That got a hand from the crowd. They cheered some more when Tommy struck out the side.
I don’t know just when it was I realized something special was going on.
Oh, I knew he had his stuff when he fanned Wade Bemis. His fastball was really popping, and his control just got sharper and sharper. It got so I’d just stick the mitt out and he’d hit it. And his curve was breaking real good, and his change had the Bobcat batters digging for balls in the dirt.
And we were in sync, too. He wasn’t shaking off my signs hardly at all, and the few times he did I was already questioning the sign in my own mind. It was like we had our minds hooked up, and we were going over the batters together, figuring how to move them back off the plate, then get them to chase stuff they couldn’t hit. When it’s like that, I sometimes lose track in my own mind as to who’s catching and who’s pitching. It’s like we’re both part of the same machine, with the gears meshing just right.
Bemis led off the top of the fifth. We’d left the bases loaded in the bottom of the fourth, and you hate to see that, and Bemis had a cocky smile on his face when he stepped in. Like we’d had our chance, and blew it, and it was his turn now.
Tommy got the first one in — he was throwing nothing but first-pitch strikes by now. His next delivery was low, but didn’t miss by much. Next was a curve, and Bemis swung late and fouled it back. I called for a fastball down and on the outside corner, and Tommy got it where I wanted it, but Kalman called it ball two. I’d swear it caught the corner, but my opinion doesn’t count. It was too close to take with two strikes, but Bemis stood there and took it. He’s got a good eye, but he was plain lucky to get the call.
He fouled off about four pitches, or it could have been five, and checked his swing on a curve that he couldn’t have reached with a broom. I checked with the first base umpire, but he said he didn’t go around. I’d have sworn he did, but you see what you want to see, and anyway no one was asking me.
Next pitch we challenged him with a fastball, high and tight, and he fouled it off. I called for another in the same spot, and he was just the least bit late in his swing, and that’s what saved us, because he really tagged that one. But instead of pulling it he lifted it to the gap in right center, and Justo Chacón floated under it and took it at the warning track.
Bemis was halfway to second when the catch was made, and he turned and trotted back to the Bobcats’ dugout. I happened to notice the expression on his face, and he didn’t look frustrated or disappointed, mad at himself or at Tommy or Justo. He looked all pleased with himself, which wasn’t what you’d expect from someone who was oh for two for the day.
Maybe it was the look on his face that made me turn around and look over to the stands, where the wives were sitting. Kathy was there, of course, and I caught her eye when I turned around, and she gave me a wave. I grinned back, happy because we’d just dodged a bullet, with Bemis’s shot nothing but a long out, happy too because there was my wife waving at me.
I looked for Colleen, too, but of course she wasn’t there, and I reminded myself that Tommy had said she wasn’t coming. I hadn’t exactly forgotten that, but Bemis’s expression made me look for her even though I knew she wouldn’t be there.
I’d heard the rumors, see. I guess everybody heard the rumors. But you hear stuff like that all the time. You don’t pay any attention to it, or at least you try not to.
Once Bemis was out of the way, it only took us four pitches to get out of the inning. Tommy used three of them to strike out the number five hitter, two fastballs that he swung at and missed and a curve he held off on. It was right on the corner, and this time we got the call. Then the next Bobcat batter fouled off the first pitch and our first baseman made a nice running catch at the stands. Three up and three down.
And that was when it first hit me that what I’d just seen was fifteen up and fifteen down, that we’d played five innings without a single Bobcat making it to first base. No runs, no hits, no errors, no bases on balls, no nothing. Tommy Willis, who’d started out shaky, like he might walk the bases loaded, was past the halfway mark of throwing a perfect game.
That’s what it was, but you have to keep in mind that it sounds like more than it is. Being halfway to a perfect game (or an ordinary no-hitter, for that matter, if there can be such a thing as an ordinary no-hitter) is a little like being ninety years old and saying you’re halfway to a hundred and eighty. It’s not as though you’re an even-money shot to get there.
No-hitters are a funny thing. Some of the winningest pitchers in baseball have never had one, or even come close. They get out the guys they have to get out, they shut things down when they’ve got men in scoring position, and game after game they scatter a handful of hits and come out on top.
But to throw a no-hitter you have to be on top of every batter you face. And you need to be lucky, too, because you can have the best stuff in the world and some lifetime .220 hitter can lunge at the ball and knock a flute into shallow left. A no-hitter’s like a soap bubble, it doesn’t take much to burst it.
And a perfect game’s all that and more, because not only can a lucky swing beat you, but a batter can get lucky by not swinging, and your too-close-to-take curveball turns out to be ball four. Your outfielder can misjudge what should have been a routine fly ball, your shortstop can bobble a grounder and then throw it into the stands. Not your fault, but there goes your perfect game.
There’s a million superstitions in baseball, plus the private rituals some players go through. Maybe it’s because there’s so much in the game you can’t control, so you try to get a handle on it by fastening and unfastening the snaps on your batting glove, or keeping a hitting streak alive by not shaving, or pounding your glove a certain number of times between pitches. No one could follow all the baseball superstitions, especially since some of them contradict each other, and anyway there’s too many of them to remember. But one that just about everybody follows is what you do when a guy’s throwing a no-hitter, and that’s that you don’t do anything. And what you especially don’t do is mention it.
It used to be that radio and TV announcers wouldn’t mention it, and some of them still won’t, but plenty of them seem to figure that they’re too far away to jinx it, and their viewers would have a fit if they wound up watching a no-hitter without realizing it.
But you don’t mention it in the dugout or on the field. You sure as hell don’t say a word to the pitcher, but you don’t say anything to anybody else, either. And here’s something interesting — if you’re on the other team, doing everything you can to keep from having a no-hitter pitched against you, you still don’t say a word about it.
I don’t know why that is. There’s no limit to what ballplayers’ll say, trying to get a rise out of each other. You’ll hear comments about a player’s wife, or even his mother. But you won’t hear anything about the no-hitter he’s so many outs away from throwing. I thought it might be like countries at war not using poison gas, because if they do the other side might use it right back at them, but how would that work in baseball? The other team couldn’t mention your no-hitter until you had one going, and it might be forever before that happened.
I guess it’s just a feeling that mentioning it would be bush. Looking bush is something a ballplayer’ll do a lot in order not to.
But the point is Tommy was twelve outs away from a perfect game, which is miles and miles away, but close enough to be aware of. And I wasn’t saying anything, and neither was anybody else, but I would look around and catch another player’s eye and I’d know he knew what was going on, and he’d know the same about me. And pretty soon everybody knew, and nobody said a word.