Roger Fisher also goes 3-2 with Tarbox, who is now relying almost exclusively on soft breaking stuff; he seems to have decided that if he does hit another batter he will not hit him hard. There is no place to put Fish; the bases are jammed. Tarbox knows it and takes a calculated risk, grooving another one, believing Fish will lay off in the hope of a walk. Roger snaps hungrily at it instead, bouncing one between first and second for a base hit. Larrobino trots home with Bangor’s first run.
Owen King, the player who was at bat when Phil Tarbox started to self-destruct, is the next batter. The York coach, suspecting his ace will work even less successfully to King this time, has seen enough. Matt Francke comes in to relieve, and Tarbox becomes York’s catcher. As he squats behind the plate to warm Francke up, he looks both resigned and relieved. Francke doesn’t hit anyone, but he is unable to stop the bleeding. At the end of three innings, Bangor West has only two hits, but they lead York, 5-3.
It is now the fifth inning. The air is full of gray moisture, and the YORK IS BRISTOL BOUND banner tacked to the scoreboard uprights has begun to sag. The fans look a little saggy themselves, and increasingly uneasy. Is York Bristol bound? Well, we’re supposed to be, their faces say, but it’s the fifth inning now, and we’re still two runs behind. My God, how did it get so late so early?
Roger Fisher continues to cruise, and in the bottom of the fifth Bangor West puts what appear to be the final nails in York’s coffin. Mike Arnold leads off with a single. Joe Wilcox sacrifices pinch-runner Fred Moore to second, and Larrobino doubles off Francke, scoring Moore. This brings Matt Kinney to the plate. After a passed ball advances Ryan to third, Kinney hits an easy grounder to short, but it squirts off the infielder’s glove and Larrobino trots home. Bangor West takes the field jubilantly, owning a 7-3 lead and only needing three more outs.
When Roger Fisher takes the mound to face York in the top of the sixth, he has thrown ninety-seven pitches, and he’s a tired boy. He shows it at once by walking pinch-hitter Tim Pollack on a full count. Dave and Neil have seen enough. Fisher goes to second base, and Mike Arnold, who has been warming up between innings, takes over on the mound. He is ordinarily a good reliever, but it’s not his day. Tension, maybe, or maybe it’s just that the damp dirt of the mound has caused a change in his normal motion. He gets Francke to fly out, but then Bouchard walks, Philbrick doubles, and Pollack, the runner charged to Fish, scores, and Bouchard is held up at third; by itself, Pollack’s run means nothing. The important thing is that York now has runners on second and third, and the potential tying run is coming to the plate. The potential tying run is someone with a very personal interest in getting a hit, because he is the main reason York is only two outs away from extinction. The potential tying run is Phil Tarbox.
Mike works the count to 1-1, and then throws a fastball right down the middle of the plate. In the Bangor West dugout, Dave Mansfield winces and raises one hand toward his forehead in a warding-off gesture even as Tarbox begins his swing. There is the hard sound of Tarbox accomplishing that most difficult of baseball feats: using the round bat to hit the round ball squarely on the button.
Ryan Larrobino takes off the instant Tarbox connects, but he runs out of room much too early.
The ball clears the fence by twenty feet, bangs off a TV camera, and bounces back onto the field.
Ryan looks at it disconsolately as the York fans go mad, and the entire York team boils out of the dugout to greet Tarbox, who has hit a three-run homer and redeemed himself in spectacular fashion. He does not step on home plate but jumps on it. His face wears an expression of near-beatific satisfaction. He is mobbed by his ecstatic teammates; on his way back to the dugout, his feet are barely allowed to touch the ground.
The Bangor fans sit in silence, utterly stunned by this awful reversal. Yesterday, against Lewiston, Bangor flirted with disaster; today they have swooned in its arms. Mo has changed sides again, and the fans are clearly afraid that this time it has changed for good. Mike Arnold confers with Dave and Neil. They are telling him to go on back and pitch hard, that the game is only tied, not lost, but Mike is clearly a dejected, unhappy boy.
The next batter, Hutchins, hits an easy two-hopper to Matt Kinney, but Arnold is not the only one who is shaken; the usually dependable Kinney boots the ball, and Hutchins is on. Andy Estes pops out to Rochefort at third, but Hutchins advances to second on a passed ball. King grabs Matt Hoyt’s pop-up for the third out, and Bangor West is out of trouble. The team has a chance to put it away in the bottom of the sixth, except that doesn’t quite happen, either. They go one-two-three against Matt Francke, and all at once Bangor West is in its first extra-innings game of postseason play, tied 7-7 with York.
During the game against Lewiston, the muddy weather eventually unraveled. Not today. As Bangor West takes the field in the top of the seventh, the skies grow steadily darker. It’s now approaching six o’clock, and even under these conditions the field should still be clear and fairly bright, but fog has begun to creep in. Watching a videotape of the game would make someone who wasn’t there believe something was wrong with the TV cameras; everything looks listless, dull, underexposed. Shirtsleeve fans in the center-field bleachers are becoming disembodied heads and hands; in the outfield, Trzaskos, Larrobino, and Arthur Dorr are discernible chiefly by their shirts.
Just before Mike throws the first pitch of the seventh, Neil elbows Dave and points out to right field. Dave immediately calls time and trots out to see what’s the matter with Arthur Dorr, who is standing bent over, with his head almost between his knees.
Arthur looks up at Dave with some surprise as he approaches. ‘I’m O.K.,’ he says in answer to the unspoken question.
‘Then what in hell are you doing?’ Dave asks.
‘Looking for four-leaf clovers,’ Arthur responds.
Dave is too flabbergasted, or too amused, to lecture the boy. He simply tells Arthur it might be more appropriate to look for them after the game is over.
Arthur glances around at the creeping fog before looking back at Dave. ‘I think by then it’s gonna be too dark,’ he says.
With Arthur set to rights, the game can continue, and Mike Arnold does a creditable job – possibly because he’s facing the substitute-riddled bottom of York’s order. York does not score, and Bangor comes up in the bottom of the seventh with another chance to win it. They come close to doing just that. With the bases loaded and two out, Roger Fisher hits one hard up the first-base line. Matt Hoyt is right there to pounce on it, however, and the teams change sides again.
Philbrick flies out to Nick Trzaskos to open the eighth, and then Phil Tarbox steps in. Tarbox is not finished working Bangor West over yet. He has regained his confidence; his face is utterly serene as he takes Mike’s first pitch for a called strike. He swings at the next one, a pretty decent changeup that bounces off Joe Wilcox’s shin guard. He steps out of the box, squats with the bat between his knees, and concentrates. This is a Zen technique the York coach has taught these boys – Francke has done it several times on the mound while in tight spots – and it works for Tarbox this time, along with a little help from Mike Arnold.