The play settles most of Bangor West’s jitters and gives Roger Fisher some badly needed confidence. Phil Tarbox, York’s most consistent hitter as well as their ace pitcher, strikes out on a pitch low and out of the strike zone. ‘Get him next time, Phil!’ a York player calls from the bench. ‘You’re just not used to pitching this slow!’
But speed is not the problem the York batters are having with Roger; it’s location. Ron St. Pierre has preached the gospel of the low pitch all season long, and Roger Fisher – Fish, the boys call him – has been a quiet but extremely attentive student during Saint’s ball-yard seminars. Dave’s decisions to pitch Roger and bat last look pretty good as Bangor comes in to bat in the bottom of the first. I see several of the boys touch Mo, the little plastic sandal, as they enter the dugout. Confidence – of the team, of the fans, of the coaches – is a quality that can be measured in different ways, but whatever yardstick you choose, York comes out on the long side. The hometown cheering section has hung a sign on the lower posts of the scoreboard. YORK IS BRISTOL BOUND, this exuberant Fan-O-Gram reads. And there is the matter of those District 4 pins, all made up and ready for trading. But the clearest indicator of the deep confidence York’s coach has in his players is revealed in his starting pitcher. All the other clubs, including Bangor West, pitched their number one starter in their first game, bearing an old playoff axiom in mind: if you don’t get a date, you can’t dance at the prom. If you can’t win your prelim, you don’t have to worry about the final. Only the coach from York ran counter to this wisdom, and pitched his number two starter, Ryan Fernald, in the first game, against Yarmouth. He got away with it – by a whisker – as his team outlasted Yarmouth, 9-8. That was a close shave, but today should be the payoff. He has saved Phil Tarbox for the final, and while Tarbox may not be technically as good as Stanley Sturgis, he’s got something going for him that Sturgis did not. Phil Tarbox is scary.
Nolan Ryan, probably the greatest fastball pitcher ever to play the game of baseball, likes to tell a story about a Babe Ruth League tournament game he pitched in. He hit the opposing team’s leadoff batter in the arm, breaking it. He hit the second batter in the head, splitting the boy’s helmet in two and knocking him out for a few moments. While this second boy was being attended to, the number three batter, ashen-faced and trembling, went up to his coach and begged the man not to make him hit. ‘And I didn’t blame him,’ Ryan adds. Tarbox is no Nolan Ryan, but he throws hard and he is aware that intimidation is the pitcher’s secret weapon. Sturgis also threw hard, but he kept the ball low and outside. Sturgis was polite.
Tarbox likes to work high and tight. Bangor West has got to where they are today by swinging the bat. If Tarbox can intimidate them, he will take the bats out of their hands, and if he does that Bangor is finished.
Nick Trzaskos doesn’t come anywhere near a leadoff home run today. Tarbox strikes him out with an intimate fastball that has Nick ducking out of the box. Nick looks around unbelievingly at the home-plate umpire and opens his mouth to protest. ‘Don’t say a word, Nick!’ Dave blares from the dugout. ‘Just hustle back in there!’ Nick does, but his face has resumed its former narrow look. Once inside the dugout, he slings his batting helmet disgustedly under the bench. Tarbox will try to work everyone but Ryan Larrobino high and tight today. Word on Larrobino has got around, and not even Phil Tarbox, confident as he appears to be, will challenge him. He works Ryan low and outside, finally walking him. He also walks Matt Kinney, who follows Ryan, but now he is high and tight again. Matt has superb reflexes, and he needs them to avoid being hit, and hit hard. By the time he is awarded first base, Larrobino is already at second, courtesy of a wild pitch that came within inches of Mart’s face. Then Tarbox settles down a little, striking out Kevin Rochefort and Roger Fisher to end the first inning. Roger Fisher continues to work slowly and methodically, fiddling with his sleeves between pitches, glancing around at his infield, occasionally even checking the sky, possibly for UFOs. With two on and one out, Estes, who reached on a walk, breaks for third on a pitch that bounces out of Joe Wilcox’s glove and lands at his feet. Joe recovers quickly and guns the ball down to Kevin Rochefort at third. The ball is waiting for Estes when he arrives, and he trots back to the dugout. Two out; Fernald has gone to second on the play.
Wyatt, York’s number eight hitter, dribbles one up the right side of the infield. The ball’s progress is slowed further by the soggy condition of the ground. Fisher goes for the ball. So does King, the first baseman. Roger grabs it, then slips on the wet grass and crawls for the bag, ball in hand. Wyatt beats him easily. Fernald comes all the way home on the play to score the first run of the game.
If Roger is going to crack, one would expect it to happen right here. He checks his infield, and examines the ball. He appears ready to pitch, and then steps off the rubber. His sleeves, it seems, are not quite to his liking after all. He takes his time fixing them while Matt Francke, the York batter, grows old and mouldy in the batter’s box. By the time Fisher finally gets around to throwing, he all but owns Francke, who hits an easy hopper to Kevin Rochefort at third. Rochefort throws on to Matt Kinney, forcing Wyatt. Still, York has drawn first blood and leads, 1-0, at the end of an inning and a half.
Bangor West doesn’t put any runs on the board in the second inning, either, but they score against Phil Tarbox just the same. The rangy York pitcher trotted off the mound with his head up at the end of the first inning. Going in after pitching the second, he trudges with his head down, and some of his teammates glance at him uneasily.
Tarbox doesn’t intimidate Owen King, who bats first in Bangor’s half of the second, but he is a big boy, much slower than Matt Kinney. After running the count full, Tarbox tries to jam him inside. The fastball turns up and in – too much of both. King is hit hard in the armpit. He falls to the ground, clutching the hurt place, too stunned to cry at first, but obviously in pain. Eventually, the tears do come – not a lot of them, but real tears, for all that. At six foot two and over two hundred pounds, he’s as big as a man, but he’s still only twelve and not used to being hit by seventy-mile-an-hour inside fastballs. Tarbox immediately rushes off the mound toward him, his face a mask of concern and contrition. The umpire, already bending over the downed player, waves him off impatiently. The on-duty paramedic who hurries out doesn’t even give Tarbox a second look. The fans do, however. The fans are giving him all kinds of second looks. ‘Take him out before he hits someone else!’ one yells.
‘Pull him before someone really gets hurt!’ another adds, as if being hit in the ribcage by a fastball weren’t really getting hurt.
‘Warn im, ump!’ a third voice chimes in. ‘That was a deliberate brushback! Warn im what happens if he does it again!’
Tarbox glances toward the fans, and for a moment this boy, who has formerly radiated a kind of serene confidence, looks very young and very uncertain. He looks, in fact, the way Stanley Sturgis did as the Belfast-Lewiston game neared its conclusion. As he goes back to the mound, he slams the ball into his glove in frustration.
King, meanwhile, has been helped to his feet. After making it clear to Neil Waterman, the paramedic, and the umpire that he wants to stay in the game and is capable of doing so, he trots down to first base. Both sets of fans give him a solid round of applause. Phil Tarbox, who of course had no intention of hitting the lead-off batter in a one-run game, immediately shows how shaken he is by grooving one right down the middle to Arthur Dorr. Arthur, the second-smallest boy in Bangor West’s starting lineup, accepts this unexpected but welcome gift by driving it deep to right center.