The Big Field

by Mike Lupica

  The only person who said anything was Darryl, Darryl with his cap turned around backward even though he knew Mr. Cullen hated that, and wearing some new cool shades Hutch hadn’t seen before.

  “The two of you come here straight from breakfast?” Darryl said.

  He didn’t wait for an answer from either one of them, just walked casually toward the right-field fence.

  Orlando got two runs in the first off Paul Garner.

  Then they got two more in the second.

  So it was 4–0 when Mr. C came out to talk to Paul, runners on second and third, still just one out. Hutch thought he might pull Paul, even if that would mean bringing in Tommy O’Neill, who hadn’t pitched an inning since the semis of the county tournament.

  But all their coach did was pat Paul on the butt and say something that got a smile out of him. Sometimes that was all he was out there for, to get a smile from a pitcher in trouble, and wouldn’t leave the mound until he did.

  Before he crossed back over the baseline, Mr. C brought the infield in, meaning they weren’t going to trade an out for a run here. They would try to hold things at 4–0.

  What they wanted here was a ground ball to Darryl or Hutch. But Hutch knew that was going to be easier said than done because Paul had been up with his pitches from the start.

  Not now.

  He finally put some late break on his first pitch to Orlando’s No. 2 hitter, who put a good swing on the ball and blistered a one-hopper hard right at Hutch.

  The ball was on Hutch so quickly he felt like a hockey goalie, dropping to his knees to make sure the ball didn’t go through him because nothing was going through him tonight, gloving the ball cleanly, transferring it to his throwing hand in one clean move.

  The kid on third, who’d taken off on contact, decided to test Hutch.

  Maybe he just wanted to put more pressure on the second baseman who’d lost last night’s game for his team. Or maybe he didn’t know this particular second baseman had a shortstop’s arm.

  Whatever.

  From his knees Hutch sidearmed a perfect throw to Brett, who had the plate completely blocked with his left leg. The kid coming from third had about as much of a chance of getting through Brett as he did beating Hutch’s throw.

  Yes! Hutch whispered to himself.

  Two outs.

  When Orlando’s No. 3 hitter lined out to Alex in short center, the Cardinals were out of the inning, feeling much better than they had a right to, down four runs already.

  “You wait and see,” Mr. Cullen said when Hutch came down the dugout steps with the rest of the guys, all of them making a good baseball clatter on the wooden floor. “You just turned this sucker around.”

  “When we get some runs,” Hutch said.

  “You seem better today,” Mr. C said.

  “Having a game to play always makes me feel better,” Hutch said.

  The Orlando starter, a right-hander, wasn’t a hard thrower like The Rocket, and had this herky-jerky delivery, snapping his head toward first base as he delivered the ball, not even looking at his target. He wasn’t a submariner, his release point was higher than that. But he was definitely coming hard from the side, and first time up Hutch had trouble picking up the ball as it was released. He’d wound up lining weakly to second base.

  He promised himself that he wasn’t going to be late with his swing next time up. And he wasn’t. With two outs, Cody on second, and Alex on first in the bottom of the third, Hutch worked the count full after taking five straight pitches. Hadn’t taken the bat off his shoulder because he wasn’t doing that until he felt like he got a good look at the ball.

  He did so on the 3-2 pitch. It wasn’t the best swing of his life, but he hung in there even though the guy dropped down a little more than he had and the ball seemed to come at Hutch out of the third base coach’s box. Hung in and hooked one over the third baseman’s head, the ball landing about two feet fair, rolling from there into the corner before the left fielder finally caught up with it.

  Cody, off with the pitch, scored easily from second. No chance at him. But the Orlando shortstop thought he had a chance at Alex, which meant that he hadn’t been paying much attention to the way Alex Reyes could run the last two nights. Alex beat the shortstop’s relay in a breeze, sliding home just for the fun of it, Hutch taking third on the play.

  Then Darryl lined one up the middle that nearly spun the pitcher’s cap around on his head, and just like that the game was 4–3.

  Now it really was what Mr. C had said:

  Brand new ball game.

  26

  PAUL PITCHED HIMSELF OUT OF BASES-LOADED TROUBLE IN THE fourth and kept the game at 4–3, then the bottom half of the Cardinals batting order started a small rally in their half of the inning, Cody finally doubling home Tripp and Tommy to give them a 5–4 lead.

  Hutch looked out at Cody, clapping his hands at second base, the front of his uniform covered with dirt after his headfirst slide in there, and decided it was as fired up as he’d ever seen his friend on a ball field. Cody had gotten his biggest hit of the season, it had put them ahead, and best of all, he’d done it here. Here at Roger Dean, here in their World Series, here in a game they had to win.

  Though neither Alex nor Brett could bring Cody home, the Cardinals had their first lead of the game despite starting out in that 4–0 hole. When Cody came off the field, Hutch was waiting for him with his cap and his glove.

  “Now that,” Hutch said, “that hit was dirty.”

  Cody grinned at Hutch, took his cap from him, took the glove, looked around Roger Dean as if he were seeing it for the first time, and said, “Dude, that was mud.”

  Orlando tied them in the sixth, the big hit coming off the bat of Rocket Rod Brown, playing first base tonight. Paul left The Rocket stranded on third base but he was pitched out now, even though Hutch knew Mr. Cullen had wanted him to go a little deeper into the game.

  The question now was who Mr. C would bring in to replace him. If they won tonight, there was going to be another game to play, and more relief pitchers to use, on Monday. But that didn’t matter if they didn’t win tonight.

  He made his decision. When they were all in the dugout, Mr. C went over to Chris and said, “That rubber arm of yours got a couple more innings in it?”

  Chris frowned like he was thinking it over, rubbed his shoulder with his left hand, and said, “I guess it feels fine, Coach. But you sure you want to waste me in a meaningless game like this?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, wise guy.”

  “Oh yes!” Chris Mahoney said. “Tell Orlando to bring it on with their own bad selves.”

  Orlando made a pitching change of their own in the bottom of the sixth, bringing in a lefty. He was as tall as Rocket Brown but a whole lot wider, reminding Hutch of C. C. Sabathia, the double-wide who pitched for the Indians. The lefty showed you a lot of motion, so much that it was almost as if there was a little delay, like somebody had hit the pause button, right before he released the ball.

  He was wild at first, walking both Hutch and Darryl to start the Cardinals’ sixth, but then Hank bounced into a double play and Chris struck out and Game 2 was still tied.

  Three innings left, unless they were still tied after nine. It was different for Orlando, though, because they had that game in hand. The Cardinals had to win. Every pitch now, every hit or out in the game could be the game. Before the night was over, somebody was going to get the chance to make one of those swings—a scrapbook swing, Hutch thought—he’d remember for the rest of his life. Or maybe somebody would make the kind of error Hutch had made at the end of Game 1, remember that for as long as he played ball. Or even longer.

  Hutch remembered Mr. Cullen’s words to him the night he was suspended. “It hasn’t happened yet.” As he stood out near second waiting for Chris Mahoney to finish his warm up pitches, he thought: This is why you play.

  It was everything. The stakes, the setting, playing to keep playing. All of that. But somehow it wa
s even more than that. In a game like this, you knew what all your sports heroes knew. You had the same nerves, the same concentration, the same…fierceness to find a way to win the game. Somewhere tonight, Hutch knew, Jeter and the Yankees were playing a game, and even though it wasn’t the playoffs for them, at least not yet, maybe it was a close game. Maybe the thing that was going to decide their game hadn’t happened yet.

  It made Hutch smile, knowing that wherever Jeter was, he couldn’t possibly be into his game any more than Hutch was into this one at Roger Dean.

  In that way, they were the same tonight.

  Chris pitched a scoreless seventh. Orlando’s double-wide used all his deception and off-speed stuff to go through Tripp, Tommy and Cody after walking Paul to start the bottom of the seventh.

  Two more innings to go. There was some kind of ending coming. Nobody knew what it was. Chris Mahoney breezed through the top of the Orlando order in the top of the eighth, looking as fresh as the first game of the season. If the Cardinals could just push across one lousy run, Mr. C could give the ball to Pedro Mota and he could pitch them to Monday night.

  In the dugout, Darryl got up and walked all the way down from where he was sitting to where Hutch was sitting by himself near the bat rack.

  “Gonna have to be you or me,” Darryl said.

  Hutch said, “We’ve got a lot of guys who can get us a knock when we need one.” Not because he thought the other guys might be able to overhear, but because he meant it.

  “Yeah, but it’s not their job, homes,” Darryl said. “It’s ours.”

  Saying it matter-of-factly.

  Like they were equals.

  Darryl reached for where he’d left his batting helmet, on the top shelf of the bat rack. Hutch’s helmet was so old and nicked up, it was as if a truck had run over it. Darryl’s, even this close to the end of the season, looked as if somebody had just spit-shined it.

  “It’s on us,” he said, “and everyone on this team knows it, whether they’d say it or not.”

  Hutch knew Darryl was right. Maybe you couldn’t be as good as Darryl was without knowing it, without knowing who wanted to be up there in a big spot and who didn’t. Even after last night, even after letting that ball go right through him, Hutch knew he wasn’t afraid. He wanted to be up in this inning and when he got out on the field, he still wanted the ball coming to him.

  Alex Reyes grounded out to second. But then their third baseman booted a routine grounder from Brett like he was a World Cup soccer player, booted it all the way into foul territory. And when the kid pouted for a second rather than starting to chase after it right away, Brett kept right on going after he rounded first and beat the throw to second with a sweet hook slide.

  So they had the go-ahead run, maybe the winning run, on second with one out.

  Ever since last night, everybody in Hutch’s world had been telling him pretty much the same thing: Get them tomorrow. Well, here it was, this at-bat. Hutch figured he had waited long enough to square things. So he didn’t wait past the first pitch he saw from the lefty. He jumped on a fat, hanging curve and hit it so hard to left that it was almost over the left fielder’s head before he made a move on it. Brett could have walked home. It was 6–5, Hutch on second. Darryl singled him home on the first pitch he saw. 7–5. The inning ended that way.

  Three outs from Monday night.

  That close.

  Except the game wasn’t even close to being over.

  Game in and game out, Pedro Mota was the most consistent guy on their team, the one who never seemed to get rattled, the one who clearly loved to be out there in close games.

  He picked tonight to lose his fastball.

  He wasn’t throwing it as hard as he usually did, Hutch could see after a couple of pitches, and he couldn’t locate it. And when both of those things happened to you at once, it didn’t matter what league you were pitching in or what your numbers were, you were going to get rocked.

  Pedro was getting rocked.

  Orlando’s first batter, their right fielder, doubled between Alex and Cody, to the Dunkin’ Donuts sign in right center. The next guy drilled one right over first that looked like it might fall in the right-field corner for a double, but Tripp made an amazing play, diving to his left, not just getting his glove on the ball but holding on to it after hitting the ground hard.

  Hard out, Hutch thought, in all ways.

  Then, the Orlando center fielder, a switch-hitter, hit a hard grounder up the middle that neither Hutch nor Darryl had a chance at, and the guy from second scored easily. Just like that, still just one out, their lead was a single run, 7–6.

  Hutch looked into the dugout at Mr. C, as if knowing his coach wanted him to look in there. Mr. C made a talking motion with his hand. Hutch called time and took his time walking to the mound to talk to Pedro.

  “Don’t try that Mr. C crap and try to get me to smile,” Pedro said. “’Cause I ain’t smiling.”

  “Take a look around,” Hutch said. “No one is.”

  “I can’t get the stupid ball to do what I want it to do,” Pedro said, slamming down the rosin bag.

  Hutch just stared at him, not saying anything.

  “What?” Pedro said, as the home plate umpire took his mask off and came strolling toward them.

  Hutch reached over, took the ball from Pedro, took his own glove off so he could rub it up hard, then slapped it back into the pocket of Pedro’s glove.

  “You’re not giving up this lead,” Hutch said. “And we’re not losing this game. So suck it up and start making the ball do what you want it to.”

  Sometimes you had to take a different approach.

  His little speech to their closer helped for exactly one batter, the left fielder, who hit a sinking liner to center that Alex made a sliding catch on for the second out.

  One run ahead still, runner on first, one out away from Game 3, the little Orlando shortstop, littlest guy on their team, at the plate. Lefty hitter. A slap hitter, but one with a great eye who made you throw him strikes.

  There was no chatter from the other infielders, just Hutch. “You got this guy, Petey,” he called in to Pedro. It was Hutch’s nickname for him. Pedro was Dominican and so was his hero, Pedro Martínez, and Hutch knew that some of Pedro’s teammates used to call him “Little Petey.”

  The batter dug in, his bat raised, awaiting the pitch.

  There was other noise all around him at Roger Dean, from both dugouts, from the stands, from the PA announcer who’d just announced the shortstop’s name. But to Hutch, the field was quiet now, as quiet as his own room when there was no baseball on the radio.

  He cheated a little bit toward second base, remembering that even when the shortstop had made good swings his first two times up, he had hit the ball the other way. But on a 2-1 fastball from Pedro that was right over the heart of the plate, one of those fastballs that just said “crush me,” the little guy turned on the ball and pulled one to right.

  At first Hutch thought the ball might hang up long enough for Cody to catch it, Cody charging hard toward the sinking ball. But it had too much topspin on it, finally knifing into the ground about ten yards ahead of him, then taking this crazy hop and spinning away from Cody, toward the line.

  With two outs the kid from first was running all the way as Cody chased down the ball. Hutch was running, too, because it was all happening at once now at Roger Dean, the way it could in baseball, the runner running around the bases and the fielders going to their spots.

  Hutch glanced over his shoulder, saw the Orlando third-base coach windmilling his right arm, waving the runner home, then looked toward the outfield and saw that Cody was already up with the ball and throwing home.

  Hutch couldn’t remember a time all season when Cody had thrown out a runner at the plate, but he had to do that now or the game was tied.

  Tripp was set up perfectly as the cutoff man, really only there to give Cody a target because there was going to be no cut. It was do or die now. That k
ind of play.

  Cody’s throw had a little too much air underneath it but had plenty of juice, too. The problem was it was on the wrong side of the first-base line, heading over Tripp’s head, sailing into foul territory instead of toward Brett at home plate.

  But Hutch was there.

  He had come running from second base to be right there, be where Jeter was that night against Oakland in the playoffs, was running for Cody’s throw the way a wide receiver ran after a pass in football.

  He didn’t pick the ball up off the ground the way Jeter did against the A’s that night. Hutch caught this one in the air, all of his momentum going toward the Cardinals dugout behind first base.

  Even running away from the plate as he was, Hutch turned his body midair and flipped the ball to Brett, who had the plate blocked like a champion. Brett: who caught Hutch’s throw a split second before the runner came pile-driving into him.

  Hutch was on his knees again as the game ended, the way he had been the night before. He was on his knees a few yards inside the baseline, about halfway between home and first, holding his breath, watching Brett until he came rolling out from underneath the Orlando runner and showed the umpire his catcher’s mitt.

  And the ball was still inside it.

  Then the silence was over and this is what Hutch heard:

  “Out!”

  Then before Hutch could move, the ump was running over to him, reaching out a big hand to help Hutch to his feet, shaking Hutch’s hand as he did.

  “Thanks, kid,” the ump said.

  “For what?”

  “For showing me somebody could make that play twice in my life. I’ll see you Monday night.”

  27

  HUTCH DIDN’T WATCH HIMSELF ON THE ELEVEN O’CLOCK NEWS when he got home.

  He hadn’t watched when he’d lost Game 1, and he wasn’t going to watch when he saved Game 2, either. The ending was better this time, but it was the same deal as Friday night: No matter how many times he watched himself, the final score wasn’t going to change.