Sliding into Home (11 page)

“I know,” Elizabeth said. “And I also know that if I really don’t want to do something, I need to stand up and say so.”

That’s true, too
, Joelle thought. But she clamped her mouth shut and gave Elizabeth a chance to continue. There was an uneasy silence.

“Well, if you want to play, it’d be great to have you on the team,” Joelle said. “But if you don’t, I totally understand. And we can still be best friends even if you decide not to play.”

That sounded so weird, Joelle realized suddenly. She’d never had a best friend before.

“Okay, Joelle,” Elizabeth said. “Thanks.”

But after Joelle hung up, she thought:
If Elizabeth decides not to play, will Mr. Shaw still want to coach? Am I a terrible person for wondering that?

Joelle had meant everything she’d said to her friend. But she really, really hoped Elizabeth decided to play.

It was okay to hope, wasn’t it?

I
can’t believe it!” Mandi said as a crowd began to gather in the library’s basement auditorium on Wednesday night. “There must be almost a hundred people here!”

“It’s amazing,” Leah breathed.

“Totally,” Elizabeth agreed.

Even so, Joelle was feeling nervous.

Very
nervous.

“I just hope all these people really
are
interested in our league,” Joelle said. “What if they’re here to try and stop us?”

“Hey, it’s a lot easier to try and stop one girl than it is to stop a whole bunch,” Leah said. She stuck out her hand and Mandi put her hand on top of it. Tara reached in and placed her hand over Mandi’s. Elizabeth added hers next.

Joelle grinned and put her hand on top. “All for one and one for all!” she said.

“I hate to break up this little party over here,” Mr. Shaw said, coming up and ruffling Elizabeth’s hair. “But we need to get this meeting started.”

Joelle’s parents were right behind Mr. Shaw. “Are you ready, Joelle?” Dad gave Joelle’s shoulders a squeeze.

“Do you know what you want to say?” Mom asked.

“Me?” Joelle took a step back. “I’m supposed to get up in front of all these people and start talking?”

“This is
your
project,” Mr. Shaw said.

Joelle gulped. She had figured this whole thing would just be a matter of sitting around a table and brainstorming ideas with a small group of girls and their parents. She never expected she’d have to get up in front of a crowd and speak.

“We’ll go up there with you,” Mandi offered. “Won’t we?”

She turned to the other girls.

Elizabeth shuddered. “As long as I don’t have to talk.”

“Me neither,” Tara added quickly.

“Would you like me to get things started?” Mr. Shaw asked.

Joelle swallowed hard. “No. We’re the ones who want to play, so we should do it.” Her heart pounding, she turned and walked to the front of the room. Mandi, Leah, Tara, and Elizabeth followed in a straight line and stood in a half circle behind her.

Joelle wasn’t sure how to start. Hopefully something would come to her.

She cleared her throat. There wasn’t even a microphone. “Hello,” she began loudly. How was she supposed to get all these people to quiet down and listen to her?

“My name is—” She could barely hear herself over the crowd.

Finally some guy in the front stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. The room immediately went quiet. Everyone turned to Joelle.

She tried again. “My name is Joelle Cunningham.” Her voice shook a little. “I just moved here from Minneapolis.”
Get to the point
, she reminded herself.

“I played on my school baseball team in Minneapolis, but the district won’t let me play baseball here. They said softball is the same thing as baseball. In Greendale, girls play softball and boys play baseball.”

Joelle’s parents nodded their encouragement from the middle of the front row. Mr. Shaw gave her a thumbs-up. In the back, Joelle noticed Ms. Fenner listening with interest.

“Well, I’ve tried to tell everyone that those two sports are totally different,” Joelle went on. “And I think it’s incredibly unfair that they won’t let girls play baseball. I’ve already found four other girls in this town who like baseball, too.”

Mandi, Leah, Tara, and Elizabeth smiled nervously at each other.

“Anyway, we were thinking there might be other girls who’d want to form teams. It would be a lot of fun to play with and against each other. And, well, I guess that’s why we’re here.”

Joelle didn’t know what else to say.

“I, for one, think a girls’ league is a brilliant idea!” said a heavyset man in the back.

“I second that!” said a woman in a navy business suit.

Joelle breathed a sigh of relief.

“Does anybody here know anything about starting up a league?” a woman asked.

Everyone seemed to start talking at once. It didn’t sound to Joelle like anyone had any idea where to begin.

Mr. Shaw stepped to the front of the room and motioned for the crowd to quiet down again. “Hello, everyone. I’m Gary Shaw. Joelle is a friend of my daughter’s and also our neighbor. I’d really like to see a girls’ baseball league here in Greendale. I know you all have a lot of questions. And I sure don’t have all the answers. But maybe if we work together, we can figure out how to get this off the ground.”

He went on to tell the crowd what he and Joelle had learned on the Internet. Then everyone started asking questions.

One parent wanted to know how they would form the teams. Another wanted to know where they were going to play. A third wanted to know about sponsors.

“Let’s take one thing at a time—” Mr. Shaw said.

A man standing in the back of the room stepped forward.

“That’s my dad,” Leah whispered to Joelle.

“My brother owns the copy shop down the street. He couldn’t be here tonight, but he told me that he might sponsor a team,” Leah’s dad said.

Then another man stood up from a folding chair in the corner. He was tall and thin with curly blond hair and he wore a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. “I’m Dave Horner. I own the bowling alley in Merrill. I know a couple of girls who might want to play. If we can get a whole team together in Merrill, I’d be willing to sponsor it.”

Joelle and Mandi exchanged glances. One thing was for sure. There certainly wasn’t any lack of interest here.

“Okay, everybody, we’re going to put out some sign-up sheets,” Mr. Shaw said finally. He tore off two pages from a yellow legal pad and put them on the table at the front of the
room. “I’ve got one for the kids and another for the adults. Any of you girls who want to play, write your name, address, phone number, and age on this sheet of paper. Everyone else, sign up on the other sheet. Let us know how you can help get this league started.”

Once people started getting up and moving around, the room seemed to get even more crowded. Joelle and her friends shrank back a little against the side wall while Mr. Shaw and Joelle’s parents talked to some grown-ups.

A woman with short brown hair and freckles walked over and introduced herself to Joelle. “Hi, I’m the elementary school P.E. teacher over in Chesterfield. I’d be happy to coach a team.”

Ms. Fenner came up, too. An older woman with whitish hair walked beside her, holding on to Ms. Fenner’s arm.

“Hello, girls.” Ms. Fenner glanced around. “Quite a turnout you’ve got here.”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Joelle said eagerly.

Ms. Fenner nodded and glanced at the woman beside her. “Girls, I’d like you to meet my mother, Claire Fenner.”

The older woman smiled and held out a hand. Elizabeth took it. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fenner,” she said politely. “I’m Elizabeth Shaw.”

“And I’m Joelle.” Joelle shook the woman’s hand, too.

“I’m so happy to meet you both,” the woman said. She spoke very slowly. “I’ve been following your situation in the newspaper, you know.”

“Mom’s always been interested in women’s baseball,” Ms. Fenner put in.

“My older sister played in the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League during the 1940s. Do you girls know about that?” Ms. Fenner’s mom asked.

“Sure,” Joelle said. “It was started during World War II when all the major league baseball players went off to fight. There’s even a movie about it.
A League of Their Own.
”

“That’s right.” Ms. Fenner’s mother seemed pleased. She squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “I’d really like to see your league get off the ground.”

“So would I,” Ms. Fenner said. “If you still need another coach, girls, I’d be willing to help. I won’t be able to do much before summer, though, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine,” Joelle said. “I’m not sure we’ll be ready until then anyway. Thanks, Ms. Fenner.”

Ms. Fenner and her mother moved on and someone else tapped Joelle on the shoulder. It was that girl from Greendale Academy. The shortstop with the zillion braids.

“Hey! Nikki, right?” Joelle said in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d—I mean, well, I’m glad you came.”

Nikki grinned. “I thought I’d check you guys out. See what you’ve got.”

Joelle introduced Nikki to Elizabeth.

“Hey, I remember you,” Elizabeth said. “You’re the girl who won the KGRN contest last fall.”

“What contest?” Joelle asked.

“It was during the World Series,” Nikki explained. “The radio station held a baseball trivia contest at the mall. Anyone could be in it.”

“And you won?” Joelle was impressed.

“My dad was in that contest, too,” Elizabeth said. “He was so embarrassed that he got beaten by a kid!”

Nikki shrugged. “Hey, I know my baseball.”

“So, do you want to play with us?” Joelle asked hopefully.

“Definitely,” Nikki replied. “But I don’t want to just sit around and talk about it. I want to do it!”

“Well, we’re working on that,” Joelle said.

“Hey, you guys.” Mandi, Leah, and Tara joined their group. They had brought two other girls with them. Two girls who looked exactly alike. Joelle had seen them earlier in the crowd.

“This is Paige. And this is Paula,” Mandi said, gesturing to each twin in turn. “They played with us in the rec league last summer.” Joelle had no idea how Mandi knew which girl was Paige and which was Paula. Both were tall and thin and wore their blond hair turned under at the shoulders.

“Hi,” they said. Their voices even sounded alike, but one of the twins seemed a little shy.

“Paige plays center field and Paula plays right field,” Mandi added.

Joelle silently counted up the girls in their little circle. “Do you guys realize that technically—I mean, if we have no alternates or anything—we’re only one girl short of a team right here?”

“And look around,” Leah said. “All these girls want to play, too.”

Joelle sucked in her breath. It did seem as if a lot of kids were interested. But was the Eastern Iowa Girls’ Baseball League actually going to happen?

“Okay, we’ve got thirty-six girls officially signed up,” Mr. Shaw said as he looked over the sign-up sheet.

By this time, most of the crowd had gone home. But Joelle, Mandi, Leah, Elizabeth and their parents had lingered around the table at the front of the auditorium.

“Amazing,” Joelle’s mom said, shaking her head.

“Yeah, but it’s still not enough for a whole league,” Joelle said glumly, her chin in her hands.

“And look at all the different ages.” Mandi pointed to the sign-up sheet. “We can’t have six year olds playing with sixteen year olds.”

“We’d have to have divisions within the league,” Mr. Shaw said.

Joelle bit her lip and studied the sign-up sheet. “We could put the six through nine year olds together. And the ten through thirteen year olds. And then we could have over-fourteen year olds. What does that leave us with?”

“Not enough for even one team in each division.” Leah slumped back in her chair. “Do the math.”

Mandi groaned. “This is never going to work out.”

“I disagree,” Mr. Burns said. “Remember, this was just an organizational meeting. And look how many people showed up. I think we’ve got a real shot at this.”

“We’ve got several sponsor offers,” Mr. Wong noted.

“Coaches, too,” Mr. Shaw added.

“We just need to keep at it,” Joelle’s mom said.

“That’s right.” Mr. Shaw nodded. “We have to get the word out even more.”

“How?” Elizabeth asked.

“Well, if each of you thirty-six girls could find just one more girl who wanted to play, we’d easily have enough to start a league,” Joelle’s dad pointed out.

“I don’t know,” Leah said slowly. “Even with seventy-two players, there wouldn’t be more than one or two teams in each age group. That’s not enough for a league. There wouldn’t be enough teams to play against each other.”

“Maybe we should just concentrate on one age group to start,” Mandi’s dad suggested.

Mr. Shaw glanced at the sign up sheet on the table. “Looks like most of the girls range in age between ten and fourteen. We could start with just ten to fourteen year olds.”

“But what about everyone else?” Joelle asked. She hated the idea of telling anyone they couldn’t play. She knew what
that
felt like.

“It’s okay to start small,” Mr. Shaw said. “Once we’ve got a couple of teams together who can play, maybe we’ll get more interest within the other age groups.”

Mandi’s dad nodded. “We’ve got four towns represented. Greendale, Merrill, Chesterfield, and Fairmont. Let’s concentrate on recruiting middle school girls from those towns.”

“Depending on how many players we want sitting on the bench at one time, we only need a few more girls from Greendale,” Leah spoke up. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“But how are we supposed to find girls from Fairmont,
Chesterfield, and Merrill?” Mandi asked. “We don’t know anyone there.”

“You’ll have to get on the phone,” Mrs. Burns said. “Call some of these girls who signed up and get
them
to do some talking.”

“We can follow up on our flyer mailings to the gym teachers, too,” Joelle suggested.

“And we need to alert the media,” Mr. Shaw put in. “Newspapers, radio stations, TV stations.”

“Hey, did anyone see or talk to a reporter from the
Greendale Gazette?
” Joelle asked. “I talked to Linda Monico a few days ago and she said she might send someone to our meeting to do a story about us.”

“I didn’t talk to any reporter,” Mandi said.

“Me neither,” Leah put in.

“Darn.” Joelle frowned. “I guess she didn’t send anyone.”

“No problem,” Mr. Shaw said. “We’ll just call her again and tell her how the meeting went.”

Elizabeth, Mandi, Leah, and Joelle divided the sign-up sheet into four parts. Each promised to call nine of the girls who’d signed up and see if they could find just one or two more players who might be interested.

It was a start, anyway.

Joelle began feeling hopeful again as they all headed home.

It was definitely possible that their league would get off the ground.

Anything
was possible.

She just had to keep believing that.