Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

The previous fall, a guy named Joe Funkhauser, the father of one of our high school football players, got into an argument with an opposing player’s father in the parking lot after a bitterly contested game. Funkhauser beat the guy into a coma and was later charged with attempted murder. The Funkhauser Incident, as the papers called it, attracted a lot of unfavorable attention to our town and triggered a painful round of soul-searching among people concerned with youth sports. In response to the crisis, Tim had organized a workshop for Little League coaches and parents, trying to get them to focus on fun rather than competition, but it takes more than a two-hour seminar to change people’s attitudes about something as basic as the difference between winning and losing.

“I don’t blame your team for being spooked,” I said. “Not after what Lori did to them last time. Didn’t she set some kind of league record for strikeouts?”

Carl’s grin disappeared. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Jack. The strike zone’s down here. Not up here.” He illustrated his point by slicing imaginary lines across his stomach and throat.

“Right,” I said. “And it’s six points for a touchdown.”

“I don’t mean to be a jerk about it,” he continued, “but I thought you were making some questionable judgments.”

“Funny,” I said. “They’re only questionable when they don’t go your way.”

“Just watch the high strikes, that’s all I’m saying.”

Tim kept smiling stiffly throughout this exchange, as if it were all just friendly banter, but he seemed visibly relieved by the sight of Ray Santelli, the Ravens’ manager, returning from the snack bar with a hot dog in each hand.

“Just got outta work,” he said, by way of explanation. “Traffic was a bitch on the Parkway.”

Ray was a dumpy guy with an inexplicably beautiful Russian wife. A lot of people assumed she was mail order, despite Ray’s repeated claims that he’d met her at his cousin’s wedding. He ran a livery business with his brother and sometimes kept a white stretch limo parked in the driveway of his modest Cape Cod on Dunellen Street. The car was like the wife, a little too glamorous for its humble surroundings.

“It’s those damn toll plazas,” observed Tim. “They were supposed to be gone twenty years ago.”

Before anyone could chime in with the ritual agreement, our attention was diverted by the appearance of Mikey Fellner, wielding his video camera. A mildly retarded guy in his early twenties, Mikey was a familiar figure at local sporting events, graduations, carnivals, and political meetings. He videotaped everything and saved the tapes, which he labeled and shelved in chronological order in his parents’ garage. This was apparently part of the syndrome he had — it wasn’t Down’s but something more exotic, I forget the name — some compulsion to keep everything fanatically organized. He trained his camera on me, then got a few seconds of Santelli wiping mustard off his chin.

“You guys hear?” Carl asked. “Mikey says they’re gonna show the game on cable access next week.”

Mikey panned over to Tim, holding the camera just a couple of inches from his face. He wasn’t big on respecting other people’s boundaries, especially when he was working. Tim didn’t seem to mind, though.

“Championship game, ” he said, giving a double thumbs-up to the viewing audience. “ Very exciting.”

LITTLE LEAGUE is a big deal in our town. You could tell that just by looking at our stadium. We’ve got dugouts, a big electronic scoreboard, and a padded outfield fence covered with ads for local businesses, just like the pro teams (that’s how we paid for the scoreboard). We play the national anthem over a good sound system, nothing like the scratchy loudspeaker they used when I was a kid. The bleachers were packed for the championship game, and not just with the families of the players. It was a bona fide local event.

The Wildcats were up first, and Carl was right: his team had a bad case of the jitters. The leadoff hitter, Alex O’Malley, stepped up to the plate white-knuckled and expecting the worst, as if Lori Chang were Roger Clemens. He planted himself as far away from the plate as possible, stood like a statue for three called strikes, and seemed relieved to return to the bench. The second batter, Chris Rigato, swung blindly at three bad pitches, including a high and tight third strike that almost took his head off. His delayed evasive action, combined with the momentum of his premature swing, caused him to pirouette so violently that he lost his balance and ended up facedown in the dirt.

“Strike three,” I said, taking care to keep my voice flat and matter-of-fact. I wasn’t one of those show-off umps who said Stee-rike! and did a big song and dance behind the plate. “Batter’s out.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when Carl came bounding out of the third-base dugout. He had his arms spread wide, as if volunteering for a crucifixion.

“Goddammit, Jack! That was a beanball!”

I wasn’t fooled by his theatrics. By that point, just six pitches into the first inning, it was already clear that Lori Chang was operating at the top of her game, and you didn’t need Tim McCarver to tell you that Carl was trying to mess with her head. I should’ve just ordered him back to the dugout and called for play to resume, but there was just enough of a taste in my mouth from the earlier encounter that I took the bait. I removed my mask and took a few steps in his direction.

“Please watch your language, Coach. You know better than that.”

“She’s throwing at their heads!” Carl was yelling now, for the benefit of the spectators. “She’s gonna kill someone!”

“The batter swung,” I reminded him.

“He was trying to protect himself. You gotta warn her, Jack. That’s your job.”

“You do your job, Carl. I’ll take care of mine.”

I had just pulled my mask back over my head when Tim came jogging across the infield to back me up. We umpires made it a point to present a unified front whenever a dispute arose.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “Let’s play ball.”

He gave me one of those subtle headshakes, the kind you wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been standing six inches in front of you. “He’s right, Jack. You should talk to her.”

“You’re playing right into his hands.”

“Maybe so,” he admitted. “But this is the championship. Let’s keep it under control.”

He was forcing me into an awkward position. I didn’t want to be Carl’s puppet, but I also didn’t want to argue with Tim right there in the middle of the infield. As it was, I could feel my authority draining away by the second. Someone on the Ravens’ side yelled for us to stop yapping and get on with the game. A Wildcats fan suggested we’d been bought and paid for by Town Pizza.

“We gotta be careful here.” Tim gestured toward the Wildcats’ dugout, where Mikey had his video camera set up on a tripod. “This is gonna be on TV.”

LORI CHANG smiled quizzically as I approached the mound, as if she couldn’t possibly imagine why I was paying her a social visit in the middle of the game.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, sounding a little more worried than she looked.

Lori was one of only three girls playing in our Little League that season. I know it’s politically incorrect to say so, but the other two, Allie Reagan and Steph Murkowski, were tomboys — husky, tough-talking jockettes you could easily imagine playing college rugby and marching in Gay Pride parades later in their lives.

Lori Chang, on the other hand, didn’t even look like an athlete. She was petite, with a round, serious face and lustrous hair that she wore in a ponytail threaded through the back of her baseball cap. Unlike Allie and Steph, both of whom were fully developed in a chunky, none-too-feminine way, Lori had not yet reached puberty. She was lithe and curveless, her chest as flat as a boy’s beneath the stretchy fabric of her Ravens jersey. And yet — I hope it’s okay to talk like this, because it’s true — there was something undeniably sexual about her presence on the baseball field. She wore lipstick and nail polish, giggled frequently for no reason, and blushed when her teammates complimented her performance. She was always tugging down her jersey in the back, as if she suspected the shortstop and third baseman of paying a little too much attention to her ass. In short, she was completely adorable. If I’d been twelve, I would’ve had a hopeless crush on her.