The shortstop whips the ball to second, hoping to catch King off the bag, but he’s out of luck.

Nevertheless, there are two out.

The Hampden fans scream further encouragement. The women behind the dugout are jumping up and down. Now there are a few Hampden Horns tootling away someplace, but they are a little early, and all one has to do to know it is to look at Mike Tardif ‘s face as he wipes off his forehead and pounds the baseball into his glove.

Ryan Larrobino steps into the right-hand batter’s box. He has a fast, almost naturally perfect swing; even Ron St. Pierre will not fault him on it much.

Ryan swings through Tardif’s first pitch, his hardest of the day – it makes a rifle-shot sound as it hits Kyle King’s glove. Tardif then wastes one outside. King returns the ball; Tardif meditates briefly and then throws a low fastball. Ryan looks at it, and the umpire calls strike two. It has caught the outside corner – maybe. The ump says it did, anyway, and that’s the end of it.

Now the fans on both sides have fallen quiet, and so have the coaches. They’re all out of it. It’s only Tardif and Larrobino now, balanced on the last strike of the last out of the last game one of these teams will play. Forty-six feet between these two faces. Only, Larrobino is not watching Tardif’s face. He is watching Tardif’s glove, and somewhere I can hear Ron St. Pierre telling Fred, You’re waiting to see how I’ll come – sidearm, three-quarters, or over the top. Larrobino is waiting to see how Tardif will come. As Tardif moves to the set position, you can faintly hear the pock-pock, pock-pock of tennis balls on a nearby court, but here there is only silence and the crisp black shadows of the players, lying on the dirt like silhouettes cut from black construction paper, and Larrobino is waiting to see how Tardif will come.