Chapter Nineteen
Reece
The thing about a championship-level game is that the stadium knows before you do.
Fifty-two thousand people filing in, and the air already has an edge to it, charged and electric, the way it gets when everyone in the building understands the stakes without having them explained.
Standing outside the dugout during warmups, I feel it moving through the crowd in waves, the tightened breath, the too-loud voices, the particular hum of collective anticipation that has no equivalent anywhere outside a packed ballpark.
The Wildcats are one game from the divisional title.
Two months ago, a sentence like that would have made me feel like the whole world was mine.
Today I feel it distantly, through glass. Present in my body, present on this field, going through every pregame ritual with the mechanical precision of someone whose hands know what to do even when his head is somewhere else.
Stretch. Throw. Assess. Repeat.
Mack catches my last warmup pitch and stands up, rolling his shoulder. He walks the ball back to me instead of throwing it, which is what he does when he has something to say and wants my full attention.
“How’s the arm?” he asks.
“Good.”
“How’s the head?”
“Working on it.”
He studies me for a moment with the particular scrutiny of a catcher who has been calling my pitches for three seasons and knows exactly which version of me showed up today. “She coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“She knows when the games are on.” I take the ball, turning it in my fingers. “The rest is her call.”
Mack nods slowly. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, meaning I believe you, and I also think you need to locate yourself in this ballpark in the next forty minutes, because I am not catching a second straight disaster game, and I’d like this to be on record before first pitch.
” He claps my shoulder. “You’ve been here before. You know what to do.”
“I know.”
“Do the thing you do.”
“The thing I do.”
“The mound thing. Where you turn into a different person.”
“That’s called pitching.”
“It’s called whatever it is, and you’re the best in the league at it, so find it.” He heads back to the plate. “And, Steele, check the GF section when you come out. Third row. Aisle seat.”
My chest tightens. “Mack…”
“Just check it.” He drops into his crouch position before I can say anything else.
The dugout before the first pitch has its own specific energy, with guys bouncing on their heels, headphones in, headphones out.
Someone eating sunflower seeds with the concentration of a man defusing a device.
Rivera is crossing himself three times in a row at the far end.
Martinez is doing the same stretch he does before every game, the one where he looks like he’s attempting a move from a contemporary dance workshop.
I sit with my eyes on the field and run through the lineup in my head.
Eastern Phoenix Raptors, top of the order, leadoff hitter who’s been getting on base at a .
388 clip for six weeks, followed by a two-hole hitter who doesn’t chase.
Then their three, four, and five, with power, patience, and a contact hitter who puts the ball in play no matter what you throw at him.
I’ve faced this lineup twice this season.
I know exactly where each of them lives in the box, exactly which pitches make them uncomfortable, exactly where I need to be, and where I don’t.
My arm is ready.
My head is the problem.
Coach Bishop comes down the dugout and stops at my end. He doesn’t sit. He stands with his hands in the front pocket of his jacket, looking out at the field, and I wait because, with Bishop, the conversation starts when he decides it does.
“Arm good?” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I want you to do something for me tonight.”
“Whatever you need.”
“I want you to pitch your game.” He turns his head slightly, not looking at me directly. “Not the angry game you’ve been throwing for a month. Not the performance you put on when you’re trying to prove something. Your actual game. The one you throw when you’re settled.” He pauses. “You settled?”
The honest answer is, I’m getting there.
“Yes, sir.”
He makes a sound that might be skepticism or acceptance. With Bishop, it’s often both. “Good. Because I need you present for nine innings, not for two and a half before whatever’s in your head takes over.”
“Understood.”
He moves back down the dugout without further comment. Two minutes later, he stops and looks back. “Steele.”
“Coach.”
“You’ve been carrying a lot this season.” He holds my gaze for exactly three seconds. “Put it down for the next nine innings.”
He doesn’t wait for my response.
I take the mound in the bottom of the first, and everything is exactly as it should be.
The crowd is deafening. The stadium lights blaze white against the evening sky.
Sixty feet six inches of perfect sightline between me and Garrett’s glove.
The mound is packed and firm under my cleats, worn smooth in the spot where I plant my pivot foot, mine and every pitcher who came before me on this dirt.
The leadoff hitter steps in.
Garrett calls for a fastball. I shake him off, not because it’s wrong, but I need to feel in control of something immediately. He flashes the curveball. I nod.
I go into my windup.
The ball leaves my hand wrong.
I know it the second it goes. The grip was half a rotation off, the release point a fraction too early, and the pitch hangs up in the zone like something embarrassed of itself. The leadoff hitter, .388 on-base percentage, patient, disciplined, takes it for a ball without flinching.
Ball one.
I catch the return throw from Garrett, stand on the mound, and take stock.
The crowd doesn’t know. The crowd is still with me, fifty-two thousand people generating enough noise to make the air vibrate. To them, it was one pitch, one ball, the opener of what could be a long at-bat. Not a sign of anything.
But I know.
My shoulder is fine.
My arm is fine.
The mechanics were fine.
The release was fine.
My head wasn’t.
I am standing on the mound at the most important game of the regular season with my head forty minutes away at a tattoo studio, wondering whether the woman I want more than any win I’ve ever had is home sketching in her private sketchbook, pulling into a parking garage, sitting in traffic, or doing anything other than sitting in this stadium.
I am not present.
And if I throw the next pitch the same way, this game is over before it starts.
I step off the mound.
One step back. Left foot off the rubber. It’s allowed. It’s legal. It stops the clock.
Garrett stands, lifts his mask, and gives me a look that is four parts question and one part threat.
I hold up one finger. Give me a second.
He settles back down.
I stand behind the mound, do the thing I haven’t done since I was nineteen years old and pitching the most terrifying game of my college career in front of forty scouts who would decide my entire future.
I stop thinking about the batter, about the count, the lineup, the scouts, the analytics, the contract, the coaching staff, the cameras, the blogs, all of it.
I take one breath in.
Hold it for four counts.
And I look up at the stadium.
Not at the crowd as a mass. At the crowd as individual people, faces, jerseys, rally towels, and signs stacked in tiers from field level to the upper deck, every seat filled with someone who drove here, took the train here, or talked their spouse into coming here because tonight mattered.
My eyes move without deciding to.
Third row of the club level section. The wives, girlfriends, and families section is separated from the general seating by a low barrier, visible from the mound if you know where to look. I’ve never looked before, never had a reason to.
Mack told me to check the aisle seat.
Dark hair. A Wildcats cap pulled low. A leather jacket she wore the first night I helped her with the stuck roller door, the night everything started.
Ava Bishop is sitting in the third row of the club level, aisle seat, with her hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed on the mound.
Fixed on me.
The breath I’ve been holding comes out slowly.
She came.
And not to the upper deck. Not to the cheap seats tucked under the stadium’s overhang, where the sound bounces strangely, and the sightlines require a generous imagination.
Not some anonymous corner of the general admission sections where nobody looks twice at the person next to them.
The club level wives and families section requires a specific credential, a name on a specific list, a specific conversation with someone in the front office, a specific decision to walk up to the gate, and to present yourself as someone who belongs there.
Ava, who drives forty minutes to a restaurant to avoid being seen with me.
Ava, who wears caps and sunglasses and has a comprehensive operational strategy for not being noticed in this city.
Ava, who turned down a SportsCenter producer without blinking and told me, clearly and specifically, that her name is not news and her personal life is not content.
Ava Bishop walked up to the family and partners’ entrance of Wildcat Stadium tonight and put her name on the list.
She didn’t text me. Didn’t warn me. Didn’t make a production of it, turn it into a conversation, or give herself the option of backing out quietly if she changed her mind at the last minute.
She decided on her own terms, the way she makes every decision, fully, deliberately, and without asking anyone’s permission.
It’s the smallest, most private declaration in a stadium of fifty-two thousand people.
It’s the loudest thing she’s ever said to me.