Extra Innings (5 page)

The pitcher wound up. Tiki set his weight on his back foot, ready to launch another moon shot. Here came the pitch. Tiki swung so hard, he nearly came out of his shoes. But all he hit was air.

The cheers died down. As the catcher threw the ball back to the mound, Tiki tried to figure out how he'd
missed that pitch. It had been right down the middle!

There wasn't much time to think, though. Here came the second pitch. Tiki, anxious to make up for missing, swung even harder—only to realize, too late, that the pitch was in the dirt. It got away from the catcher and Lenny Klein came halfway home from third before deciding it was too risky and heading back to his base.

The crowd started chanting again, bellowing with all their might. Tiki could feel himself sweating. One bead trickled down from his helmet, down his forehead, and onto his eyelid. He shook his head to get rid of it, just as the pitch came in.

He wanted to swing but held up, thinking the pitch was a little outside. By the time he realized it was curving back in toward the plate, it was too late. He watched it pass right over the heart of the plate, and heard the umpire yell, “Strike three! Yer out!”

A groan went up from the stands. Tiki wanted to smash something. Muttering under his breath, he returned to the bench, staring at the ground and ignoring the teammates who patted him on the back, saying, “Don't worry about it” and “We'll get 'em anyway.”

The next batter, Michael Mason, hit the first pitch he saw right at the second baseman, who grabbed it out of the air, then tossed to first base, where Ian Lloyd had started heading for second. The double play ended the inning, as quickly as that.

Incredibly, after loading the bases with no one out, the Eagles had failed to score!

Demoralized and angry, Tiki grabbed his glove and headed out to second base. How had he missed that first pitch? Why had he even swung at the second? And how in the world had he let that third pitch go by?

He tried to get all these negative thoughts out of his head while he was in the field. Luckily, John Benson was pitching well, and the Bears weren't putting the bat on his fastball. If Tiki had to field a sharp grounder that inning, he wasn't sure he could have handled it.

After a scoreless second, Ronde walked to lead off the third. Good thing, Tiki thought. If his brother couldn't make contact, at least he could reach base by letting the pitcher walk him.

With Lenny Klein at the plate facing an 0–2 count, Ronde took off for second base. The pitch was in the dirt, but the Bears' catcher made the mistake of trying to throw Ronde out when it was way too late to get him. The throw bounced off Ronde's sneaker and into left field, and Ronde wasted no time in heading for third.

The left fielder threw the ball to home plate—but it got away from the catcher, and before anyone knew what was happening, Ronde was heading home! The catcher, stunned to see what was happening, fumbled at the ball as he tried to pick it up—and Ronde slid safely in with the first run of the game!

Tiki let out a whoop that was drowned in the sea of noise from all the Eagles and their fans. Ronde ran back to the bench, high-fiving everyone he could reach.

Unfortunately, that was all the scoring the Eagles did that inning. Nor did they even reach base in the next two innings. By the time the top of the seventh rolled around, the score was 3–2, Bears. John Benson had given up a big inning in the fifth, as his arm had tired and he'd started throwing the ball right down the middle instead of to the corners. The Eagles second run had come on a homer, with Michael Mason providing the heroics.

As for Tiki, he'd popped up twice to the infield, on swings that had been meant to produce home runs. He couldn't understand why it was happening—at batting practice the ball was right where he saw it. Today, though, he was swinging just over it, just under it, or was swinging too soon or too late. He wasn't off by much, but that little bit was the difference.

As he was dwelling on all this, the Bears' cleanup hitter smacked a hard ground ball to his right. He dove for it, and came up with it in his mitt. Springing to his feet, he fired the ball toward first—but his aim was way off. He'd rushed the throw, not realizing that the hitter was a slow runner and Tiki had plenty of time. The throw sailed wide of first, rolling straight under the fence and into the stands.

The umpire signaled that the hitter was to take third
base on the unplayable ball. Tiki hung his head and kicked the dirt with his toe.

Just what they needed! It was one thing for a team to come back in the last at bat from being down one run. But if the Bears scored this insurance run, it would be that much harder. And it would all be his fault!

Sure enough, two strikeouts later, a base hit scored the run, making it 4–2, Bears.

In the bottom of the seventh, Tiki had one last chance to make things right. As Tiki was walking to the plate as the winning run, with men on first and second and two outs, Coach Raines cautioned him to “Just go for a base hit! A base hit ties the game!”

Tiki heard the words, and he understood their meaning. But in his head a voice kept telling him,
One swing of the bat wins this game! One big home run! You can do it, dude!

Tiki took a strike, wanting to get a feel for the Bears' relief pitcher's stuff. He wasn't throwing as hard as the first guy. Tiki thought he could see the ball well coming out of the kid's hand. He reared back and swung, ferociously.

“Strike two!” yelled the umpire as the ball landed in the catcher's mitt.

Tiki nearly fell to the ground, so hard had he swung. His whole body had twisted like a pretzel, and he'd lost his balance.

The next pitch was high and inside. Tiki ducked, but the ball hit his bat and went foul. “Strike two!” the umpire called.

Tiki was really sweating now. He had to keep shaking his head to keep the salty, stinging drops out of his eyes.

The pitch came in fast. Tiki took one last, explosive, salt-blinded swing at it—and missed!

“Strike three! Yer out! Ball game over!” the umpire yelled.

Tiki heard him, even over the loud moan that came from the stands and the Eagles bench. Another Eagles loss!

And this time everyone would be pointing the finger straight at him.

• • •

To his surprise, in the locker room nobody said a mean word. Those who came up to him patted him consolingly on the back and muttered words of consolation and encouragement.

But it didn't help. Tiki knew the truth—all he had to do was look at Ronde to confirm it. Ronde, who'd struck out twice after his early heroics, but whom nobody had been counting on for his bat, couldn't even look him in the eye.

Even Ronde knows this loss was on me,
Tiki thought.
I've got to get myself turned around somehow—and fast!

The Eagles were 0–2 out
of the gate, and Ronde was feeling totally bummed out. He was so upset, he was barely able to focus on his schoolwork. In fact, Ms. Bernstein, his English teacher, had called him over after class and asked him if there was some trouble at home she should know about.

He'd told her there wasn't—which was true—but didn't mention his worries about what was happening to him at the plate. He knew she wouldn't understand. Ms. Bernstein had more than once mentioned that she thought playing sports in junior high school was a waste of time—time that would be better spent studying or doing homework.

Ronde knew his mom would agree about the studying part, and he promised Ms. B. that he would pay better attention from now on. But he also knew that until
and unless he solved the mystery of his total failure in the batter's box, he would be distracted by feelings of defeat, misery, and frustration.

That afternoon at practice he hit okay, as he sometimes did in practice. That got him to wondering why in real games he whiffed nine swings out of ten. It couldn't just be a coincidence, he realized.

His problem had to be with the speed of the pitches. Coaches at batting practice wanted you to make contact, so they threw the ball right down the middle, at a speed any batter could catch up to. In game action the other side's pitchers were trying to make you
miss
. They would throw balls that looked like strikes, and strikes that looked like balls—and before you knew it, you were confused and swinging at thin air.

Ronde thought his problem was that he would get used to the speed of batting practice pitches, then be consistently behind when it really counted. He made a decision to try a drastic remedy—after all, if there ever were a time for desperate measures, this was it.

He decided that he was going to cheat.

That is, whenever he thought the next pitch was likely to be a fastball, he would start his swing early, before he even knew how fast the pitch was or where it was going to be. He might miss badly if it turned out to be a changeup or a curveball. But it was his only chance of catching up to a good fastball. And so far fastballs had
accounted for about two out of every three pitches he'd seen.

Ronde figured that if he started hitting those fastballs, word would get around the league eventually, and pitchers would start throwing him pitches he could actually catch up to with his normal swing.

He knew this decision was a big gamble, but he figured he didn't have much to lose. He hadn't gotten a hit in either of the first two games—hadn't hit the ball fair even once! Just strikeouts and the occasional lucky walk.

Convinced that whatever happened would at least be different from what he'd done before, Ronde readied himself to face the Martinsville Colts. It was another home game for the Eagles, so whatever happened, it would all play out in front of hundreds of his friends, teachers, and schoolmates.

As he took the field for the start of the game, Ronde saw Jason Rossini on the adjacent running track, practicing for his next meet. Jason waved to Ronde, and gave him two thumbs-up. Ronde waved back, thinking as he did so that maybe he should have gone out for track, like Jason had suggested.

Ronde hated the thought that the last memory Hidden Valley's students and teachers would have of him might not be as a football hero but as a baseball failure.

He didn't have much time to think about it, fortunately. On the first pitch of the game, Martinsville's
leadoff man cracked a line drive to center field. Ronde stood frozen in place at first, trying to gauge how hard the ball had been hit. It seemed to rise in midair, gaining extra speed as it went. Ronde took off toward the wall, taking his eye off the ball for a second to see how much room he had to roam.

As he approached the chain-link fence, Ronde leapt into the air, extended his arm, and grabbed the screaming liner out of the air. He crashed into the fence, protecting himself with both arms up. When he came down, he stumbled, then held up the glove to show that it contained the ball. A roar went up from the stands, and Ronde forgot all about his hitting troubles—at least until the bottom of the second, when he came up to the plate for the first time.

By then the Eagles led, 2–0, on a towering home run by Tiki, who'd connected on the Colts' pitcher's tempting change-up and crushed it, scoring Lenny Klein from second base, where he'd arrived after a leadoff double.

Ronde tapped the plate with his bat, measuring his distance from it in the batter's box. He dug his cleats into the soft dirt, trying to get good footing. It hadn't rained in three weeks, and the ground was dusty and soft. He held his bat back way behind his shoulder, wound like a spring ready to uncoil.

There was one out, and a man on first due to a walk by the Colts' pitcher. Ronde knew that a speedy runner
like John Benson was likely to steal. He was already taking a big lead off first, and the pitcher could see that, too—which meant he'd want to stick to fastballs, giving his catcher a chance to throw out the runner at second.

As the pitcher went into his windup, Ronde reared back as far as he could. He went into his swing a split second earlier than he otherwise would have—and amazingly, was rewarded with solid contact!

The ball bounced twice down the third base line and hit the bag before the third baseman could glove it. The ball ricocheted high into the air, and by the time the Colts had retrieved it, Ronde was on second base and Benson was standing on third!

“Attaboy, Ronde! Attaboy!” Ronde heard Coach Raines yell. Ronde clapped his hands together and crammed his helmet back onto his head. He took his lead, hoping Lenny would drive him and John in for two more runs.

But Lenny only flied to left. John Benson scored the Eagles' third run on the sac fly, but Ronde had to stay at second while the throw went to third. Chris Jones and Ian Lloyd both walked to load the bases—but Tiki struck out to end the inning, stranding all three runners.

The Colts scored twice in the top of the fourth and were threatening to tie the score. With one out, men on second and third, and their cleanup man at the plate, Ronde backed up to make sure nothing would be hit past him.

With a full count the hitter popped one up to shallow
center! Ronde's eyes went wide as he realized he could never reach it because he was playing so deep.

Or could he? Ronde took off like lightning, running for all he was worth. The ball was falling now, dropping almost straight down. He figured the runners would both be going, assuming the ball was going to drop in for a hit—but he couldn't take his eyes off the ball to look.

At the last second Ronde launched himself forward, reaching so hard he thought his arm would detach itself from the rest of his body—and caught the ball only inches from the ground!

He hit hard, doing something of a face-plant in the grass. But he made sure to squeeze his mitt tight. Coming up in one swift motion, he fired the ball to second base, where Tiki was waiting for it. The runner had no chance of getting back in time, and a would-be disaster was transformed into an inning-ending, Barber-to-Barber double play!