The Only Game

by Mike Lupica

  Henry held them there. After the third out, Teddy came off the field, head down, as if the Red Sox had won the game instead of just tied it with two more innings to play.

  He went over to Gregg and said, “I managed to turn a perfect throw into a run for them.”

  The coach’s son said, “We don’t apologize on this team. We just figure out a way to get the run back. Okay?”

  He wasn’t joking, and Teddy knew it from the tone of his voice.

  “Okay,” Teddy said.

  There were two runners on for the Rays, second and third, when Teddy came up in the top of the fifth with two out. But he tried too hard to get a hit and struck out on three pitches. The game was still tied.

  In the bottom of the fifth, it was Zack Claiborne torturing them on the bases again. He got a two-out single off Jerry York and stole second easily. When Teddy sailed a throw over Hawk as he tried to steal third, Zack jogged home with the run that gave the Red Sox the lead.

  Teddy started to say something to Jack when the Rays were getting ready to hit in the top of the sixth. It was their last ups if they couldn’t make something happen, but Jack stopped him.

  “Game’s not over,” he said.

  Gus came over and pounded Jack some fist, then Teddy.

  “You know what we call this?” he said. “Winning time.”

  Jack was leading off for the Rays. He hit the second pitch he saw from the Red Sox closer, Jay Hill, over the rightfield wall, crushing it. The game was tied again. Then Gus Morales hit the first pitch he saw from Jay over the leftfield wall, back-to-back homers for the first time all season.

  Now the Rays were ahead by a run, 4–3. Jay got three straight outs after that. Now Jerry York had the chance to close out the game in the bottom of the sixth.

  Jack sat next to Teddy as he put on his chest protector. In a quiet voice Teddy said, “You ever get scared?”

  “All the time,” Jack said.

  “How do you get over it?”

  “You don’t,” Jack said. “You just tell yourself that this is why you play.”

  Somehow Teddy managed a smile behind his catcher’s mask. “Oh good,” he said. “’Cause I was starting to wonder.”

  The game ended this way:

  The Red Sox with runners on second and third, two outs. Tying run at third, winning run at second. A base hit would win for them. An out would win for the Rays. The Red Sox centerfielder, Adam Weiss, at the plate, the count two balls and two strikes.

  Jerry threw him the kind of pitch that pitchers called filthy, an inside fastball, at the knees, hard to hit, too close to take in a moment where a called third strike ended the game.

  But Adam put a good swing on the ball, too good, muscling the ball deep into the shortstop hole. Maybe when it came off the bat it looked like a single to left that was going to split Jack and Hawk, and a game-winning RBI.

  Just not to Jack.

  He read the ball perfectly off the bat and got a tremendous jump on it, doing what he’d always done and gliding to the ball. Jack backhanded the ball on the outfield grass. As he did, he could see Andy Gundling, the runner on third, stumble slightly as he broke for home.

  Jack knew how fast Adam was and how long the throw was to first. His only chance for an out was to plant as well as he could, even with his momentum taking him into short leftfield, and throw home.

  To Teddy.

  He had the plate blocked the way Jack had taught him. He reached for the ball as Andy went into his slide.

  Jack watched the play from his knees, at the edge of the infield grass:

  Catcher. Ball. Runner.

  Everything happening at once.

  Jack wondering if Teddy could hold on to the throw this time.

  At winning time.

  He held on to the throw.

  When the dust cleared, there was Teddy showing the home-plate ump that the ball was still in the pocket of his mitt. The ump took one last look down and saw that Andy’s foot still hadn’t touched home plate, because Teddy had blocked it like a champ with his shin guard.

  The ump pointed at the plate then, jerked his right arm up in the air, and yelled, “You’re out, son.”

  Rays 4, Red Sox 3.

  Final.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jack and Teddy and Gus and Cassie were in Jack’s backyard later in the afternoon, having just finished a game of Wiffle ball Home Run Derby.

  It was Jack and Teddy against the team of Gus and Cassie. Gus and Cassie’s team won on their last swing, Cassie hitting a pitch from Jack over the hedges at the end of the yard and acting as if she’d just hit a walk-off to win the championship of the entire planet.

  She followed it by running a victory lap around the yard, full of whoops and fist pumps.

  “Girls rule,” she yelled. “Boys drool.”

  “Wait a second,” Gus said. “Weren’t we on the same team?”

  “You know I carried you,” she said.

  When she finished her lap, Jack said, “You do know what a truly awful winner you are, right?”

  “Only with you guys,” she said. “Never with my girls.”

  Teddy said, “Are we supposed to thank you for that?”

  They all went and sat in the shade of the big old willow tree, drinking the lemonade Jack’s mom had just brought out to them and eating chocolate chip cookies.

  “I hit the game-winning homer, Mrs. Callahan,” Cassie said.

  “I heard,” Jack’s mom said.

  “So did people in Florida,” Jack said.

  “He’s just jealous,” his mom said to Cassie, then reached down and high-fived her. “Girls rule,” she said.

  Then they were replaying the big game, again. They talked about Jack’s home run and Teddy knowing enough to ignore the runner trying to score and throwing to first. Of course they talked about the play that had won it for the Rays. As always, you didn’t need a video to see the big plays and the big moments in the game you’d just played. They were burned into your memory, and maybe your imagination.

  “You guys bailed me out,” Teddy said.

  “You bailed us out by making that tag!” Gus said.

  “You can keep talking about how you have to get better,” Cassie said to Teddy. “And you’re going to get better. But you still made the play you had to make. So shut up about the ones you didn’t make.”

  She punctuated the thought by leaning over and pinching his arm.

  “That hurt!” Teddy said.

  “It was supposed to,” Cassie said.

  “You know the games are only gonna get bigger for these guys, right?” Teddy said to Cassie, pointing at Jack and Gus.

  “For us,” Jack said. “You’re one of us now.”

  Cassie pinched Teddy again. “So get with the program, big boy.”

  They ate and drank in silence for a couple of minutes until Cassie said to Teddy, “Tell the truth—what were you thinking about when the ball and the runner and the whole game were coming right at you?”

  “You want the truth?”

  Cassie nodded.

  “I was thinking about the last thing Jack told me before the game started,” Teddy said. “That we were just going to have a game of catch. So I told myself to catch the ball.”

  “But you blocked the plate, too,” Gus said.

  “Hey,” Teddy said, “that was the easy part. I’m a lot bigger than Andy. He probably thought he was trying to slide through . . . what?” He looked at them. “Little help here.”

  Jack smiled and said, “A bear?”

  Teddy smiled back at him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “A big, bad bear.”

  Teddy stayed a few minutes longer after Gus and Cassie left. Before he got on his bike to leave, Jack said, “One last question: How did it feel?”

  Teddy said, “It felt great.”

  Then he said, “For that one minute, I knew what it’s like to be you.”

  “Nah,” Jack said. “That was all you, dude.”

  Tedd
y got on his bike and rode away. Jack watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

  Yeah, he thought, a whole new Teddy Bear Madden.

  This one was the catcher for the Rays.

  • • •

  The Rays won again on Tuesday night against the Rangers. Andre pitched his best game of the season, and everybody in the batting order got a hit, including Teddy in his last at bat, a bloop single to right over the second baseman’s head.

  Teddy was still making rookie mistakes behind the plate. He still wasn’t trusting his arm the way Jack thought he should be. But it didn’t matter on a night when the final score was 11–4, and the Rays were in second place in the Atlantic by themselves.

  Even better, the Rockies had beaten the White Sox in their last at bat. So this Saturday’s game against the White Sox would be for the top seed in the play-offs. Jack knew it was more for pride than anything else, pride and last ups in the title game if it came to that.

  But it was a lot of pride on the line for all of them. After everything that had happened, the way the season had started for Jack and for his team, they had put themselves in a position where if they just kept winning, they’d win the championship of the Atlantic and play themselves into the County All-Star League.

  If they won that, they had played themselves into the tournament for the Little League World Series. That was just a dream at the start of the season. Now it was in reach.

  It was Jack starting against Nate Vinton in the last game of the regular season. The Rays’ best against their best. Coach Leonard had decided to start Jack against the Sox. Andre would start in their first play-off game next Wednesday, then Jack again in the finals on Saturday night if they made it that far.

  “I can’t start you twice in the play-offs, anyway,” said Coach Leonard, “not with just one day’s rest. So you go today, and then you’ve got all the rest you need for the big game. We’re gonna play this one today like the play-offs are starting right now.”

  “Stay on a roll,” Jack said.

  “All the way through next Saturday night.”

  Coach didn’t think they were going to lose any more games this season, and neither did Jack.

  “Sounds right,” he said to Coach.

  “Right as rain.”

  It was one of his favorite expressions.

  “Coach,” Jack said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you: What does that mean, right as rain?”

  Coach shrugged and blew a huge bubble with his gum. “No clue,” he said.

  The stands were full on both sides of the field. The Rays, as home team, had the first-base side. The top row was Jack’s parents, Mrs. Madden, and Gus’s parents. Cassie had told Jack not to look for her in the stands; she was going to wander.

  “I can’t stay in one spot. I get too nervous,” she’d said to Jack.

  “More nervous than when your own team is playing?”

  The Orioles, still unbeaten, would play for the championship of their league on Monday night.

  “Way more nervous,” she said. “With you guys, I’m not in control.”

  “Never a good thing for you.”

  “Torture.” He knew she was telling the truth. When the Rangers game was still close, right before the Rays blew it open with seven runs in the fourth, he’d looked down the rightfield line at one point and seen her peeking at the action from behind a tree.

  Right before the Rays took the field, Jack said to Teddy, “How you feeling?”

  “Other than the fact that I’m having trouble breathing, feeling just great.”

  “I’ve always felt that breathing in baseball was totally overrated.”

  “Can I ask you one favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can we have it not come down to the last play today?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Jack said. “If you promise to remember one thing.”

  “To start breathing eventually?”

  “To remember that even though I always say this is the only game, it’s still a game.”

  “Even today?”

  “Especially today.”

  Jack had a case of nerves himself. But he kept telling himself they were good nerves. He knew that the season wasn’t on the line against the White Sox. They were in the play-offs win or lose. But in sports, first place was still first place. Coach Leonard had another expression that covered that one: “If you’re not the lead dog, the view is always the same.”

  Jack wanted the Rays to be the lead dogs today. Then he proceeded to go out and pitch the sloppiest inning he’d had in weeks.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  He walked their leadoff man, Wayne Coffey, even though he hated walking the first batter of an inning, and especially the first inning. When Teddy threw the ball back to him, Jack snatched it out of the air in disgust.

  He followed that by doing the worst thing you could do as a pitcher: He was still thinking about the last batter instead of focusing on the next one. He was still mad at himself and tried to overthrow his first pitch to Conor Freeman, the White Sox shortstop, and threw it so far behind him that it hit him in the butt.

  “Sorry!” Jack said to Conor, walking toward home plate. “You okay?”

  Conor waved him off, grinning at him. They’d been playing ball with and against each other since they were six years old.

  “Not hurt,” he said. “Just shocked.”

  “Me too,” Jack said.

  First and second, nobody out. His next pitch, to Nate Vinton, was a ball in the dirt that handcuffed Teddy completely, a wild pitch that ended up behind him. Now the Sox had second and third, nobody out. Nate then laced the 1–0 pitch over Gregg Leonard’s head for a triple. It was 2–0, White Sox, and Jack hadn’t thrown a strike yet.

  He threw one to Mike O’Keeffe, actually got ahead of him 0–2, but Mike managed to hit a sacrifice fly to right and it was 3–0. Jack struck out the next two batters to get out of the inning, but the damage had been done. He had put his team into an early hole.

  “I pitched better my first game back,” he said to Gus on the bench.

  “Can I tell you something you’re always telling me without you biting my head off?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Get over it,” Gus said. “They’re not going to let you pitch the first inning all over again, so I’m pretty sure you can’t do anything about what just happened. So get over it.”

  He did, not allowing the Sox another run before he went out to play shortstop in the top of the fourth. But the score was still 3–0, because Nate was the one dealing today. He was showing off an even better fastball than the last time they’d played, and with even better control of it. After he struck out Teddy to end the top of the third, it was nine up and nine down for the Rays. Nate had five strikeouts.

  “He’s pitching the way I was supposed to,” Jack said to Gus and Teddy on the bench. The top of the order was getting ready to hit against Nate in the top of the fourth.

  Nate was finishing his warm-up pitches, his dad having allowed him to pitch one more inning.

  “I’m glad he’s still out there,” Gus said.

  “Why?” Teddy said.

  “Because we’ve still got a chance to ruin his day.”

  The Rays did their best. T.W. Stanley singled, for their first hit and their first base runner. Gregg Leonard walked. Jack whistled a single right past Nate’s ear, making him duck out of the way, and the Rays were on the board. Gus followed with a double and just like that, it was 3–2. They were in business.

  “New game,” Gus said when they headed back onto the field.

  Jack said, “I like this one much better.”

  Henry Koepp came in for the Rays, trying to keep it a one-run game.

  Only Teddy picked this inning to act as if he really was playing his first game all over again.

  He dropped a third strike, couldn’t find the ball behind him, and allowed Conor to reach first. Then Nate, their best hitter, surprised everybody by laying down a perfect bunt up
the firstbase line. Teddy, as surprised as anybody, was slow getting to the ball and should have seen he had no chance to get Nate at first.

  He tried anyway and put too much on his throw. The ball sailed over Gus’s head, and suddenly a bunt that had rolled about twenty feet up the line was on its way to becoming an inside-the-park home run. By the time Jerry York chased down the ball in the rightfield corner, Nate was the one chasing Conor Freeman home, and the White Sox were ahead 5–2.

  Henry walked Mike O’Keeffe. When Mike took off for second, Teddy tried to aim the ball instead of cutting it loose, obviously afraid to throw another ball into the outfield. The ball dove into the dirt about six feet in front of Jack, and he had no chance to get a glove on it as it took a crazy hop past him. When he picked it up in short center, Mike was on third.

  The next White Sox batter hit a ground ball right at Jack, who’d moved in to the infield grass, because Coach wanted them to at least get a chance to cut down the run if somebody did hit the ball on the ground. Jack gloved the ball cleanly and threw a perfect strike to Teddy, thinking as the ball was in the air that it might have been the best pitch he’d thrown all night.

  With Mike bearing down on him, Teddy dropped the ball. Now the White Sox were ahead 6–2. Even then, the Rays didn’t quit. Jack doubled with one out in the sixth, Gus doubled him home. It was 6–3. Hawk struck out for the second out. But Henry walked and so did Jerry York. Still a chance. Andre hit a little RBI roller that died between home and third and the bases were still loaded.

  For Teddy.

  Somehow the game had found Teddy in its biggest moment.

  If Teddy could keep the inning going, they were back to the top of the order one last time, and anything could happen after that.

  What actually happened: Teddy Madden struck out on three pitches, and they weren’t going to finish in first place after all.

  When they’d finished shaking hands with the White Sox, Jack looked around for Teddy.