Dave falls silent for a moment, thinking, bouncing a few sunflower seeds up and down in the palm of his hand.
‘It’s not about winning or losing,’ he says finally. ‘That comes later. It’s about how they’ll pass each other in the corridor this year, or even down the road in high school, and look at each other, and remember. In a way, they’re going to be on the team that won the district in 1989 for a long time.’ Dave glances across into the shadowy first-base dugout, where Fred Moore is now laughing about something with Mike Arnold. Owen King glances from one to the other, grinning. ‘It’s about knowing who your teammates are. The people you had to depend on, whether you wanted to or not.’
He watches the boys as they laugh and joke four days before their tournament is scheduled to begin, then raises his voice and tells Matt to throw four or five more and knock off. Not all coaches who win the coin toss – as Dave Mansfield does on August 5, for the sixth time in nine postseason games – elect to be the home team. Some of them (the coach from Brewer, for instance) believe the so-called home-team advantage is a complete fiction, especially in a tournament game, where neither team is actually playing on its home field. The argument for being the visitors in a jackpot game runs like this: At the start of such a game, the kids on both teams are nervous. The way to take advantage of those nerves, the reasoning goes, is to bat first and let the defending team commit enough walks, balks, and errors to put you in the driver’s seat.
If you bat first and score four runs, these theorists conclude, you own the game before it’s barely begun. QED. It’s a theory Dave Mansfield has never subscribed to. ‘I want my lasties,’ he says, and for him that’s the end of it.
Except today is a little different. It is not only a tournament game, it is a championship tournament game – a televised championship game, in fact. And as Roger Fisher winds and fires his first pitch past everything for ball one, Dave Mansfield’s face is that of a man who is fervently hoping he hasn’t made a mistake.
Roger knows that he is a spot starter – that Mike Pelkey would be out here in his place if Pelkey weren’t currently shaking hands with Goofy down in Disney World – but he manages his first-inning jitters as well as one could expect, maybe a little better. He backs off the mound following each return from the catcher, Joe Wilcox, studies the batter, fiddles with his shirtsleeves, and takes all the time he needs. Most important of all, he understands how necessary it is to keep the ball in the lowest quarter of the strike zone. The York lineup is packed with power from top to bottom. If Roger makes a mistake and gets one up in the batter’s eyes – especially a batter like Tarbox, who hits as powerfully as he throws – it’s going to get lost in a hurry.
He loses the first York batter nevertheless. Bouchard trots down to first, accompanied by the hysterical cheers of the York rooting section. The next batter is Philbrick, the shortstop. He bangs the first pitch back to Fisher. In one of those plays that sometimes decide ball games, Roger elects to go to second and try to force the lead runner. In most Little League games, this turns out to be a bad idea. Either the pitcher throws wild into center field, allowing the lead runner to get to third, or he discovers that his short-stop has not moved over to cover second and the bag is undefended. Today, however, it works. St. Pierre has drilled these boys well on their defensive positions. Matt Kinney, today’s shortstop, is right where he’s supposed to be. So is Roger’s throw. Philbrick reaches first on a fielder’s choice, but Bouchard is out. This time, it is the Bangor West fans who roar out their approval.
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!’