeping track of Jack’s pitches, and told him he was sitting on seventy- five, usually his limit.
“I’ve got a whole year to rest,” Jack said.
Mr. York smiled. “You’re the coach,” he said.
Cassie was with them. “This coach only looks this good because of the guy he’s got pitching,” she said.
Jerry’s dad said, “Go finish in style.”
Jack did, striking out the side. When the last out was finally in Teddy’s glove, Teddy ran out from behind home plate, tossing away his mask, and nearly knocked Jack to the ground when he jumped into his arms.
“I just always wanted to do that,” he told Cassie after the trophy presentation.
By then the parents were all on the field and the Cubs were posing with the trophy. When that was finally over, Cassie said to Jack, “You did it.”
“We did it,” he said.
“Yeah, well, get back to me the next time a player-coach wins the championship of this league,” she said.
“Repeat: we did it,” he said. “It’s never just one guy. It’s never supposed to be one guy. At least not when sports work the way they’re supposed to.”
“You know something?” she said. “You’re right.”
“You want to know something?” he said. “I never get tired of hearing you say that.”
“Shut up,” she said.
Jack said, “Where you gonna hang out until your game?”
She pointed at him, then over at Gus and Teddy, who were posing for their parents with the trophy.
“Where do you think?” Cassie said.
THIRTY-FIVE
Cassie didn’t think of it as trying to pitch her way to Fenway Park. She didn’t think about making the sixteen-team tournament and giving the Sox a chance to win the three games that would put them in Fenway.
She just wanted to win this game.
She wanted to win this season.
She wanted to win that.
Greta and Allie were talking to her again the way Kathleen was; the way they all were. They weren’t being overly friendly. Things obviously weren’t the way they used to be, and might not ever be again. She got that. She even got that no one had apologized to her. Teddy joked that it was clear now that Cassie must have been giving herself the silent treatment.
Cassie didn’t even know if today’s game mattered as much to the other girls as it did to her. But that didn’t matter to her either.
The game did matter to her. As much as any she’d ever played in her life. During basketball season she’d kept telling herself that she wasn’t trying to prove some point by playing point guard on the boys’ team. But today she knew she was trying to prove something to herself.
Mostly about being strong.
She’d always prided herself on her strength, in sports and everything else. She’d always thought she was strong.
Now she knew.
The last thing to do was win the game.
• • •
She had a quiet moment to herself, about five minutes to three. She went down the right-field line and sat in the grass with her back against the wire fence that separated the field from the parking lot. The other players knew enough to leave her alone. So did her dad.
And then Cassie thought about Sarah Milligan. The night before, she’d read up a little more about athletes with autism and Asperger’s. She hadn’t done it for a couple of weeks. It wasn’t as if she thought she would find some big secret that would help Sarah today or help the team, or make things easier. She still wanted to learn. She was still looking for a way to break down the barriers between them, whether it helped in softball or not.
And she’d found this story from Sports Illustrated about a basketball player with autism who’d once played for Michigan State. In the story he talked about how much sports mattered to him, and why it mattered.
“You might want to work hard,” the player said, “to get better at something you like to do. Sports rewards all that. Trust me, it does.”
With everybody, Cassie thought. One more time she’d looked for some truth about Sarah and found one for herself instead. The other thing that jumped out at her from the story was the player talking about the sense of “community” you got from sports.
They’d lost that on the Red Sox, for too much of the season. Now she hoped they’d gotten it back, just in time. She hoped but didn’t know for sure.
All she knew was that they were about to find out.
She heard her dad calling to her now, telling her that it was going to be practically impossible to start the game without her.
When she got to him, she said, “Let’s do this.”
Their season in the league was ending with Hollis Hills, the same as the Cubs’ season just had. And the Red Sox season had begun with the Hollis Hills Yankees, a game that had been decided when that ball had fallen in between Kathleen and Sarah. So now they had come full circle. Even the starting pitchers were the same: Cassie and Sydney Ellis.
It was still 0–0 in the bottom of the fifth. With one out, Cassie thought she’d gotten every bit of a Sydney fastball, but their left fielder made a great catch, running toward the line. Then Sarah did catch all of one and hit it into the gap in left-center. Their center fielder tried to make a hero play, diving to her right, but missed. Sarah had pulled a ball over third for a double her first time up, and the left fielder was shading her too close to the line this time up. So she was nowhere near the play. By the time the right fielder came all the way over from the other side of the field to chase the ball down, Sarah
