warming up in the bullpen before the game. My arm felt good, but I could feel my earlier nervousness returning. The stadium was already nearly packed, and the area above the bullpen was full of fans watching me warm up and shouting encouragement.
“Yeah Rafa!”
“You’re our ace, Rivera. Send those Yank-mees back to the hotel crying!”
“Give Judge a fastball to the chin! Show him who’s boss!”
Usually I could tune out all the noise, but tonight was different. Tonight I heard every word spoken by the fans and they got into my head.
To my right, Natalie was sitting on a chair watching me pitch. She smiled, and I felt all my nervousness disappear.
“Hey, can I tell you something?”
“Sure,” she said.
“I love you.”
Her eyes widened with shock, and then her entire face brightened up. I couldn’t get over how beautiful she was, especially when she showed a glimpse of the emotions she normally hid away.
Plus, what I said was true. I did love her. I had loved her for a while now. She wasn’t like anyone else I had ever been with. She was my partner in everything. In baseball, in our personal lives. And in the bedroom. In everything in my life, she made me stronger than I was alone.
Natalie looked around to make sure nobody could hear us. “You’re just saying that because of what happened earlier.”
I threw another pitch across the bullpen to the catcher. “Yep.”
She made an offended noise. “Oh, come on! Is that all it takes for a guy to say that?”
“Yep.”
She shook her head and the words slipped out of her mouth easily. “I love you too. Asshole.”
I grinned at her.
There was a lot of pregame fanfare. The Rangers teams that made the World Series in 2010 and 2011 were honored before the game. Hall-of-famer Ivan Rodriguez threw out the first pitch. The National Anthem was performed by Leon Bridges, a singer who was originally from Fort Worth.
Then it was time to take the field.
My teammates all jogged out of the dugout, but I strolled to the mound slowly, taking care to step over the foul line. An old pitcher superstition. On the back of the mound, a special Texas Rangers T-logo had been stenciled into the dirt. The crowd was extra loud.
It was impossible to pretend that this was just another game.
“Now batting for the Yankees. Number twelve, Yordano Hamilton.”
The speedy shortstop stepped into the batter’s box and dug his heel in. I thought about the information I had learned in the pre-game meeting. Pound the outside corner against him. The umpire signaled to me that he was ready, and I went into my windup. I tightened my fingers around the baseball with a fastball grip, two parallel fingers along the seam. I hurled the pitch…
It was just outside of my target, and Hamilton took it for a ball.
Okay, okay, I caught the ball from the catcher and started the next pitch. This time I caught a lot more of the plate, and it was called a strike. The crowd cheered loudly, as if it was the ninth inning instead of the first. That helped energize me a little bit, and I located my next pitch perfectly on the outside corner of the plate. Hamilton took a big hack, fouling the ball straight back to the netting behind the plate.
It was good that I was now ahead in the count, but the way he fouled it off scared me. That meant he was dialed-in to the speed of my fastball, and had just barely missed crushing the ball right back up the middle.
It was time to switch my speed up.
My instinct was to use my changeup. It was my typical out-pitch. But I remembered the strategy we had discussed with Natalie, and I trusted her completely. My catcher put down the sign for the pitch I wanted to throw—a slider. He set up his glove down-and-away, giving me a target to aim for. I went into my windup.
The ball left my hand just a little too early. Instead of falling across the outside of the plate, it stayed way too far inside. Hamilton turned away but he was already crowding the plate, and the ball clipped his elbow.
I groaned as he jogged down to first base. The last thing a pitcher wanted to do was allow the first batter of the game to get on base, especially after getting ahead in the count. I couldn’t make those mistakes tonight. Not in this game.
The next batter to