The Hitting Zone

Chapter 95 Game Two: Pleasant Valley 3

Noah pointed at Zeke, who was walking up to the plate. "That’s why. As an infielder you should be aware of who is coming up to bat, what the score would be, and so on. They gave up the run to get the two outs. That’s a million times better than no outs and bases loaded for Zeke, the number one player in the county. Even if the shortstop had thrown home, there would be no guarantee that they’d get Jason out on the tag play. They gave up one run which is manageable."

I watched as Zeke got in the batters box. He had a good stance. If I was tall and built like he was, I would want to try a similar stance. It’s a good way to hit for distance. The pitcher didn’t give him anything good to hit, just two balls on the outside. With the third pitch, he tried to come inside, but it looked to be right over the plate. Zeke ate it up. He blasted it over the left field wall. Home run!

The guys all cheered from the dugout and the bullpen. As Zeke touched home plate, he pointed at the bullpen, then came back to the dugout.

I looked at Noah, confused on what that meant.

"That was Zeke showing off. Dave demanded a homerun, right? Well Zeke delivered." Noah explained. Who knew Zeke had a side like this. I kind of always thought he had a stoic personality.

In the short time that Noah explained, Tony went up to bat and sent a fly ball to left field as well. Except his was caught for out number three. The teams changed sides.

James had a strong first inning that didn’t transition into a good second inning. It started off with back to back doubles, cutting our lead to 2-1. Then a pop out. Strike out. Fly out.

Bottom of the second, John, Daniel, and Kelvin would start us off. I was interested in what John would do since he’s the player I had replaced. But I didn’t get much...he struck out looking. Daniel grounded out. And Kelvin’s would-be line drive single was snatched by the third baseman with a spectacular jump. Three up, three down. Top of the third we go.

"At this rate, we won’t be able to get the called game that Zeke wanted. Even if he does hit a couple more homers." Noah mumbled as we watched our team take the field.

"What’s a called game? Mercy game?" I rubbed my head trying to recall.

Noah laughed. "A called game is when you end a game early because one team leads by a lot early on. It’s called a mercy rule. It’s to shorten the span of a game. For this tournament, if a team is ahead by ten runs at the end of five innings, they declare the game over. That’s a called game. During regular season games, you have to lead by fifteen by the end of the fifth. Right now, we only lead by one. That means we have to score nine more runs, while they don’t score any, and we can be declared the winners by the end of the fifth inning with a score of 11-1. But it’s looking bleak right now." Noah nodded at the field.

I looked. While Noah was telling me about the mercy rule, James had given up another double. I looked just in time for him to strikeout the next batter though.

This game was nothing like a hitting fest that coach had predicted. It was rather close. James gave up another single. Then a groundout that allowed a runner to score. 2-2. Then he struck out the batter for the last out. Bottom of the third, game tied at two. For the team to win a called game, they would really have to start scoring.

When James came back to the dugout, coach called him over when he should have been getting ready to go up to bat.

"Coach is going to pull him." Noah whispered. I raised my eyebrow. Pull how? "Look at the bullpen. Troy and Ryan are warming up. Coach will probably put in a pinch hitter for James. Then after we finish batting, replace the pinch hitter with a new pitcher." Noah grinned. "You should know, not every game is like your first one where Kyle pitched the whole time. I’ve explained the pitch count and rest days to you before. Kyle was under 110 pitches so he was okay, but he did well over 76 so he’s gonna have to rest three whole days. For the game on Tuesday, he’ll be unavailable."

Oh. Okay. That makes sense, I guess. James should be under 76, but over 50 for sure, so he would need two days. We can use him on Tuesday then.

Sure enough, James went to sit down and Sean was going up to the batters box, with Coach right behind him. Coach spoke to the ump and the umpire pulled out some paper to make a scribble on. He looked to someone in the stands and called out ’pinch hitter.’

I tried to see who he was talking to, but the stands were crowded with parents and other players.

"He was announcing the change for the official scorekeeper." Noah saw me checking out the stands. "The scorekeeper has the record book that keeps track of the game, at bats, the pitch count and so on."

I was interested to know more, like how it was done, but Noah went back to cheering. Sean would lead us off. Followed by Jason and Julian. Then hopefully we could also bring up Mahki and Zeke.