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Chapter 26 – Lady Lucky Monday April 24
Today they would announce the regional seeding to start the state baseball playoffs. We had two rounds of playoffs to reach the state finals. Regionals would encompass area teams, which would then move to sectionals. Moose would share who we would be playing before practice today.
Lexi had decided she’d had enough of small-town living, so she had left early this morning. I was more than a little surprised that my mother hadn’t said a word about Lexi spending the night with me while she was in town. Mom knew I wasn’t celibate, but that didn’t mean she turned a blind eye to my activities, either.
This was especially true when Tami came home. Mom still entertained visions of the two of us being together. I’d expected at least a comment, but she’d said nothing. It made me wonder if her talk with Tami, which I’d overheard, was the reason she’d decided to leave me alone. I’d probably best just take that as a win and forget about it. The last thing I wanted to do was poke the bear and have my mom all up in my business.
I walked into the kitchen to find Cassidy making breakfast. I hadn’t seen her all weekend.
“Hello, Stranger,” I said by way of greeting.
She ignored me.
“Where were you all weekend?” I asked.
“Around,” Cassidy said vaguely.
I decided if she wasn’t going to talk, I would call Brook.
“What’s up?” Brook asked when she answered her phone.
“Did you figure it out?” I asked.
“Yeah. She was around,” Brook said.
I figured out that the two of them were having me on. I decided I wasn’t playing.
“Great,” I said and hung up.
I stepped over to the sink to get a cup of water and put it in the microwave so I could make tea. Cassidy kept glancing over at me, expecting me to question her. If what she’d been up to was something that worried Brook, Brook would have told me.
Mom and Dad came downstairs with Duke.
“Go help Peggy,” Mom said.
I ran upstairs and fetched my sons. Peggy was still getting ready.
“I thought we agreed that you would start dressing better,” Mom said.
“Need I remind you that this isn’t LA, and I already have a date to prom?” I fired back.
“You might have to start picking out his clothes again like you did when he was little,” Dad offered.
“Go change into something nicer,” Mom ordered.
“Why? What’s going on?” I asked.
“Just do as your mother says,” Dad tried.
Both mom and I began to laugh. Dad typically wasn’t the disciplinarian, and when he said stuff like that, it was funny. That didn’t mean, though, that when he got worked up, he couldn’t put the fear of God into me.
When Dad gave me a look that showed he wasn’t amused, I raised my hands in surrender and left to change.
There must be a reason, so I reached into the back of my closet to get my model clothes. I found a black silk turtleneck and paired it with dark gray slacks. I grabbed a Dakora sports coat and put on my oxblood red leather tennis shoes.
When I came back downstairs, I found out why Mom had insisted I change clothes: Jeff Delahey was sitting in our kitchen with a camerawoman.
They told me they would follow me around for baseball. Great!
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When we got to school, everyone scattered when they saw Jeff and me with a camera in our faces.
“Since when do you dress up to go to school?” Jeff asked.
“Which do you want, the truth or some spin?” I offered.
“Give me the spin first.”
“Since I became a big-time movie star, I have to look the part,” I tried.
Jeff wasn’t buying it. I agreed.
“My mom made me,” I admitted.
“Go with that one,” Jeff said.
He did a quick interview and then told me he would see me before practice. At least he wasn’t going to follow me around all day.
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Moose gathered us around in the locker room before practice to announce the regional seedings. Jeff had joined us with his camerawoman so they’d have the footage for the piece he was doing.
“We’ve been selected as the number one seed and will be playing number eight seed Lakeview tomorrow. When we win that game, our next opponent will either be Eastside or Mt. Vernon, and we will play them on Thursday,” Moose shared.
He read off the rest of the regional pairings. St. Joe wasn’t among them because of the debacle that transpired after they threw at me earlier in the year. The number two seed was Washington. If it all played out to script, we would meet them in the regional finals on Saturday. The winner would go on to sectionals.
Sectionals would be another eight-team tournament where the winner would move on to state. At state, the four sectional winners would face off in a two-game, winner-takes-all championship.
“Why don’t they play this as a double-elimination tournament?” Jeff asked.
“Three reasons,” Moose answered. “The first is they want to let as many teams have a shot as possible.”
“But is that fair to a team like yours that only has one loss to be playing a barely five hundred team?”
“I see your point. But I’ve been there with similar records before. I think it’s important that other teams at least get the chance to have a Cinderella experience and surprise some folks,” Moose said.
“What are the other two reasons?” Jeff asked.
“The second is that’s how it’s always been done. Baseball is a game of traditions, after all. The third is we only have a limited amount of time. If we used a double-elimination format, each eight-team tournament would require us to play 4 or 5 games rather than the three we play now,” Moose explained.
After Jeff had everything he needed, Moose told me to lead the team out to warm up for practice.
◊◊◊ Tuesday April 25
As the number one seed, we would be at home for our game.
The saying goes that April showers bring May flowers. That held true for today because it was raining when I rode to school. The problem with weather like this was that if the field became too wet to play on, we would have to push our game to tomorrow.
The forecast predicted rain for the rest of the week. Our goal was to play today because if we didn’t, it would have a domino effect of bunching up games to get them all in this week.
That was important because of pitching rotations. High school wasn’t like the major leagues where you could bring in a pitcher on back-to-back nights. We followed a pitch-count rule.
The rule said that any appearance that didn’t exceed the 30-pitch mark required no rest, which allowed a pitcher who pitched short-term to pitch the next day if needed. They did have a three-day rule, though. You couldn’t throw on three consecutive days, no matter your count.
Other pitch-count requirements said that you couldn’t throw more than 105 pitches in a day. The required recovery periods were four days for 76 to 105 pitches; three days for 61 to75 pitches; two days for 46 to 60 pitches; and one day for 31 to 45 pitches.
The reason for the 105-pitch maximum was that a high school pitcher threw an average of fifteen pitches per inning. Simple math said that over seven innings, an average game would have 105 balls thrown.
I was impressed that Moose had been using three to four pitchers a game for the last few. I suspected he wanted to be flexible with our pitching. That way, if we got our games jammed up because of the weather, we shouldn’t lose the use of key players because of the mandated recovery time.
It also let our pitchers cut loose because they knew they would only be pitching a couple of innings. They didn’t have to worry about getting tired.
We’d moved up our game time because the rain had subsided. My weather app showed a wall of storms coming our way, though. The school let the baseball team out of classes two periods before the end of the day to get ready.