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When the man stood again, he raised both hands, the ball held firmly in his glove.
Tucker whooped loudly. He bent double, bracing his hands on his knees, and the crowd booed in response, but it barely registered. It didn’t matter. They’d gotten the out and were one man closer.
The next two were basic strikeouts, and another one-two-three inning closed out.
He walked back to the dugout but noticed there were fewer back pats and high-fives. Ramon squeezed his shoulder, but aside from that the atmosphere in the dugout was downright chilly.
When he sat on the bench, the players closest to him got up and walked away with polite smiles.
Alex was the only one not avoiding him. The catcher took the place on the bench beside him, shucking off his catcher garb like an exoskeleton. “Still feeling good?” Alex asked.
“Definitely feeling the love.”
Alex grunted but didn’t dispute how Tucker had become a pariah.
That was the kind of respect he got for striking out, what…twenty guys? Tucker ran through the numbers in his head, and then, for the first time in the entire game, it dawned on him what was happening.
He hadn’t struck out twenty guys. He’d struck out, or gotten out, twenty-four opposing players. Every single one who had come up to face him. As if to confirm his suspicions, he finally looked up at the big, bright scoreboard.
A line of zeroes lit up the whole Yankee line.
“Fuck.”
“Just figuring it out?” Alex patted a batting helmet down on his head and pulled a bat from the bin marked with his number.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Alex laughed. “Are you fucking with me? You and I both know you never discuss it. Ever.” He slung the bat over his shoulder.
Tucker had been so busy focusing on getting through the game he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. Every out had just been a step closer to finishing the game. He hadn’t processed that all of those outs were adding up to something spectacular.
Something perfect.
That at least explained why everyone was avoiding him. No one wanted to be the guy who ruined his winning mojo by saying or doing something to distract him.
His hands started to shake, and he looked around the dugout, trying to find something solid to focus on.
“She’s still with Jamal,” Alex said.
Tucker knew where Emmy was, because she wasn’t there. Maybe it was for the best, since he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get through the last inning if he was worried about what Emmy was thinking.
The bottom of the ninth could totally destroy him. Just because he’d gotten through eight straight innings of a no-hitter didn’t mean anything, because there was a whole section of baseball history dedicated to perfect games being ruined by the twenty-seventh man up to the plate.
There was even the infamous Detroit game where a bad call at first base had destroyed Armando Galarraga’s bid for a perfect game.
Now that he knew what he was in the midst of, the thousand and one different ways it could be ruined were swirling through his head. Four balls, a base hit, a double, a triple, a home run. For every one of the three players who would come up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth, those possibilities existed.
Christ, he could get too nervous and hit a player with a pitch. A beanball would be the worst thing to happen, but it was a possibility, and it would kill his chances.
There was no way he could do this.
He rubbed his wet hands on his pants and took off his cap, running his fingers through his sweaty hair. His forehead was beading with perspiration, and he suddenly felt like he was stewing in his own juices.
He also might throw up the second he got up to the mound.
The top of the ninth yielded one more run for the Felons, but went by too quickly for Tucker’s liking. In every inning before, he was excited to get back out on the field and prove he was still him. Now there was something really meaningful on the line, something more than just a complete game, and he felt frozen in his seat.
Alex geared up after his run-scoring at-bat, and clapped Tucker once on the back. “You can do this, buddy. Nearly there.”
