Five days later, against the Blue Jays, Danny knew what he needed to do. He was ready to take his big brother’s advice.

Change things up, Joey had said. Shake up your normal routine. Whatever you’re doing, do something different.

Maybe Joey wasn’t baseball’s version of Dr. Phil. Maybe he didn’t have all the answers. But he sure knew way more about pitching than Danny did. Joey was on the fast track to the major leagues—even if he ended up spending a year or two pitching for a top college program first. Why would you not listen to someone like that?

So Danny had totally altered his pregame routine. This time, before coming on in relief of Zoom, he had thrown just five warm-up pitches on the sideline, instead of his normal fifteen or twenty. He had pushed off from the right side of the pitching rubber instead of the left. And instead of using the catcher’s mitt as a target all the way through his delivery, he had looked up at the sky at the last minute in his windup before briefly spotting the target and releasing the ball.

Zoom had watched him get loose and nodded approvingly.

“Love the no-looking-at-the-target thing,” he’d said. “The Blue Jays will think you’re crazy. And having the batter think you’re crazy is a definite plus for a pitcher.”

Now, when the first Blue Jays batter strode to the plate in the fifth inning, Danny motioned for Mickey to join him on the mound.

“What would we normally start this kid off with?” Danny asked.

Mickey looked back at the batter.

“I don’t know…fastball?” he said. “He’s a skinny little dude. It’s not like he’s going yard on you. Why fool around with him?”

“Great,” Danny said. “We’ll throw him nothing but curve balls.”

Mickey’s grin vanished. “Nice to see how much my opinion is valued.”

“It’s not that,” Danny said. “It’s…no, it’s too complicated to explain right now. Just go with me on this.”

Mickey studied him for a moment and shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “You’re the pitcher. I am but the lowly catcher, here to serve. Here to offer suggestions based on wisdom and experience. Only to see them shot down like so many doomed warplanes in battle.”

“Wow, did you just come up with that?” Danny asked. “Pretty impressive.”

As his catcher trudged back behind the plate, Danny nervously patted his right hand with the resin bag and glanced at the scoreboard. ORIOLES 6, BLUE JAYS 1. Your team gave you a nice lead, he told himself. The pressure’s off. Now don’t blow it.

Don’t blow it. Wasn’t that the delicate way Katelyn had put it last week?

He peered in at Mickey, who put down two fingers. Danny nodded. He went into his windup and fired.

It was a nasty curve, he could tell that right away. It had come off his fingers just right. And his wrist snap had ensured that the ball would break sharply downward, just the way he wanted.

Unfortunately, it ended up way outside.

Mickey lunged like a hockey goalie and backhanded the ball before it could sail to the backstop. The batter just stood there impassively.

Ball one.

Ball two, another breaking ball, was even farther outside. So were ball three and ball four.

As the skinny kid trotted down to first base, Mickey jogged to the mound.

“Well, that was interesting,” he said. “You know, if we dug up home plate and moved it five feet to the right, a few of those would have been strikes. I’ll ask the ump if he has a shovel.”

“You’re hilarious,” Danny said. “But we’re not changing our strategy.”

“This is our strategy?” Mickey said. “To pitch so far outside they can’t hit it with a canoe paddle?”

“I’ll get it under control. Trust me,” Danny said.

“Famous last words,” Mickey muttered, turning away.

Danny walked the next batter on five pitches, all of them curve balls, only two anywhere near the plate. Now he found himself taking five miles per hour off each pitch to get it over the plate. The next Blue Jays batter timed one perfectly and promptly slammed a two-run double into the gap in left center.

As the kid slid into second base ahead of Corey’s throw, Danny felt the familiar panic welling up in his chest.

The comfortable 6–1 Orioles lead was now 6–3.

Not so comfortable.

Somehow, Danny managed to escape further damage. But he owed it all to his teammates. The next Blue Jays batter hit a screaming line drive that Sammy backhanded while leaping high in the air. Corey caught another hard shot hit directly at him. And Justin made a nice play at second base on a hard two-hopper to his left, tossing it underhand to Ethan for the third out.

In the dugout, Danny was greeted with a glare from Katelyn and an uneasy silence from the rest of the Orioles.

When Mickey plopped down beside him, Danny whispered, “No more curve balls. We go back to mixing it up.”

“Excellent idea,” Mickey said. “Lose that crappy curve, dude. Fastballs and changeups only from now on.”

But the change in strategy had little effect. After the Orioles went 1-2-3 in the top of the sixth, Danny took the mound and struggled again. He struck out the Jays free-swinging lead-off batter on a high fastball, then gave up back-to-back doubles that cut the Orioles lead to 6–4.

Hunter backhanded a line drive at third for the second out, but the next Jays batter roped a single to right to narrow the Orioles’ lead to a run. Then Danny watched in horror as the next batter launched a titanic shot to deep center field before Corey calmly reeled it in a few feet from the fence to end the game.

It took another full minute for Danny’s heart to stop pounding.

Somehow the Orioles had hung on for a 6–5 win. But even as the rest of his teammates whooped and fist-bumped each other, he was in no mood to celebrate.

Yeah, we won, he thought. But it sure wasn’t because of me. I was a train wreck—again.

I was Gas Can Connolly. I came in with a big lead and started another Dumpster fire. Without three or four great plays behind me, this would have been a disastrous loss. And after Zoom pitched his heart out for us, too.

One by one, his teammates drifted off with their parents or headed out to the parking lot to wait for a ride. But Danny didn’t feel like walking or talking with anyone. He knew his mom wasn’t due to pick him up for at least another twenty minutes—assuming Joey’s game hadn’t gone into extra innings.

He gathered up his bat and glove and slumped on the bottom row of bleachers, his head in his hands.

Then he heard it.

“Boy, you’re a mess out there, you know that?” a voice said. “A complete mess.”

Looking up, Danny saw an old man wearing a straw hat and sunglasses leaning against the backstop. He looked eerily familiar.

When he took off the shades and pushed back his hat, Danny’s eyes widened.

It was Mr. Spinelli.

The old guy shook his head mournfully and sent a stream of spittle off to one side.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “you sure need a lot of help.”