The Only Game

by Mike Lupica

  But he’d already gone home.

  • • •

  Teddy didn’t return any of Jack’s calls or texts for the rest of Saturday afternoon and into Saturday night. So Jack was surprised when he did get a text from him Sunday morning.

  U WANT TO WORK OUT?

  Jack:

  YEAH, MAN, WHEN AND WHERE?

  Teddy:

  SCHOOL NOW.

  Teddy was waiting for him in the dugout. On his way across the field, Jack was thinking that a lot had happened in that dugout in just one season, for him and for Teddy.

  When Jack sat down on the steps across from Teddy, he said, “I don’t think you’ve ever been the one who wanted to work out.”

  “I never needed it as much as I do today.”

  “Fine with me,” Jack said. “A day without baseball is never as good as one with it.”

  Scott Sutter’s catcher’s mitt, the one Teddy was still using because it was broken in perfectly, was next to him on the bench. His blue Rays cap was on top of the mitt. But Teddy wasn’t ready to work out just yet. Jack could see something was on his mind.

  “You okay?” Jack said.

  Teddy shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Listen,” Jack said. “I know we lost yesterday, but it’s not the end of the world. Even if we’d won, we’d still have to win two more games to win the championship.”

  Teddy said, “No pep talks today, okay?”

  “That wasn’t a pep talk,” Jack said, and shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  Teddy took a deep breath, blew it out. “I can’t do this,” he said.

  “Why?” Jack said. “Because of yesterday? How about the way I pitched? It’s a good thing it wasn’t one and done like the play-offs. If it was, we’d be done like dinner.”

  “Maybe next year I’ll be ready for games like this,” Teddy said. “But I’m not ready for them right now. I’m gonna end up screwing this thing up for you guys.”

  “It’s not ‘you guys’ anymore. It’s us. You’re one of us now, which means we’re all in this together.”

  “I know that sounds great,” Teddy said. “I do.” He shook his head. “But I did more to help the other team than ours.”

  “You’re our catcher.”

  “The worst one on any team in the play-offs.”

  “Dude,” Jack said. “You gotta stop talking like this. And thinking like this. Because I’m telling you, you are ready for this.”

  “I’m not.” Jack started to say something, and Teddy put out a hand to stop him. “I worry all the time about making mistakes. I wake up in the night sometimes and I’ve been dreaming about making mistakes. And then when I do make one on the field, I press more and make two others. I’m scared all the time.”

  He looked up at Jack with big eyes and said, “I feel like I’m back at the bridge.”

  “C’mon, that’s totally different.”

  “No,” Teddy said. “It’s not.”

  “It’ll get easier,” Jack said. “It’s like my dad is always telling me, it’s just reps.”

  “I keep trying to tell you, but you won’t listen: I’m not you!”

  “Nobody’s asking you to be. Just be yourself.”

  “I am being myself,” Teddy said. “Scared.”

  “Everybody gets scared. It’s a part of sports, finding a way to get past it. I can help you do that.”

  “But you can’t make the catches for me or the throws or hit for me,” Teddy said. He shrugged. “I wish sometimes I could get some kind of injury and have a good reason to quit.”

  “You’re not quitting.”

  “I know.” Teddy shrugged again. “I wish I had something funny to say, but I don’t. So let’s play.”

  They soft-tossed for a few minutes. Then Jack had Teddy do some drills where Jack purposely threw balls in the dirt, showing him all over again how easy it was to slide and get his body in front of the ball and keep it in front of him. Before they finished, Jack went out to second and put his glove out when Teddy would come up throwing, as if he were the catcher giving a target to the pitcher.

  When they were done, Jack said, “I know you don’t want to hear this today. But I watch you now and can’t believe what you looked like when we started.”

  “You’re a good teacher,” Teddy said. “I just gotta become a better pupil this week.”

  “You did this, not me. And you know why? Because you secretly love it.”

  Teddy couldn’t help himself. He smiled. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “And if you think I ever will, you don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do.”

  “I give up,” Teddy said. “Check you later.”

  Teddy watched him walk slowly in the direction of his house, Scott’s mitt in his hand, his Rays cap turned backward on his head, his head down.

  Jack knew Teddy believed everything he’d told him, knew that when Teddy got out of his own way, he was a good catcher and a good ballplayer. And nobody knew better than Jack how you could build things up in your own mind and make them much worse than they really were. Doing that had nearly cost him his season, the season that was ending now with Teddy as his teammate and his friend.

  Jack watched Teddy until he climbed the short fence in the distance. He’d never looked back, like he was lost in his own world.

  When Teddy was finally out of sight, Jack thought, Now I’m the one who’s scared.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Jack and Teddy and Gus watched somebody else play for the title the next night.

  Jack did it from the Orioles’ bench, and from the first-base coach’s box. Teddy and Gus did it from the stands on the first-base side of the front field at Highland Park.

  They all watched Cassie and her team try to beat the Dodgers and finish off an unbeaten season.

  The Dodgers had lost only two games during the regular season, both to Cassie and the Orioles. Jack knew from having seen both games that they not only had as many good hitters as the Orioles did, they also had the second-best pitcher in their league, Karla Johnson.

  But as good as Karla was and as good as the Dodgers were, Cassie was the show.

  She was pitching in front of the biggest crowd the Orioles had had all season, and she was the one dealing tonight. She struck out the first two batters of the game, gave up a single, and struck out Karla on three pitches.

  She struck out two more in the second, two more in the third. In the bottom of the third, she tripled up the alley in right-center, and Katie Cummings singled her home for the first run of the game.

  Her dad had decided beforehand that she could pitch four innings tonight. It wasn’t just that her pitch count was low, it was that it was the championship game. Before she went back out to the mound for the top of the fourth, she walked over to Jack and said, “You know I could go the distance tonight if I had to.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I feel awesome.”

  “You look awesome out there,” Jack said. “Now just go out and pitch this inning like it’s the last one you’re ever going to pitch.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” she said, and sprinted to get the ball.

  She gave up another hit in the inning, and a walk, and Jack wondered if she could possibly have lost it that fast. But he watched as she walked behind the mound, rubbing up the ball as she looked at the base runners.

  Then she looked at Jack, and she smiled, like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

  Then she proceeded to strike out the side. On nine pitches. The game stayed 1–0. There were no smiles now as she walked off the mound, no fist pumps. She just stared straight ahead, walked to the bench, placed her glove on it, grabbed her water bottle out of her bat bag, and took a swig.

  When she finished doing that, she looked at Jack and winked.

  Teddy and Gus were hanging over the fence. Jack went up to them and said, “How cool is she?”

  “Pretty much the coolest,” Gus said.

  Teddy said to Jack, “I don�
�t want to be you anymore. I think I want to be her.”

  “You know why?” Jack said. “Because the only thing she’s afraid of is somebody else pitching the rest of the game.”

  “That somebody happens to be my sister,” Gus said.

  “No offense, dude.”

  “None taken.” Gus laughed. “Because I’m scared too!”

  “Angela will be fine,” Jack said. “Her fear of blowing this and having to deal with Cassie will be a great motivator.”

  Angela Morales got through a sketchy fifth, leaving two runners on. Cassie got her out of it by flashing behind second, getting her glove on what looked like a two-out single from the Dodgers’ Emily Curley, making a sliding stop, and flipping the ball to Gracie Zaro for the third out.

  It was still 1–0 when Angela and the Orioles got ready to take the field for the top of the sixth, three outs from the championship.

  Cassie walked over to where Jack was standing and put out her fist. He touched it with his own.

  “Only game,” she said.

  “Only one.”

  Angela got two quick outs, the best possible thing in a moment like this, for her and for all of them, giving them all some room to breathe. One out away.

  But then the girl hitting ahead of Karla ripped a single over Gracie’s head and proceeded to steal second, and then third. So the tying run was on third with Karla Johnson, their best hitter as well as their best pitcher, coming to the plate.

  As much as Jack wanted Cassie to win, maybe this was the way a great game like this was supposed to end. The only thing that would have made it better, he thought, was if Cassie was still on the mound.

  He found out he was wrong on the very next pitch.

  Karla took a huge swing but topped the ball, rolling it toward short, the ball looking as if it were going to die in the infield grass before it got to Cassie.

  Jack had the whole play in front of him, saw the runner coming down the line from third, saw Karla running hard with her head down toward first.

  But then his eyes were on Cassie Bennett, barehanding the ball—hard to do with a softball—and whipping it sidearm across the diamond into Katie Cummings’s outstretched first baseman’s mitt.

  One last time this season, Cassie was showing off the best arm in her league. Or maybe the best arm any girl her age had anywhere.

  She threw one last fastball and got Karla by one step and won the championship game for the Orioles, 1–0.

  And when the celebration was over on the field, when Cassie had hugged her teammates and her dad, she walked over to where Jack had watched from the sidelines. He knew it was where he belonged. He had been happy to be a part of her team, and its season. But this was their moment.

  “You know where I learned how to do that?” she said.

  “Where?”

  “From watching you.”

  “I don’t know that I could have made a play like that with it all on the line.”

  “Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, you would have.”

  Then she hugged him, too.

  When they both came out of the hug, neither one wanting it to last too long, Cassie said, “Now it’s your turn.”

  They both knew what she meant. Time to win two games and finish a season right that he nearly hadn’t started.

  THIRTY-SIX

  There was a half day of school at Walton Middle on Wednesday. It was just Walton being a baseball town because of the semifinals in the Atlantic later on.

  With four teams playing, that was a lot of students from Walton Middle. Before they were all let out at noon, the principal came over the PA system and encouraged everybody to show up for the two games:

  White Sox vs. Rangers at five thirty.

  Rays vs. Mariners at seven thirty.

  Before they left school, Jack told Teddy and Gus that he’d check them later, maybe they could meet up at his house and hang there before heading over to watch the first game of the doubleheader.

  When Jack and Cassie were walking home, he asked if she was interested in watching the White Sox and the Rangers.

  “Not even a little bit,” she said. “It feels to me like the JV game.”

  “Wait a second,” he said. “The White Sox just beat us last Saturday.”

  “You wouldn’t have lost if it was the play-offs,” she said. “You guys are winning tonight and then beating whoever wins the JV game on Saturday.”

  “You sound pretty sure.”

  “The only way I’d feel more sure,” she said, “would be if I were playing.” She gave him a little shove. “You know I could’ve replaced Scott at catcher, right?”

  Jack grinned. “I actually thought about it. But I figured playing with boys was beneath you.”

  His mom fixed him a sandwich when he got home. When Jack finished eating, he went upstairs and tried to watch a movie, just to take his mind off the game, but knew he was wasting his time. He just wanted time to go fast. He wanted the afternoon to be over and the White Sox–Rangers game to be over and for their game to be starting. Instead time was standing still.

  He finally grabbed his phone and shot Teddy a text.

  ON MY WAY TO UR HOUSE, GOTTA GET OUT OF MINE, FORGET EARLIER PLAN.

  He didn’t get a response right back, but that probably meant Teddy was having lunch with his mom, whom he’d said had taken a half day herself. She had a rule about him not having his phone at the table, doing what she called the “look down” when they were having a meal together.

  Jack told his mom he’d be back in a couple of hours, then grabbed his bike and headed for Teddy’s, taking his time, taking a longer route than he usually did. He felt like it was the end of a basketball game and he was taking time off the clock.

  Mrs. Madden’s car was in the driveway when he got there. He leaned his bike against their mailbox, walked up the steps, and rang the doorbell.

  When she opened the door, Jack said, “Hey, Mrs. Madden. I’m looking for my catcher.”

  Jack could see right away that she was confused.

  “But I thought he was with you, Jack.”

  “He was supposed to be later. But I couldn’t sit around in my room any longer, so I decided to come over here just to have something to do.”

  “Well, my boy was acting all wound up himself,” she said. “Then he went and got his bike and told me he had something to do, and then he was heading for your house.”

  “Did he say what he had to do?”

  She shook her head. “No. But whatever it was, he made it sound important. I asked him what, and he said, ‘It’s just something I need to do before I can play the game tonight.’ Said it was something he should have done a while ago if he wanted to be a real ballplayer. He left in such a hurry he didn’t even take his phone with him.”

  “Maybe he’s just riding around the way I was.”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “He really was such a bundle of nerves.”

  Jack said he’d call Mrs. Madden when he caught up with Teddy.

  He tried not to look like he was in a hurry getting back on his bike. But he was in a hurry. Because he didn’t think Teddy was just riding around.

  Jack thought Teddy had a destination.

  No.

  He didn’t just think that.

  Somehow he knew.

  Knew in his heart that this time it might not be his brother being somewhere he shouldn’t be. It was his friend.

  When Jack was back on his bike, he rode fast. He wanted to be wrong. He kept hoping he was wrong all the way back across town. But when he saw Teddy’s bike at the Connorses’ dock, he knew he wasn’t.

  I feel like I’m back at the bridge, Teddy had said the other day.

  Maybe he had to prove himself to himself. Maybe he thought if he could face down his greatest fear, the others would be easy. Jack wasn’t smart enough to know exactly why Teddy was up there.

  But he was.

  Jack ran. He didn’t know the trails as well as Cassie did. But he felt as if he was tak
ing the most direct route, the one he thought they’d taken the day Teddy couldn’t make it across. He moved in and out of shadows, feeling himself going uphill as he went, feeling the wind on his face. He’d noticed the breeze picking up on his bike.

  When he could hear the water, he yelled Teddy’s name.

  No response.

  “Teddy, you up here?”

  Still nothing.

  When he finally approached the clearing that first brought the falls and the bridge in sight, Jack heard him.

  “Jack?”

  Suddenly it didn’t matter why Teddy had come up here. He sounded more frightened than ever, out there somewhere between the water and the sky.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Teddy Madden was halfway across the bridge, which was swaying even more than it usually did because the wind was blowing even harder up here.

  He had turned himself to face Jack. He seemed to have a death grip with his right hand on the thick rope that served as a railing.

  “Don’t look down,” Jack said.

  But that was exactly what Teddy did as soon as Jack said it. He looked down at the falls, then back at Jack.

  “I . . . I can’t get back,” he said.

  In that moment Jack thought of his brother. Brad never had any fears to overcome. Teddy was the opposite. But he’d decided to test himself today, the way Brad was always testing himself.

  “Yes, you can,” Jack said.

  He made himself smile, as if this was no big deal, as if they were behind Walton Middle throwing a ball around instead of facing each other high above Small Falls. “Piece of cake,” he said.

  Teddy looked down again, then back at Jack.

  “I can’t move,” he said. “I thought if I could do this, everything else would get easier. But I can’t.”

  “You can,” Jack said. “It’s the same advice my mom gave me after my brother died. You just gotta put one foot in front of the other.”

  Teddy wasn’t crying, but he was close.

  Jack said, “Teddy, the guy who was afraid of the bridge—you’re not that guy anymore.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “You’re not!” Jack said. “If you were, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.”