Robbie Hammond stared in at the batter and tried to look intimidating. I need to work on my game face, he thought. Hitters don’t dig in against a pitcher with a good game face. Mine is lame. When I try to scowl, I look like a kid who needs to find a bathroom in a hurry.

He vowed to practice in front of the mirror when he got home, if his little sister wasn’t around to watch. It was hard to concentrate with Ashley cackling and shouting, “Mom, you gotta see this!”

Robbie got the sign from his catcher, Joey Zinno, and nodded. He went into his windup, kicked, and fired. The pitch was low and outside, but the Tigers batter swung anyway and missed for strike one.

“Yes!” Joey shouted, pointing at Robbie before whipping the ball back. “Now you’re dealing!”

Robbie exhaled slowly. Maybe that last pitch wasn’t a thing of beauty, he thought. It didn’t exactly split the plate. But it was the best one he’d thrown all day, which wasn’t saying much, seeing as how the Orioles were getting their butts kicked—again.

He glanced at the scoreboard behind the center field fence: Tigers 5, Orioles 0. And it was only the fourth inning, meaning there was still plenty of time for further disaster. Gazing at the stands, Robbie saw that the Orioles’ cheering section wasn’t exactly riveted by the action on the field, either. Two dads were talking on their cell phones. Another was pecking away at his laptop. One mom had her head buried in a book.

Even a couple of dogs tied to the fence looked bored. That’s how bad we are, Robbie thought. We even make pets yawn.

Still, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, Robbie permitted himself a thin smile. At least he hadn’t given in to the batter. He’d gone after him, challenged him with his best pitch. He hadn’t walked him, the way he had with four other batters so far.

Then he heard it.

“BEND YOUR KNEES! FOLLOW THROUGH!”

There it was again. The same voice he’d been hearing since the season started two weeks ago—an annoying foghorn that conveyed more than a hint of impatience. If the voice had belonged to a kid, Robbie would’ve wanted to gag him and shove him into a closet.

The problem was, the voice belonged to his dad.

Robbie glanced over at the Orioles dugout. Ray Hammond was perched on the top step in his usual pose: shoulders hunched, hands jammed into the pockets of his blue Windbreaker, rocking back and forth on his heels. A thick man with a buzz cut under his O’s cap, he chomped furiously on a wad of gum the size of a golf ball.

Watching him, Robbie was glad his dad hadn’t discovered the joys of chewing sunflower seeds. The man would be spraying them like machine-gun fire about now.

“CONCENTRATE! PUT THIS GUY AWAY!”

Robbie sighed. Give it a rest, Dad, he thought. Let me at least enjoy this rare moment of triumph before I uncork one that sails over the backstop this time.

But his dad wasn’t about to stop yapping, Robbie knew.

No, as the new coach of the Orioles, his dad was a nervous wreck. Outwardly, Ray Hammond could fool you. As a Baltimore cop, he projected an air of calmness and authority. And why not? In his sixteen-year career, he’d been decorated numerous times for coolness and bravery in the line of duty.

Just a few months ago, he had answered a call about a domestic dispute and stood in a kitchen, across from a distraught man waving a knife. It took over an hour, but eventually Robbie’s dad talked the guy into putting down the knife and surrendering. For that, Sgt. Hammond was awarded the Bronze Star, one of the police department’s highest honors.

No, there wasn’t much that seemed to rattle Ray Hammond—until he took over the Orioles. Here he was less certain of himself, Robbie knew, still finding his way as a rookie coach. And it didn’t help that his kid, supposedly the best pitcher on the team, couldn’t find the strike zone with a GPS. Or that the Orioles weren’t hitting, either, and kept discovering new and innovative ways to lose.

Maybe the rest of the Orioles couldn’t tell, but Robbie knew his dad was stressing in his new role. And one way Coach Hammond dealt with the stress was to bark nonstop advice to his players, in a voice you could hear in Canada.

Coach Motormouth, some of the kids called him when they thought Robbie couldn’t hear them. But Robbie heard everything—everything his dad said, and everything his teammates said, too. Which was part of the problem.

“JUST RELAX OUT THERE!”

Oh, that’s helpful, Robbie thought. Telling a pitcher who’s wild and down 5–0 to relax. A little late for that, isn’t it?

Besides, if you yelled at someone to relax, didn’t it have the opposite effect?

Wouldn’t it be better to use a soothing voice—your indoor voice—to calm your rattled pitcher?

No wonder baseball wasn’t nearly as much fun this season. Even though he was short for his age, with stubby arms and legs that he feared made him look like SpongeBob, Robbie had always been the best pitcher at every level he played. “You got a live arm, son,” his coaches had always said.

At the prestigious Brooks Robinson Camp last summer, he had mowed down one batter after another in the intra-squad games. Brooks Robinson himself, the great Hall of Fame third baseman, had watched from the sidelines and said to one of the coaches, “The boy sure has some giddyup on that fastball.”

But that was then.

That was before it happened. The thing with Stevie Altman.

Oh, Robbie still had plenty of—what was it again?—“giddyup” on his pitches. He still threw harder than anyone else in the league. But lately, more often than not, he had no idea where the ball was going when it left his hand.

And now that the Orioles had lost their first six games of the season, his dad was barking at him a lot. Which didn’t seem to happen to any of the other Orioles, Robbie noticed.

Now the Tigers batter dug in again. But this time he was crowding the plate, hunched over the inside corner as he waved his bat menacingly in the air.

Seeing this, Robbie froze. Shouldn’t the kid step back a little? Wouldn’t that be the smart thing to do? Shouldn’t he tuck that elbow in so he doesn’t—?

“Time!” a voice behind him yelled. Willie Pitts, the Orioles’ speedy second baseman, trotted to the mound. He was joined by Connor Sullivan, the big shortstop, and Jordy Marsh, the first baseman.

None of them seemed happy.

Great, Robbie thought. More teammates thrilled with my performance.

“Dude,” Willie said sternly, “you’re thinking too much.”

Robbie nodded sheepishly. “Yeah,” he said. “I tend to do that.”

“Don’t!” Connor said. “Just throw the ball over the plate.”

“Yeah, try that,” Willie said. “By the way, the plate is that white thing up there. In between the batter’s boxes.”

“The thing the ump keeps dusting off,” Jordy added helpfully.

With that, the three looked at one another, rolled their eyes, and trotted back to their positions.

“Thanks,” Robbie murmured. “I feel much better now.”

Actually, what he felt was a familiar tightening in his stomach, something that seemed to happen a lot lately when he pitched.

Okay, no thinking, he told himself. Just throw it.

Robbie got the sign from Joey again, wound up, and fired a fastball. It skipped in the dirt. Ball one. The next pitch, another fastball, was high. Ball two. Robbie could see that the kid at the plate wasn’t going to help, either.

No, the kid was no dummy. He had learned his lesson. He wasn’t swinging at any more junk out of the strike zone. Instead he stood there like a statue, bat on his shoulder, as Robbie skipped two more pitches in the dirt and the umpire cried, “Ball four!”

With a smirk, the kid tossed his bat aside and trotted down to first base.

The rest of the inning seemed to take forever.

Robbie walked the next batter on five pitches. He walked the batter after that on six pitches. Bases loaded. He was so nervous now, he was almost nauseated.

Oh, God, he thought, please don’t let me hurl, too. I’m embarrassed enough without spewing in front of all these people.

But for the first time all game, the Orioles caught a break.

The next Tigers batter, a hulking kid named Ramon who Robbie recognized from gym class, swung at an outside pitch and looped a weak flare over second base. Willie and Yancy Arroyo, the Orioles center fielder, both gave chase. For an instant, the ball looked like trouble. But Yancy called off Willie and made a running one-handed catch at the last second for the third out.

Robbie was never happier to get off the mound. Mike Cutko was scheduled to pitch the last two innings for the Orioles, which was fine with Robbie. He was done for the day—in more ways than one.

Oh, he was so-o-o done.

As he neared the dugout, his dad gave him a high five and said, “Way to get out of that jam.” But Robbie knew his dad was just trying to be encouraging. Or maybe he felt guilty about riding his kid so hard.

Whatever, Robbie thought, the drive home should be fun. He pictured his dad with one meaty hand draped over the steering wheel, quiet and unsmiling, worried about whether he was doing a crappy job coaching the Orioles, and wondering why his kid was struggling so much with his control.

Taking a long swig from his water bottle, Robbie was struck by another thought: I wonder if it’s too late to go out for lacrosse?