by Mike Lupica
And in that moment, his brother, too.
“Game on the line, little bro?” he used to say to Jack. “Nobody else I’d ever want up there except you.”
Game on the line here. Season on the line.
He took a strike, on the inside corner.
Then Danny threw him two balls, both inside as well. Maybe he knew what everybody else in their league knew, how hard and how far Jack could hit the ball to rightfield; how that was his real power.
If you’re ever going to wait, Jack told himself, wait now.
He wasn’t just waiting with his hands, and with his swing. He was telling himself to wait for his pitch. And got it from Danny. And got just underneath it enough to foul it back.
Shoot, shoot, shoot.
From the time he’d started playing ball, everything always seemed to get quiet for him in moments like this. Even though he’d never had a moment quite like this.
Danny Hayes tried to come inside again. But the ball ended up over the outside corner. The outer half, that’s what the announcers liked to say.
Jack tried to hit the ball into outer space.
Maybe nobody else at Highland Park knew for sure that the ball was gone when they saw it heading high and deep toward the rightfield wall. Jack knew.
He came flying out of the box and toward first, but he knew, only slowing down when the ball cleared the fence by as much as it did. One of those homers you always dreamed about hitting in baseball, the kind that you hoped wouldn’t stop rolling even when the game was over.
This one wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. But it was 3–2 Rays at Highland Park.
Gus tried to make it 4–2 three pitches later, but Wayne Coffey caught up with Gus’s try for a homer about a yard short of the wall in dead center.
They were still up by a run going to the bottom of the sixth, maybe the bottom of the last.
Before they took the field, Gus grabbed Jack and said, “Any more words of inspiration from the home run king?”
Jack turned to Teddy. “You tell him.”
“Little more work to do,” Teddy said.
Turned out to be a lot.
FORTY-ONE
It came down to the White Sox’s best player, Nate Vinton, up with a chance to be a hero in the bottom of the sixth. It was Nate who was going to be the hero or the last out for his team, with both the potential tying run and championship run on base.
Conor Freeman on second.
Wayne on first.
A 2–2 count on Nate.
He was the one down to his last strike when he was able to muscle a ball just between Gus and T.W. and toward Andre Williams, who had moved over to rightfield when Jerry came in to pitch.
Two things happened next, both huge.
Conor stumbled between second and third in his haste to get home with the tying run, and nearly went down.
That was one.
Two? Andre Williams got an amazing jump on the ball, charging it and picking it up in short right and coming up throwing as Conor finally got around third and headed for home.
The only problem was that in Andre’s haste to make a strong throw to the plate, he slipped slightly, his throw ballooning toward the infield. Everybody could see it was going to come up way short, near the pitcher’s mound instead of home plate. And neither Gus nor T.W. was there to be the cutoff man, because both of them had laid out trying to keep Nate’s hit in the infield.
There was no cutoff man in sight until Jack was.
He was running at full speed from his position on the other side of the infield, at shortstop, the way Derek Jeter had one time in the play-offs, when he came out of nowhere to take a throw from the outfield and make one of the most famous defensive plays in history, a flip throw to the plate that saved a game for the Yankees. Jack had watched the play a lot on YouTube. His dad had always said it was the best example he could ever remember in baseball of a player being in the right place at the right time.
Jack was in the right place now, catching up with Andre’s throw, catching the ball in stride, gloving the ball and getting it in his throwing hand and making his own flip throw toward home plate without looking.
Toward Teddy.
Then Teddy was the one catching the ball in Scott Sutter’s old mitt, making a sweep tag as Conor went into his slide, a good, hard, clean baseball slide.
He kicked up all this dirt.
Teddy kicked up his spikes as he went over on his back.
More dust and dirt from him.
When it cleared, Teddy was showing the home-plate ump that the ball was in the pocket of his mitt and Conor was out and the Rays were champions of the Atlantic.
In the next moment Jack was down there in the dirt with Teddy, and then the rest of the Rays were piling on top of them.
When they finally got to their feet, what felt like about an hour later, Teddy looked at Jack, smiling, face full of dirt and uniform full of dirt.
“Dude,” he said. “You never told me the last step was the hardest.”
FORTY-TWO
They were still at Highland Park an hour after the championship trophy had been presented in a ceremony at home plate. They had taken all the team pictures, before Coach Leonard leaned in and said to Jack, “I never thought I’d see that play again in my life. And never from a twelve-year-old.”
Jack told him what his dad had said about being in the right place at the right time.
Coach put out his hand and said, “I’m happy for you.”
Jack shook Coach’s hand and said, “I’m happy for all of us.”
“By the way? Turned out your catcher could catch.”
Jack grinned. “Right place, right time,” he said.
They both laughed.
Jack’s mom and dad were sitting at the end of the Rays’ bench, taking it all in. Cassie was with them. Jack walked over.
Cassie said, “The Jeter play? Seriously?”
Jack shrugged. “Just glad I thought of it before you did. And, Cass? That sidearm throw you made at the end of your game was harder.”
“Shut up,” she said, and then told him she needed one last slice of pizza. She walked over to the screen behind home plate where Mrs. Morales was passing them out.
It was Jack’s mom who spoke next. For all of them.
“He would’ve loved it more than anyone,” she said.
“The way he loved you,” his dad said. “He’d be bragging about you all over the place, telling everybody that his little bro came up bigger than he ever had.”
“And then,” Jack said, “he would’ve been busting my chops as soon as we got home.”
Jack looked over and saw Teddy near third base, posing for his mom as she took one more picture of him next to Coach and the championship trophy. When he broke loose, he and Gus met Jack near the pitcher’s mound.
“You were there for me,” Jack said to Teddy.
“Owed you one.”
Jack said, “I owe you a lot more than you owe me.”
“Got a question,” Teddy said. “How do we ever top this?”
“Are you kidding?” Jack said. “We’re just getting started. We’re not even close to summer yet.”
Teddy groaned.
“I’m not going to get much of a summer vacation, am I?” he said.
Jack and Gus looked at each other, then back at him, shaking their heads.
“We’re going right back to work, aren’t we?” Teddy said.
“No,” Gus said. “Actually, we’re going all the way to Williamsport.”
And they did.
Photo by Taylor McKelvy Lupica
MIKE LUPICA is the author of multiple bestselling books for young readers, including QB 1, Heat, Travel Team, Million-Dollar Throw, and The Underdogs. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, he writes for the New York Daily News, appears on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, and hosts The Mike Lupi
ca Show on ESPN Radio. You can visit Mike at mikelupicabooks.com.
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SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Mike Lupica
Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Dave Seeley
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lupica, Mike.
The only game / Mike Lupica.
pages cm
“A Home Team Novel.”
Summary: Sixth grade is supposed to be the year that Jack Callahan would lead his team to a record-shattering season and the Little League World Series, but after the death of his brother he loses interest in baseball and only Cassie, star of the girls’ softball team, seems to understand.
ISBN 978-1-4814-0995-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4814-0997-1 (eBook)
[1. Baseball—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Bullies—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L97914Onl 2015
[Fic]—dc23 2014015989
