Plunked

by Michael Northrop

  What the heck, I think, everyone else is talking around here. “Sometimes you squash the bug,” I say under my breath.

  The pitch comes in, inside but definitely a strike. I put a swing on it and hit a sharp grounder to first. Jackson takes it himself.

  Coach doesn’t give me another at-bat. I’m glad I put a decent swing on the ball, and maybe he is, too, but we both know I’ll be starting Saturday on the bench. I just have to be ready, I tell myself as I put the bat back in the rack. I just have to be ready.

  I think a lot of kids like Saturday because they can sleep in. Me, I’m up earlier than I have been all week. I’m padding around my room in socks because Mom and Dad like to sleep in on the weekends. And since their idea of “sleeping in” means maybe eight thirty, it doesn’t seem like so much to ask.

  Still, it sort of limits my options. I look over at my computer. I haven’t killed a soldier in days. (But I like to think that they’re still talking about the bloody rampage I went on last week!) I guess I could play it with the sound off. I’m not really in the mood, but I turn the computer on anyway.

  There’s a big whopping zippo in my e-mail in-box. Of course, Mom and Dad have so many filters on this thing, it’s a wonder anything gets through. Like, St. Paul the Apostle could send me a personal e-mail telling me to study hard, and it would end up in the spam folder.

  I check the spam folder. Nothing from any saints, angels, or celestial beings, but I find some funny stuff that Mom and Dad would probably not be too happy about.

  After that, I click on my games. I stay off the battlefield and play a puzzle game instead. At eight fifteen, I get a text from Andy. As I’m answering that, I get another one from Tim. At least I’m not the only one up early. Tim has news, too: “CampL team at batting cages last nt. THREE big guys now!!!!”

  “Any1 pitching?” I type.

  “Not @ batting cage! LOL!” says Tim.

  I get another text from Andy: “Did U hear?”

  “Yep. 3! What R they feedin em?”

  “Campbells Soup!!!!!!!”

  Then one from Tim: “Andy sez they R feeding em Campbells Soup!!!”

  And then I hear movement downstairs.

  I punch in “CU there!!!!” because the game is on the lumpy little field in Campbeltown. I wish I really felt four exclamation points’ worth of excitement. I send it to both of them.

  Andy: “CU”

  Tim: “L8R”

  Then I head downstairs. No surprise, they’re in the kitchen. I grab for some Pop-Tarts, but Mom is too quick.

  “No way, honey bunchkins,” she says, pretending to slap my hand away from the cupboard.

  “You’re gonna need the good stuff today,” says Dad. “I’m thinkin’ bacon and eggs.”

  “The ‘good stuff’ really isn’t all that good for you, you know?” I say. “We learned in science that —”

  Dad cuts me off by making that motorboat sound with his lips. “Gives you energy. Campbeltown has three big kids and a bunch of good hitters.”

  “How do you know that?” I say, though I sort of know.

  “The Lu-Lus were over at Hungry Hut last night. Said it was quite a scene at the cages.”

  “You really shouldn’t call them that because —”

  But Dad cuts me off with more motorboating. Mom is just smiling and pouring orange juice.

  It’s funny, they love game day as much as I do. Right now, they probably love it more, but I’m glad. I remember how tense it was on the couch the other night. It’s all gone now, washed away by orange juice and motorboats. And all I have to do is step to the plate a few times today and get hit in whatever body part the pitcher feels is appropriate.

  Three big kids, I think: the two from last year and a new one? Or, who knows, one from last year and the Monster Beefoid Twins? Whatever the case, there’s a pretty good chance one of them will be pitching. I’m not a fan of big pitchers. The name floats through my head: Tebow.

  “Hey,” says Dad. “Hey!”

  It occurs to me, sort of vaguely, that he’s been asking me something.

  “Earth to honey bunchkins!” Mom says.

  That snaps me out of it. “DO NOT call me that at the game!” I say.

  “Call you what?” she says. She’s always trying to trick me into saying it.

  “You know what,” I say. “HB.”

  I’m completely serious, but Mom thinks it’s the funniest thing she’s heard all morning.

  “Sausage or bacon?” Dad says. I guess that’s what he was asking.

  I give him a look to let him know what a dumb question that is.

  “Bacon it is,” he says.

  As I turn to leave, I hear him say something else, quieter.

  “Good to have you back.”

  When we get to the field in Campbeltown, Mom and Dad head for the bleachers, and I head for the far side of the field.

  “Bet you’ll be chomping at the bit,” Dad says, right before we split up. He knows I’ll be coming off the bench. I never mentioned it, but I guess it’s pretty obvious. I don’t even really know what that expression means, but it sounds about right. And then he says, “If anyone asks —”

  “Family emergency,” I say, looking down and watching my feet walk themselves.

  “Got it,” he says.

  I look up in time to see him add in a little wink.

  “Go get ’em,” Mom begins. I’m afraid she’s going to call me HB again. We’re close to the bleachers now, and there are parents and kids all around us. “Tiger,” she says.

  And then I’m free and walking across the grass. Mom and Dad have been cool today, but it’s players and coaches only out here, and I like that. I walk in a wide semicircle around the area where the Campbeltown players are warming up. They’re the Pirates, by the way. I’m not sure why we don’t call them that more. Pirates vs. Braves … it’s a classic National League matchup.

  I look over, trying not to be too obvious. They’ve definitely got some big kids. And there are a few kids I recognize from years ago. A few of them were teammates of mine as far back as T-ball. I’ll probably always recognize them. Isn’t that weird?

  “Heads up, dingus!” I hear.

  I scramble to put my glove on as I look up. I catch sight of the ball a split second before it gets to me and make the catch stepping back.

  “What,” I say to Andy, “no hello?”

  Andy just smirks and points straight up in the air.

  I throw it underhand, as high as I can. He camps under it, shuffling his feet, gauging the sun, and making the catch.

  As soon as he looks over, I point straight up. It’s a sunny day. That’s more of a problem for me than for him. Once I get in the game, anyway.

  “Nice of you to toss it around with a bench-warmer,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’m a real saint.”

  “Bring it in here!” Coach bellows, and we do.

  And then, there’s no good way to put this, I find a spot on the bench. Everyone jockeys for the spot at the end, closest to Coach. (Of course, being on the bench mostly means hanging off the fence, but location still matters.) You want him to see you all the time and maybe put you in early.

  But Malfoy gets to the best spot first, and I don’t want to sit (or hang) next to him. I end up halfway down the bench, looking out at the field through the wire. I just have to trust that Coach won’t forget about me. That, and try to make eye contact whenever possible.

  We’re the away team, obviously, so we start at the plate. We’re all waiting for their pitcher to take the mound, and we’re glad when he does. He’s not that big, maybe just a little above average. But once he starts to throw, I can see he has decent stuff. I hear the first few pitches slap into the catcher’s glove, and my pulse starts to race.

  Come on, Jack, I tell myself. How much would it even hurt to get hit by this kid?

  Then from somewhere deep inside, from some part of myself that I hate, I hear the answer. Plenty, it says, if he hits
you in the head.

  But I’m watching him warm up, and it looks like he’s got good control. I can see him moving the ball around. It should be calming me down, but every time he throws one inside it’s like a poke in the gut.

  Morgan is a few spots down the bench. I see the kid next to him lean over and say something to him, but I can’t quite hear it. Morgan leans forward and catches my eye. “This guy’s their ace,” he says. “Really good.”

  I nod and then pass the information down.

  The next pitch slaps into the catcher’s mitt, louder this time. A little fear is good, I tell myself. Just let me get up there and get it over with. But I’ve got a long wait, and who knows what a little fear in the first inning will be by the third or fourth? Could even be a big, beefy reliever with a rocket arm and no control by then.

  Finally, the game starts and I have something to watch. Three quick outs: not a great start.

  “You’re chasing!” Coach yells as the starters get their gloves and take the field. “You gotta lay off that junk!”

  Coach is subbing in right field from the get-go. As soon as he sends Chester out there to start the game, you know it’s probably going to be two innings a pop from then on out. I mean, Chester’s not even really an outfielder. I start to think maybe he’ll put me in right to start the third.

  I’m half right, because it’s a short day for Chester. The Pirates’ starter is really locating his pitches today, and that little strike zone doesn’t help Chester at all. But it’s Malfoy who takes his place: back to his usual spot. That’s not cool. Didn’t he hit all those kids last game? Shouldn’t he be punished more for that?

  I give Coach a look, trying to fit all the injustice and wrong in the world into my eyes. He ignores me.

  Pitchers’ duels go fast. And they go faster when you’re on the bench, counting the outs. It’s still scoreless in the middle of the third. Coach makes some more substitutions, but I’m not one of them.

  When I see Morgan go in, I stick my head in my glove and swear into the leather. No offense, but I mean, seriously. It feels like I’m being punished. It feels like Coach doesn’t trust me at all, and I stop trying to make eye contact with him. He’ll have to put me in soon anyway, just to get me the required number of outs in the field.

  The Pirates get a run in the bottom of the inning. It’s not really J.P.’s fault. It starts off with a walk, and OK, technically that is his fault, but it’s just a walk. Then the guy advances on two straight groundouts and scores on a bloop hit to shallow right.

  We’re down 1–0, and I’m still not in the game. I’m feeling pretty useless, and my head is down the next time Coach walks by me.

  “Get ready,” he says.

  “Whuzzat, Coach?” I say.

  “Putting you in for the rest of the game,” he says. “Was holding you out for a reason.”

  And I guess I’m still not making the connection, so he makes it for me.

  “Tight game, and you can hit this guy.”

  All of a sudden, I understand. Subbing is an art in Little League. I mean, ideally, you build up a big lead and then get everyone in during garbage time. But how often does that really happen? In these close games, you can’t just run all your worst players out for the last two innings, not if you want to win. Sometimes you might want to save a surprise for the other team. Like, say, a kid who was a starter two weeks ago.

  “OK,” I say as I get to my feet.

  I look out at the field, and it’s like I’m seeing it clearly for the first time all day. It’s a close ball game, a sunny day, and my coach doesn’t think I’m useless after all.

  I’m in the field for the bottom of the fourth. Nothing comes my way, but I keep my head in the game. I wait until Manny hauls in the third out before I start really concentrating on my at-bat. I’m leading off the top of the fifth, and their starter is still going strong. When I said before that he wasn’t that big, I was missing one obvious thing: He’s about the same size as J.P.

  The inning starts and I step to the plate.

  “What’s his name?” I ask their catcher as I step in. They’ve been calling it all game long, but all I could make out was a lot of vowels.

  “Wooster,” the catcher says. “Jamie Wooster. We call him Woosh.”

  I go through my full routine. It’s the start of the inning, so there’s time. I’m doing anything I can to avoid thinking about the baseball, about Woosh coming inside, and about how pitchers can lose control when they get tired. But it’s hard to fool yourself with your own tricks.

  So, yeah, I’m freaking out a little. You know the symptoms; I won’t repeat ’em. What’s happening on the field is a lot more important than what’s happening in my head. We’re down by one run to the Campbeltown Pirates, we’ve got six outs to get it done, and I’ve waited all game for this shot.

  The windup … and the pitch.

  I can see right away that it’s outside. I think about swinging at it anyway, just because it’s outside and I can. But that’s dumb. You don’t swing at a pitch out of relief. I let it go, and the ump does the right thing.

  I’m a new batter, and Woosh was just sizing me up. Now he’s behind, and I figure he’ll come right at me. I take my mini swings, and he goes into his windup.

  I can feel the sweat under my batting glove, and I can hear my pulse. And he hasn’t even come inside yet. The longer this goes on, the worse I’ll get. And there’s no way a control pitcher is going to want to fall behind 2–0. It all adds up to one thing.

  The ball is cutting in toward me, but my bat is already moving. There’s nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do except hit the thing. The contact feels good. It’s in toward my hands but solid. Before I even look up, I know I’ve hit this one on a rope…

  …right to the third baseman. He makes a good play and catches it on the fly. One out.

  Ugh. An at-’em ball. If I hadn’t started so early, maybe I could’ve squeezed it in between third and short. I head back to the bench. Nothing I can do about it now. I get my glove and stand by the fence.

  “Good swing, man,” says Andy.

  “Tough break,” says Tim.

  “Bad luck,” says Dustin.

  Five outs left, still down by one. All I can do is hope I get another shot.

  We get a bloop single and a walk in the fifth but leave them both stranded. Once I get positioned in left, I do the math to figure out what it will take for me to get another shot at the plate. I need two of the guys in front of me to reach base.

  It’s possible. Woosh might be getting tired or he might not be. His pitch count isn’t as high as it should be because we’ve been swinging at too many first pitches. We’ll hear about that next week. It’s tough, though. He’s been around the plate, and his stuff looks hittable. He’s just keeping us off balance.

  Yeah, we got two base runners in the fifth, but the single was just barely over the second baseman’s glove, and the walk was borderline. And then J.P. goes into his windup, and I focus on the plate.

  J.P. is really battling. I gotta say: He looks a little tired himself. Even from out here, I can see that his fastball doesn’t have the same pop on it. I stay ready and watch him work. Sometimes a tired pitcher means a lot of work for the left fielder. Even tired, though, J.P. is something else. He’s doing what their pitcher has been doing: getting ahead in the count, keeping the batters guessing.

  He strikes out the first guy with a ball in the dirt. The kid heads back to the dugout bopping himself on his helmet with the bat. Been there.

  The next batter hits a slow dribbler and beats it out for an infield single. There’s one on, one out, and one of their big kids coming up.

  J.P. takes a little extra time, then goes into his windup and throws a pitch I didn’t even know he had. Ahead 0–1, he wastes a pitch way outside. The kid doesn’t chase, even though it looks like he has the reach to get to it. The count is 1–1, but it turns out it wasn’t a wasted pitch after all. The big kid is looking outside now,
and J.P. ties him up with junk on the inside half. It’s 1–2, and now J.P. has the whole plate to play with. He reaches back for his best fastball of the last two innings and strikes him out swinging.

  Two outs with a runner on first and an ace who still has something in the tank: You can almost feel the other team deflate a little, glad they still have that 1–0 lead. The next kid chops a routine grounder to short. Katie is back in the game after being subbed early. She gobbles it up and flips it to second for the easy out.

  We head in to bat. We’re still down by a run, but most of our starters are back in now, and it’s the top of the order. Tim is batting leadoff. In a textbook example of how not to start a rally, he pops the first pitch straight up. Their catcher throws off his mask, waits for it, and makes the play. One out.

  Then Manny starts fouling off pitches. The strike zone has four edges: inside, outside, knees, and letters. Woosh is working all four and hitting more often than he misses. But Manny spoils the good ones and takes the bad ones. Nine pitches later, he trots down to first. We all cheer.

  “Good eye, Manimal!” shouts Dustin.

  “Radar locked!” yells Chester.

  Manny just lets out a long breath. Walks like that are hard work.

  Jackson steps to the plate. Just looking at him you can see that he has power, and Woosh is careful with him and falls behind in the count. Finally, he has to give him something over the plate. Jackson puts a good swing on it, and I think this might be it. But he’s just underneath and lifts it to center. Manny doesn’t risk tagging up, and now we’re the team with two outs and a runner on first. The difference: We don’t have a lead to fall back on.

  Andy steps to the plate. His first game in the cleanup spot hasn’t gone well so far. He taps his cleats with the bat and stares out at the mound. It’s his last shot and mine, too. If he doesn’t reach base, the game is over.