Except the one person I wasn’t sure about was Tommy. I tried not to stare, but of course I was looking at him when he was out there and I was behind the plate, because how could I catch him properly without taking a lot of long looks at him? And when it was our turn at bat I couldn’t help sneaking peeks at him, and it seemed to me he was just looking straight ahead and not seeing anything. He was in a zone, all right. He was off somewhere with his own private thoughts, and what those thoughts might be or where they were headed was something I didn’t have a clue about. Maybe he was seeing the whole game, past and future, pitch by pitch, or maybe he was off in some world where there was no such thing as baseball. I could stare at him all I wanted and it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t know I was staring, and I wouldn’t be able to tell what was going on in his head.
Tommy struck out the side in the top of the sixth.
Justo walked to lead off our half of the inning, and I laid down a bunt that was good enough to get him to second. But that was as far as he got. A pop-up and a ground ball and the inning was over.
In the top of the seventh, Tommy went to three and two on the leadoff batter. Then he shook off my signs until I called for a curveball that I didn’t really want him to throw, and he hung it. The batter got all of it, and I thought it was gone, and it was, but it hooked at the last minute and was foul by a couple of feet.
The whole ballpark held its breath, and when the ball went out and the umpire called it foul, everybody in the place sighed at once. And there were cheers, real cheers, and as far as I know it’s the first time anybody drew cheers for hitting a foul ball. The batter had only got a few steps toward first base, since he and everybody else knew right away it was either a home run or a foul ball, so there was no need to set any records getting down the line. He trotted back and picked up his bat and struck out on the next pitch.
The next batter tapped a grounder to first, and the inning ended with a foul pop. It was high enough so that I could imagine a hundred things going wrong in the time it took to come down, but it plopped in my mitt and stayed there, and we were out of the inning. Twenty-one up and twenty-one down, and six to go.
We scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh, and I’d say it was about time. The thing is, no matter how good a pitcher is, he can’t win a game without runs. There was even a case once of a pitcher throwing nine no-hit innings and losing in extra innings. People don’t believe it could happen, but it’s right there in the book.
Anyway, with one out, Darnell Weeks doubled down the line, and Tommy was next in the order. Ordinarily that would have meant a pinch hitter, because Tommy’s batting average is a lot less than his playing weight. He takes a decent cut at the ball, but more often than not he fans.
So, with the game on the line, he’d have been gone. And that would have been true even if we already had a lot of runs on the board. Tommy would hardly ever stay in for a whole nine innings. If we were behind he’d come out for a pinch hitter, and if we were ahead we’d have Freddie Olendorff close things out. But you don’t lift a guy who’s six outs away from a no-hitter, let alone a perfect game. Tommy picked up a bat and struck out on three pitches.
Pepper Foxwell was up next, and he ran the count to three and two, fouled off five or six pitches, and finally got one he liked. He’s our leadoff batter and doesn’t usually hit for power, but this time he swung hard and got all of it, and just like that Tommy had a two-run cushion.
I watched the ball go out, and as soon as it cleared the fence I looked over at Tommy. Everybody else was off the bench with the crack of the bat, climbing up the dugout steps to watch and then to cheer, but Tommy never moved. I don’t even know if he saw what was happening, or paid any attention to it.
He was in a zone, and he might as well have been in a bubble. Between innings, nobody sat down next to him and nobody talked to him. That’s part of not mentioning a no-hitter. You just leave the pitcher alone, you let him stay in his own space, and I guess that’s where he was.
The next man up hit a long fly, and it looked for a minute like it was going out, too, but their center fielder gathered it in at the track, and that was the third out.
Wade Bemis led off the top of the eighth. He had a funny look on his face, not what you expect of someone whose team’s getting shut out. Like there was a joke and he was in on it.
“Hey, Willis,” he called out. “You’re almost perfect.”
Now I’d say the whole park went silent, but it pretty much already was. Because everybody in the stadium knew Tommy Willis was six outs away from putting a perfect game in the record book, and if that won’t quiet a crowd down I don’t know what will.
Quiet as it was, Bemis’s words rang out loud and clear, and what followed them was a whole lot of silence. I was truly shocked, and the first thing I did was look at Tommy, but if his face showed any expression I couldn’t read it.
In an undertone, so nobody but Bemis could hear it, I said, “Man, that was really bush.”
He must have heard me, but he didn’t react. “Just like Colleen,” he said, loud and clear. “She’s pretty close to perfect herself, Willis.”
Now Tommy reacted, but not like you’d expect. He got this big grin on his face. He stood up there on the mound while Wade Bemis knocked the dirt out of his spikes and got into his stance. Bemis crowded the plate, the way he always did, but this time he was closer than ever. I called for a fastball on the inside corner and Tommy delivered it belt-high. It was a strike and Ev Kalman called it a strike, but at the same time it was almost the end of Tommy’s perfect game, because it was that close to brushing Wade Bemis’s uniform. It was over the plate, but even so it almost hit him. In fact I wasn’t sure it didn’t touch the cloth, and if it had that would have put him on first, even if it was in the strike zone.
Everything would have been different. The box score would have been the same, if you think about it, but everything would have been different.
As close as the pitch was, Bemis didn’t turn a hair. He didn’t make a remark, either. He stepped out of the box, picked up some dirt, gave his batting helmet a tug, and stepped in again. If anything, he was crowding the plate more than ever.
I called for a curve outside. It would break in toward a right-handed batter like Bemis, and if it worked right it would just catch the outside corner. It would be a tougher pitch for him to handle if Tommy could first move him off the plate by throwing high and tight, but I was afraid another inside pitch would get a piece of his uniform and he’d be on first and Tommy’s perfect game would be out the window. I set up low, figuring if Tommy kept the ball down it would be a tough pitch for Bemis to handle, even if he was just about standing on the plate.
Well, everybody in the world saw the pitch Tommy threw. They showed it over and over on every news program in the country. I try not to look at it, but I still guess I must have seen it a hundred times, with Tommy going into his windup and throwing his fastball straight at Wade Bemis’s head. Except it wasn’t right at his head, it was behind his head, so that when Bemis saw it coming and tried to get away from it he just pulled right back into it.
Somebody had a radar gun clocking the pitch — somebody always does, these days — and the ball was going 102 miles an hour when it hit Bemis. Tommy threw it at his head and there was nothing the matter with his control. It got Bemis just above the ear, and I’ll never forget the sound it made.