Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Logan
Iprobably shouldn’t be texting right before the game starts, especially when I’m supposed to leave the locker room within the next two minutes, but …
Georgie is so freaking cute in the new Firebirds hat I sent her.
Georgie
Go get ’em, 49!
This text is accompanied by a selfie of her in the Meant to Bean truck, her brown eyes closed, long blonde hair pulled back into two braids, lips red and puckered blowing me a kiss.
“Dang, Fischer. Your girlfriend’s hot,” Jake says from behind me.
I flip my phone over, but before I can say anything—or punch Jake in the ribs—Lucas groans.
“Shut up about my girlfriend,” Lucas says from the locker next to mine. He’s dressed in uniform, but he’s not pitching tonight. He’ll be watching me from the dugout with the rest of the team.
“Gross,” Jake says, making a face. “I’m not talking about Scot. I’m talking about this one’s girlfriend.”
I turn on the bench and stare at him. “‘This one’? My name’s Logan. We’ve known each other since February.”
Jake shakes his head. “Honestly, knowing one of you is too many,” he says, slapping Lucas’s stomach on his way past. “Later, dorks.”
“Love you, too, Jakey!” Lucas calls out. Then he plops down next to me on the bench. We’ve spent a lot of time together over the last four days, but years of experience has taught me that sitting in a locker room or bullpen or dugout together never gets old.
I look at my twin—his face a mirror image of mine—and watch him watching me. “So, Georgie sends you kissing selfies, huh?” he asks.
I shrug, but it only makes him grin.
“You’re so bad at playing it cool,” he says, pushing my shoulder. “Get a move on it, bro. Bullpen’s waiting.”
My pulse kicks into high gear. “Don’t remind me.”
I get up and follow Lucas out of the locker room and into the stadium. But it feels a lot more like out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Time to see if Dr. Chang’s techniques work on the big stage.
***
Lucas has this thing he likes to do when he steps onto a new mound. He ignores the crowd, lights, sounds, and colors, and he focuses on everything he already knows. I’ve ignored this advice my whole life because it seemed impossible to turn my brain off the way he describes.
Let’s see how it works.
I count my steps from the bullpen to the mound—sixty-eight, close enough to the sixty-four I always get running in from the pen back in Mullet Ridge.
My eyes fix on the grass, the dirt, the mound, all familiar enough, even if they’re a different hue.
I breathe in, slow and steady, and step onto the mound, not letting myself think about the thirty-eight thousand fans in attendance or the fact that we’re in the middle of a playoff run.
I’m aware of all of this, but I don’t let myself think about it.
Almost like I can … control my own mind.
But the real question is if I can do this while holding a knuckleball.
The rubber is sixty feet, six inches, I tell myself. Ten inches higher than home plate. I breathe in and hold out my glove for the umpire to throw me the ball. I catch it with a satisfying thwap and then I heft the ball.
Major League baseballs all have one hundred and eight stitches and are all between nine and nine and a quarter inches in circumference.
This ball is right around nine inches—too small for my knuckleball, which is what I’m here for.
I give the ump a nod and toss it back to him.
He feels in his pouch for another ball and throws it back.
I roll it around in my hand, feeling the tacky brown film worked into the leather—the same mud that’s been used on every Major League ball since 1938, taken from a tributary of the Delaware River somewhere in Southern New Jersey.
The location of the river is a secret even from baseball executives, and the mud is jarred and distributed by a single company.
Tell me baseball isn’t awesome.
Someone in the clubhouse spent real time today working the mud into this exact ball by hand. This is a good ball. The right size.
I look up.
Rojas and I are both wearing different uniforms—Firebirds navy, red, and orange—but it’s still us pitching and throwing the ball back until we’re both ready. My brother’s in the dugout as well as my future brother-in-law. I have friends on this team.
And a girl I hope is watching back in Mullet Ridge.
When the first batter steps up to the plate, I tell myself I’m not pitching for her.
But if she’s impressed, I won’t be mad about it.
I focus on the glove in front of my face for a few heartbeats, then let my vision go soft and lose focus on a spot right above the ump. I feel my pulse steadying. Georgie’s in the back of my mind, but nothing is taking the front. I grip the ball—fingernails in, knuckles out—wind up, and release.
Thwap.
Strike one.
I can feel Rojas smiling behind his mask.
It’s hard to predict where a knuckleball will end up, so I miss the zone a few times. I walk one, strike out two, and then another still gets on base.
I have two outs, but also two runners on base, with one in scoring position when the next batter gets up.
He has a mean look on his face that I ignore.
He fouls the first one straight back. Swings at the next without getting a piece of it.
I miss the strike zone on the next two pitches, trying to be clever when you can’t be clever with a knuckleball.
By the time I’ve climbed to a full count, the crowd noise has gone from background hum to something I can feel in my back teeth.
I look at my glove in my hand. Then just over the umpire’s head, where I let my focus relax—
Wait, is that Scottie in the stands cheering?
I catch her blonde hair and glasses as she claps.
How did I miss her sitting there this whole time?
I blink hard and something tugs in my chest, thinking about Georgie watching in her upstairs apartment so many states away instead of a mere hundred feet, like my brother gets.
She’s probably got the TV on in the background as she does homework.
Is she watching me now?
Shoot.
I can’t think about Georgie right now. But I can’t try to avoid the thought of her, either.
Avoidance never works. I slow my breathing and let the thought of her move through me instead of fighting it, let the feeling of missing her go in and out of me with every breath, and then I let my focus go soft again.
Look at the spot behind the ump. Nothing else.
The pitch clock’s ticking down.
What happens next is quick—maybe two seconds, but every movement counts.
I set my grip and dig my fingernails into the seams while I find the sign from Rojas. I nod, then settle my right foot against the back of the rubber and set my left foot in front of me.
I lift my knee up to hip height, weight staying back over my right leg through the whole thing.
Then I stride forward in a burst of strength and speed.
My arm comes through on its normal path—same arm slot as my fastball, same arm speed almost the whole way so hitters can’t see it coming.
My wrist doesn’t lock quite right but the ball releases off my fingertips, knuckles out, leaving my hand with no spin.
Something in my forearm stings like a rubber band hitting it and I have to shake it off, watching as the ball floats toward Rojas.
This one’s fast. Gotta be seventy-eight miles per hour, my best pitch of the night.
The batter doesn’t know where to swing but he can’t help himself, and it veers six inches at the last possible second.
Strike three.
The guy stands there looking at his bat like there’s a hole in it, but the stadium is going wild.
Three outs.
I did it.
My forearm still feels off as I jog from the mound. Rojas meets me halfway, smacks my glove with his. Lucas and Coop are already off the bench, and they grab me excitedly. Even Jake smacks my butt and gives me a “good one” on his way past.
I drop to the bench next to Lucas while our teammates get ready to bat, and when no one’s looking, I press two fingers into my own forearm, testing it like it’s a bruise.
The Firebirds’ manager comes over while I’m still carefully feeling around the spot.
“What’s going on?” Joe asks, chewing sunflower seeds.
“Nothing, I don’t think. Just feels off.”
He doesn’t buy it—I can see it in how his eyes narrow—but he doesn’t push, either, not with an inning still live. “You ever had a ligament tear? Elbow, forearm, anything?”
“No, never,” I tell him. Knuckleballers don’t usually blow stuff out the way everybody else does. The pitch causes less stress on the arm than most pitches, which explains why you can still see guys throwing knuckleballs into their forties.
“All right,” Joe says. “But we’ll have somebody look at it tonight to be safe.”
I nod and watch the rest of the inning from the bench next to Lucas, but underneath the cheering, there’s a low, familiar hum of dread and the spiraling feeling of a whirlpool trying to pull me down.
***
The game’s still going when I get pulled by the team doctor into the training room, where the head athletic trainer and team doctor are already waiting. The doctor has me sit on the table, presses his fingers into my forearm, and asks me to rate the pain one to ten.
“Two, maybe three?”
“Make a fist. Now straighten your fingers against me.”
I push against his hand, and something pulls along the back of my forearm, down toward my wrist. Not sharp. More like a tight rubber band being stretched too far.
“Again.”
I do it, and the same spot tugs.
He bends my elbow and has me press two fingers against the side of my forehead. “Thinker’s test,” he says.
I do what he asks. Nothing.
Then he takes my hand and pulls my thumb backward with my elbow bent past ninety degrees, putting a stretch through the inside of my elbow.
“What’s that for?”
“Ruling things out.”
Enough said. I know exactly what gets ruled out when a pitcher’s forearm goes, and my brain’s already sprinting ahead, wondering if that was the pitch that ends everything or only the beginning of the end—