Danny got to Eddie Murray Field early, more out of habit than any great desire to play baseball. That desire had been missing for well over a week now. Even a big game like this, with the play-offs on the line, wasn’t getting him fired up.

“See you in about forty-five minutes,” his mom said as she dropped him off.

Danny cocked an eyebrow. “You’re coming to the game?”

“We’re all coming,” she said. “Dad doesn’t have to work late. And Joey’s team has a bye tonight. Isn’t that great?”

Oh, yeah, Danny thought as he watched her drive away. That’s just great. So the whole family will be on hand to watch me ride the bench. Or, if they’re really lucky, they’ll see me play an inning or two in left field.

It was a hot and humid Friday evening, and a half hour before game time, the stands were already filled with Yankees fans.

“Where do they come from?” Katelyn said as the Orioles warmed up. “The Yankees have the same amount of players as we do, right? But they always have twice as many people cheering for them. What do they do, send out invitations?”

“Maybe they recruit fans on Facebook,” Sammy said. “I hear lots of teams do that now.”

“That’s pathetic,” Katelyn said. “Why would you want strangers coming to your games? And why would the strangers want to come? It’s not like they’re giving away iPads or flat-screen TVs. Or are they?”

As the Yankees took infield, Reuben made a point of showing off on each ground ball hit to him, picking it casually on the run and throwing as hard as he could to first base. Then he glared at the Orioles as he headed back to his position.

Watching him, Katelyn couldn’t help cackling.

“This kid is too much!” she cried. “Are we supposed to be impressed with that? Are we supposed to be like ‘Oh, Mr. Mendez, you look fabulous taking infield! What a cannon for an arm!

“‘Seeing you now, it’s obvious that we don’t have a chance against you and your team! What were we thinking? So we’re going home now, okay? You guys win by forfeit.’”

She snorted and shook her head. “Yeah, like that would ever happen. Right, Zip? Or Zoo? Or whatever your dumb name is?”

“Absolutely,” Zoom said. He spit a stream of sunflower seeds and shot Reuben a dirty look, punching the pocket of his glove for emphasis. “He was a jerk last year. And apparently he’s still a jerk.”

Zoom was totally wired for this game—the Orioles could read it on his face.

Katelyn and Sammy had filled him in earlier about Reuben’s dissing of his name, as well as his trash talk about the team.

As he listened to this, Zoom’s jaw had tightened and his eyes had turned into twin slits.

“Our work here is done,” Katelyn had chuckled after seeing his reaction.

“Agreed,” Sammy had said. “That should add at least another five miles an hour to his fastball. Especially when Reuben’s up.”

Danny was glad to see how loose the Orioles were, because he himself had never been more down before a game. A few minutes later, when Coach called him over, his mood only worsened.

The two of them walked down the left-field line until they were out of earshot of the team.

Danny knew what was coming. For one thing, Coach looked like his house had just burned to the ground.

“Danny,” he said softly, “I’ve got bad news. You’re not going to pitch tonight. I’ll play you later in left field. But you just haven’t been effective enough to pitch in a big game like this. If Zoom needs help, Sammy’s going in. I’m sorry, buddy. Hope you understand.”

The thing was, Danny did understand. But Coach’s words hit him like a slap anyway.

Ever since the Terminator had gone south, he’d been pitching like crap again and everyone knew it. For the past two days, he’d tried throwing the trick pitch to Joey in the backyard and the results kept getting worse and worse.

The pitch still had zero drop, zero late movement.

It was about as hard to hit as the ocean.

But Coach had just made it official: Danny Connolly, the kid with the awesome pitch no one had ever seen before, the kid who’d been just about unhittable for weeks and the talk of the league, was back to being Gas Can Connolly.

And if the Orioles trotted him out there to face hulking Reuben Mendez and the rest of the powerful Yankees lineup, he’d only be hurting the team. That’s what Coach was saying. And the last thing Danny wanted to do was hurt the team.

Walking forlornly back to the dugout, Danny noticed an old man wearing a straw hat and sunglasses leaning against the fence down the right-field line.

Mr. Spinelli had come to the game after all!

Danny waved to him and the old man waved back.

For an instant, Danny felt better. Apparently, under that grouchy demeanor, the guy actually had a heart of gold.

But Danny’s spirits quickly sank again. So what if Mr. Spinelli was here? It wasn’t like he was going to see a heroic pitching performance by his young next-door neighbor. All he was doing by showing up was ruining his own dinner plans—again.

And for what?

For nothing.

Thinking this made Danny feel even worse.

Once the game began, Zoom was uncharacteristically wild from the outset.

You didn’t have to be a pitching coach to figure out why: it looked like he was trying to throw the ball 500 mph on every pitch. Everyone could see the kid was too amped up for his own good.

He walked the Yankees lead-off batter on four pitches. He walked the second kid on five pitches. Mickey jogged to the mound to calm him down. That helped for a moment as Zoom got the third batter, their lanky, power-hitting first baseman, Will Bramford, on a weak pop-up to Ethan.

It also brought Reuben strutting to the plate.

As the big shortstop dug in and took a handful of vicious practice swings, he stared balefully out at Zoom, who stared back.

“Can we move this along?” the umpire said finally. “Or do you two just want to look at each other for the whole game?”

“Yeah, let’s go, Zoo,” Reuben said with a smirk. “That’s your name now, isn’t it? We don’t have all day.”

Zoom’s face darkened. Watching him from the dugout, Danny thought, Oh, man, this won’t be good—for us or for Reuben.

Zoom rocked and kicked and threw as hard as the Orioles had ever seen him throw, a fastball that sounded like a rifle shot when it smacked Mickey’s mitt.

“Ball, outside!” the ump cried.

The next pitch was another fastball out of the zone. So was the next. But rather than looking frustrated over the 3–0 count, Zoom seemed to actually be…smiling.

He reared back and fired again, and this time the pitch just missed Reuben’s chin, spinning him around and sending him sprawling in the dirt.

Reuben shot to his feet right away and dusted himself off. But the Orioles could see he wasn’t smirking anymore. Or getting into another stare-off with Zoom. Trotting down to first base, he wore a look of pure relief.

Zoom kept overthrowing and walked the next batter, too, forcing in a run. Luckily for the Orioles, the next kid hit a bullet to Hunter, who doubled-up the runner on third to end the inning.

But the damage was done. The Yankees had pushed an early run across on the Orioles’ best pitcher, giving them renewed confidence.

As soon as the Orioles reached the dugout, Mickey got in Zoom’s face.

“Dude, you gotta calm down!” the catcher said. “Yeah, you’re touching, like, three hundred miles an hour on the radar gun. But it’s not helping us. Plus you’re gonna kill your arm! It’s gonna fall off your shoulder if you keep throwing like that!”

Zoom scowled and turned away.

“I hate those guys,” he said quietly.

“Fine,” Mickey said. “And I hate broccoli. But you can’t let what you hate control what you do. You gotta pitch smarter than that.”

Zoom shrugged and said nothing.

“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?” Mickey shouted, grabbing him by the jersey. “IS ANY OF THIS GETTING THROUGH?!”

Zoom looked back at his catcher, as if seeing him for the first time. His expression seemed to soften.

“Okay,” he said at last, “I hear you. I’ll be better next inning.”

But Danny wasn’t so sure, not the way Zoom was sweating and rocking nervously back and forth on the bench. The kid still had buckets of adrenaline coursing through him. Whether he could calm down enough to get his control back was anyone’s guess.

The Orioles went three-up-and-three-down and Zoom was back on the mound in no time. He was still throwing hard—way too hard, despite both Mickey’s and Coach’s imploring him to slow it down.

But now the Yankees seemed so intimidated that they were swinging at anything: pitches in the dirt, pitches a foot over their heads, pitches way outside, it didn’t seem to matter.

How long can he get away with that? Danny wondered.

The answer arrived quickly enough.

With the Orioles trailing 1-0 in the third inning and two out, Zoom uncorked maybe his hardest pitch of the day to Will Bramford.

Only this time the Orioles starter yelped and grabbed his arm.

Coach’s face turned pale and he started immediately for the mound, but Zoom waved him off.

He kept pitching, but in visible pain now, and his fastball looked at least 10 mph slower. Only a great play by Sammy, who leaped and backhanded a scorching line drive, got the Orioles out of the inning.

As they hustled off the field, their faces were grim. It was still early and they were only down by a run. But their ace starter was grimacing in pain, cradling his arm stiffly as he walked.

Sure would be nice to have a dependable reliever besides Sammy about now, Danny thought ruefully.

On a whim, he asked Spencer to throw with him, just to see if by some miracle he could get the Terminator going again.

But he could see right away it was just as useless as before. After a half-dozen pitches, Danny threw his hands up in disgust and waved Spencer back in.

He trudged back to the dugout and sat down heavily. Feeling sorry for himself, he began flipping the ball idly from one hand to another.

The tuba, he thought, is definitely in my future.

Then he saw it.

Looking down at the ball, he noticed a small indentation next to one of the seams. Examining it more closely, he saw it was more like a tiny slash, a mark that might have been left by, say, someone’s fingernail.

Danny stared at it for a few seconds. Slowly, he began to grin.

“That’s it!” he whispered. “Has to be!”

He leaped to his feet and grabbed his glove.

Maybe someone else would think he was crazy.

Maybe someone else would think, No, it’s too much of a long shot.

But Danny had never been surer of anything in his life.