As soon as the pitch left his hand, Danny Connolly thought, Uh-oh.

The ball had come off his sweat-slicked fingers all wrong. Now it was floating gently to the plate, a weak waist-high fastball destined to be launched into orbit—possibly all the way to the International Space Station—by the glowering Red Sox batter.

Maybe the kid won’t swing, Danny thought. Maybe he’ll be so shocked at how lame the pitch is that he’ll just burst out laughing.

But that was wishful thinking.

No, the boy’s eyes were lighting up already, like it was a bacon-and-cheese-stuffed pizza sailing toward him. His hips were starting to turn. His shoulders were uncoiling. His bat was moving forward.

Danny winced. This was not going to be good.

What followed was a loud PING! that sounded like a coin dropped on a dinner plate. By the time he whipped his head around, the ball was arching over the left-field fence for a three-run homer, and the kid was doing a slow trot around the bases—slow enough to wave to his mother, his sisters and brothers, his grandparents, and every other person in the stands.

Bet he even waves to his dog, Danny thought, kicking at the dirt in disgust.

He looked at the scoreboard and sighed. Red Sox 4, Orioles 1. So much for following Coach’s instructions.

“Just hold ’em this inning and we’ll find a way to win,” Coach had said, handing Danny the ball, clapping him on the back, and flashing a smile that was meant to be reassuring.

Danny stole a quick glance at the Orioles dugout. No, Coach wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, he looked as if someone had just rear-ended his car.

Even before the umpire fished another ball from his pocket, Sammy Noah, the Orioles shortstop, called time and jogged to the mound. He was followed by Ethan Novitsky, the rangy first baseman.

Neither of them looked happy.

“What…was that?” Sammy said.

Danny hung his head.

“I know, I know….” he said. “My bad. Ugly pitch.”

“Seriously ugly,” Ethan said. “My little brother throws harder than that.”

Danny managed a weak smile.

“Can you get your little brother on your phone?” Danny asked. “We may need him, the way this is going.”

The two boys just stared at him.

“What?” Danny said. “Not the time for jokes?”

“Uh, probably not,” Sammy said. “Instead of working on your lines, work on getting this next guy out, okay?”

He looked at Ethan and the two rolled their eyes before heading back to their positions.

As he bent down and grabbed the resin bag, it occurred to Danny that sometimes jokes were the only thing that kept his spirits up in games like this.

The truth was, he was having a crappy season so far as the Orioles backup pitcher. Oh, he knew what backup meant, of course. Backup meant not good enough to start. Backup meant we’ll get you in there when we can, kid. Now zip it and grab some bench.

And with hard-throwing Zach “Zoom” Winslow on the team, a tall right-hander who could touch 80 mph on the radar gun, Danny knew the O’s had a marquee starter who was one of the top pitchers in the league. Not to mention way better than Danny.

Which he could live with—at least for now.

The problem was, when he did get into games, Danny hadn’t exactly been a shutdown reliever either.

That’s what Danny wanted to be: the closer. When he went with his family to Camden Yards to watch the big-league Orioles play, he loved seeing the bullpen doors swing open in the ninth inning of a tight game and Zach Britton, their closer, come strutting out to the mound.

With the crowd on its feet and cheering madly, the closer would chomp furiously on his gum, glare at the batters, and blow them away one-two-three to preserve the win.

The closer came in to put out the fire—everyone knew that. But in his last five or six outings, Danny had been hit hard. And when he wasn’t hit hard, he’d given up way too many walks.

He sure hadn’t been putting out any fires. In fact, his teammates were starting to call him “Gas Can” Connolly for his habit of taking the mound and making the fire worse.

Great, Danny thought. A horrible new nickname to haunt me for the rest of the season.

Things were going so badly that, warming up in his backyard earlier in the afternoon, he’d even sailed a pitch over the bounce-back net and shattered a window in his next-door neighbor’s house.

Cranky old Mr. Spinelli hadn’t been home at the time, which was a lucky break. And Danny had slipped a note under the man’s front door, taking responsibility for the accident. But he knew the gloomy geezer would go thermonuclear once he spotted all that broken glass.

Oh, well, he thought. I’ll worry about that later.

He took a deep breath and tried to refocus on the Red Sox. Two outs. One more and at least they’d be out of the inning.

As the next batter dug in, Danny peered in for the sign from Mickey Labriogla, the O’s catcher. Mickey put down three fingers: changeup.

Danny couldn’t believe his eyes. A changeup? What was the plan here—to just give the game away?

To bore the other team to death?

Here he’d just thrown possibly the slowest pitch ever recorded in the history of youth baseball, and the batter had crushed it. And now his catcher was calling for another off-speed pitch? Another meatball that might end up in yet another galaxy far, far away?

Why don’t we just throw underhand from now on?

Then he caught himself. Maybe Mickey knew something about the batter that Danny didn’t. Maybe Mickey knew the kid was so geeked to swing for the fences that he might screw himself into the ground with some slow junk.

In any event, Danny wasn’t about to shake off his catcher, who also happened to be the best catcher in the league and Coach’s son. He nodded, took a deep breath, and went into his windup.

One changeup coming up.

PING!

This time the batter lashed a towering drive into the gap in right center. Danny’s heart sank as he watched center fielder Corey Maduro and right fielder Katelyn Morris turn and race after it.

But at the last moment, it was Katelyn who ran it down, making a lunging over-the-shoulder catch before tumbling to the ground and raising her glove high to show she had the ball.

As the Orioles fans in the stands cheered wildly, Danny breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the dugout.

“Saved your butt—again,” Katelyn hissed as the Orioles hustled off the field. “You totally owe me, nerd.”

Good ol’ Katelyn, Danny thought, shaking his head.

Encouraging as ever. Always ready to pick you up when you’re feeling down.