Chapter 5: Triple Play

https://www.bostonherald.com/2017/05/30/olivia-mcgrath-leads-latin-academy-to-another-city-league-softball-title/

“I’ll tell you what Dodger great Duke Snider told us at spring training in 1963,” Coach Q announced before the girls took the field in the bottom of the seventh inning at Washington & Lee. “Never give up and you’ll be a winner.”

“Those lawyer chicks are going down,” Jo added, cracking open another pack of Big Red and tossing two to Shawna as she walked out to the mound of the groomed intramural field on a back hillside of the Lexington campus.

__________

The night before the game, I had gathered up Shawna down at the motel dorms and Jo and MG in Alma Wood before heading over to the Delta Ep oyster roast. A ragged lineup of would-be fraternity pledges were in the dormitory courtyard singing at the top of their lungs:

“In eighteen-hundred and sixty-five

at Washington and Lee,

there was a band of soldier boys

as brave as they could be.

They’d fought with Lee  and Jackson

from the mountains to the sea,

and when the war was over

they founded old DE.”

“We have no chapters in the North

nor any in Japan.

We have no need for chapters

in any foreign land.

We’ll live and die in Dixie

so give a rebel yell,

and if you don’t believe it

you can simply go to hell!”

Before the song was even over Jo was backing away toward Alma Wood.

“The horror!” laughed MG, hooking one of Jo’s elbows.

Shawna took the other and we paraded her around the back of New Dorm and down the driveway to the front of the oldest building on campus. The antebellum fieldstone fraternity house along the railroad tracks dated back to the College’s 1868 move from Danville in the middle of Virginia’s Albemarle country to a hotel resort in the woods west of Richmond.

Who cooks for you, who cooks for you too echoed down from a barred owl up in an old oak, spurring us onto the brick porch between two white columns, where Burkhardt tended a half barrel turned up onto a log stand.

“Can you say aphrodisiac?” he asked, deftly prying open a dozen of the misshapen green shells, giving them a quick lemon squeeze, and passing the plate to Jo.

“I reckon,” she laughed, slurping down a salty mollusk and passing them on.

The girls polished off the plate as I waded across the crowded dance floor clutching four plastic cups sloshing Old Milwaukee onto the worn floorboards.

“This band really rocks!” Shawna shouted as we squeezed into a back corner of the room.

“Roadstar,” called Quinn, reaching down a hand and pulling her up to join a dozen others bouncing on an old wooden table.

Before long Shawna had pulled up Jo, and Burkhardt appeared beside Quinn.

“So, where are you from?” Quinn mouthed, staring down into Shawna’s blue eyes.

“Toity toid stweet where da boids sit on da coib eaten doity woims,” she yelled back, clutching him around the waist and leaning into his tall body as his ribs chuckled at her affected New York accent.

“How about your pretty friend?” he whispered into her ear, nodding over at Jo.

“Philippi in West By-God Virginia” Shawna called out just as a song ended.

“There’s a Melungeon community on Chestnut Ridge above Philippi,” boomed Burkhardt as the applause died down.

“The malangu were Angolan men brought into Jamestown before interracial marriage was banned,” I chipped in from down on the floor.

“Their mixed race descendants had to flee into the mountains after 1697 or risk being hanged,” Burkhardt continued.

“Later settlers called them Indians because they were already there,” I added, ducking as Jo leapt over my head and out the door.

“Hey assholes, back off with that historical bullshit!” Quinn shouted as the band pounded out the rocking beat of a new Journey song and the lead singer kicked in with “Something about you baby, really knocks me off my feet….”

__________

It’s the bottom of the seventh inning and we’re winning 3-2 on Toni’s two run double to right center in the top of the inning. Shawna is hanging on despite being wiped out after spending the night at the DE house. W&L law has runners on first and second on a leadoff bloop single and a four pitch walk.

The third batter steps in with her pleated royal blue skirt, Lady Generals neatly sewn below the right collar of her starched white blouse. Shawna chomps down on her gum, licks her left fingers, and toes the rubber. She steps back with her right foot and flows forward, propelling the big ball toward the plate.

“Ball one!” calls the ump as the pitch sails past the batter at foot level.

Cat Kent scoops the ball out of the dirt and tosses it back to Shawna. Coach Q calls for time out and walks out to the mound with hands jammed into his black Yellow Jackets jacket pockets.

“What do you say we call it a day?” he asks, holding out a palm for the ball.

“I can hold on for three more outs,” pleads Shawna, eager to complete the game against the snooty W&L law students.

“You didn’t listen against Bridgewater and had to be saved by Jo,” he counters.

“Wait Coach, didn’t you tell her to give them a hit in that game?” asks Ronki, joining the huddle on the mound from her position at shortstop.

“I better not regret this,” he mumbles, shaking his head and walking off the field.

“Ooh la la, do it for Quinn!” encourages MG from the bench.

Shawna rears back and delivers a slider on the inside corner, her blond hair swishing toward the plate. The batter steps into it and the bat clangs with a hard liner up the middle. Shawna leaps and misses, not even close to grabbing the ball shooting past her. We jump up from the bench as the runners take off and the ball heads for centerfield. Out of nowhere, Ronki lunges and gloves the ball. She skims second base with a foot as she skips past the bag and then races down the baseline to catch the runner halfway back to first.

“The first unassisted triple play in ODAC history,” I note from the bench.

Coach Q strides out to the mound extending a hand to Shawna. She turns away and high fives Ronki who’s running over to celebrate. The team crowds the mound, pushing Q to the edge of the huddle.

“We’re all for one,” chants Ronki.

“We’re all for one,” they respond.

“We’re one for all,” Ronki continues.

“We’re one for all” they answer.

“Together we stand,

Together we stand,

Together we fall,

Together we fall,

But in the end,

But in the end ,

We win them all,

We win them all.”

None of the girls see Coach Q throw down his hat and storm off the field.




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