The Best American Sports Writing 2013 (12 page)

Fifteen minutes after Warrenfeltz arrived, the players began to trickle in. Some, like senior Tyler Byers, had shut down completely. Others, like Tyler's brother, Colby, a talented freshman backup catcher, kept asking why this had happened. Warrenfeltz gathered them in the dugout. “The most important thing I want to say to you guys is this: however you feel is however you feel,” he said. “If you're devastated to the point where you just need to sit down by yourself, away from everybody, that's fine. There's no timetable here, no way you're supposed to be feeling on this day or that day.”

For the next two hours and each of the following two afternoons, the boys just hung out at the field. Some, like Ryan Butts and Tyler Nally, followed their usual routine—dressing, hitting off the tee—because they needed the structure and the distraction. Others sat in silence. A few threw the ball around; others played home run derby. Just being together anchored them. All season long the players had been exceptionally close. They'd gone out to eat together, fished together on Saturdays, and walked the school hallways in clusters of six or seven. In the days after the accident, though, they became a family. On Sunday night Tyler Byers slept at outfielder Brandon Greene's house for comfort. Sunday morning, at the field, the freshmen had cried on the shoulders of the seniors. Watching this, Warrenfeltz realized the question wasn't whether they should keep playing but for how long they could. Every day they were together was precious.

There was only one problem: the playoff schedule. Williamsport was slated to play on Friday afternoon, during Brendon's viewing.

Warrenfeltz called Williamsport's athletic director, Stan Stouffer, who called the state office and explained the situation. The Wildcats were given a choice: they could play on Friday afternoon or at 2:00
P.M
. on Saturday. That wasn't much better, though; Brendon's funeral was at 11:00 that morning.
Can we push the game back to Monday?
Warrenfeltz asked. The state office balked. It couldn't hold up the whole tournament for one team.

Torn, Warrenfeltz called Brendon's grandparents. They had helped raise him while Chad, who lived with the boy after splitting with his mother, Amy, worked 11-hour days as an X-ray technologist at an outpatient facility in Leesburg, an hour away. He asked them one question:
Should we play?

Gail Colliflower answered immediately:
You have to
.

 

The line of cars heading to Brendon's funeral stretched for nearly a mile, so that the Williamsport police closed down one lane of traffic and turned it into a parking strip. By 12:30 on Saturday, hundreds of people had gathered at Greenlawn Memorial Park cemetery as Brendon was buried in his blue number 6 Wildcats jersey. The morning was warm but hazy, and midway through the ceremony somebody pointed to the sky. Soon enough everyone was looking up, for there, circling the sun, was a rainbow. To Chad, it looked like a halo.

At one, the Wildcats said their final good-byes, laying their hands on their friend's casket and chanting, “One-two-three, Brendon!” Then they drove the half-mile to the field. They had less than 45 minutes to warm up. They changed into their uniforms in their cars and jogged to the field. More than a few still had tearstained faces.

It had been more than a week since the Wildcats had practiced. They were without their best player and star pitcher. Many parents wondered if their boys could even play. But even though the opponent, ninth-seeded Wheaton High of Silver Spring, was winless—in Maryland every team makes the playoffs—there is no way to explain what happened next.

The Wildcats hit with a power that had been missing all season. Tyler Byers drove in two runs; so did Brandon Greene. Zach crushed a home run that soared to where Warrenfeltz's grandmother, who preferred to watch the game in her car, was parked, 410 feet from home plate. As she scooted out of the way, the shot shattered her windshield, a piece of glass piercing the ball. The final score was 22–0. More astonishing, four Williamsport pitchers had combined to throw a no-hitter.

Afterward no one wanted to leave the field. The parents brought sandwiches and sodas and chips. Unable to stomach food before or immediately after the funeral, the hungry players scarfed it down. All around were the trappings of the day: the white rose that was on the mound before the game, the remnants of the spray-painted 2 and 6 next to it, the signs and flowers on the fence, the string from the 80 blue-and-white helium balloons that parents sent into the sky during a pregame moment of silence. All afternoon people approached and hugged Chad Colliflower, including players, something he never expected from 16- and 17-year-old boys, who usually find it so hard to hug another man. He saw people he hadn't seen in 20 years and old, red-nosed guys he'd seen only down on the corner but who were suddenly wearing Williamsport blue. Chad later said, “I never felt so much love in my life.”

Before the game many of the boys had worried that they shouldn't be playing. Now something flipped inside them. Zach had a feeling of empowerment—he was now in control. As for Warrenfeltz, he called his father that night and said of his team, “I just want more time to be together, that's all.”

He knew that was unlikely, though. The Wildcats were slated to play again in two days, and Warrenfeltz had seen the brackets.

 

On Monday it rained, granting Williamsport a one-day reprieve. Tuesday brought no such luck. At 1:30
P.M
. the Wildcats piled onto the bus, bound for Liberty. The top seed in the West region, Liberty boasted the best pitcher in Class 2A, Andrew Massey, whose arsenal included an 88-mile-per-hour fastball and a devastating 83-mile-per-hour cutter. This should have been the big showdown: Colliflower versus Massey. Now the Wildcats would be hard-pressed to keep it close.

For two seasons Warrenfeltz had relied on his ace in big games. Now he had to make a choice. There was Tyler Byers, the headstrong, wiseass country boy who threw exclusively fastballs, which wasn't such a bad thing considering they arrived at 87 miles per hour. Unfortunately, Tyler had taken a line drive on the ankle while pitching two weeks earlier. Assistant coach Kyle Lewis suspected the ankle was fractured, but there was no way Tyler's father, Mick, a demanding but loving man who put baseball right after God and country, was taking him to the doctor and no way Tyler would have gone. In the meantime Warrenfeltz had moved Tyler from first base to DH to keep his bat in the lineup.

That left Warrenfeltz with one option: he needed Zach to take the mound. Zach was a hitter first, a pitcher by necessity. For the season he had a 4.68 ERA and 22 strikeouts in 33⅔ innings. He possessed neither a great fastball nor much of a curve.

What Zach did have was desire. The oldest son of a nurse and a cable-company engineer, he had been shy and chubby as an underclassman, but the summer after his sophomore year he began lifting weights. Week by week he added muscle to his five-foot-nine, 180-pound frame, becoming more confident. As a junior he set the team single-season record for RBIs. He also began spending more time with Brendon. The two were in some ways opposites, Zach struggling with his weight while the rail-thin Brendon went to the Waffle House and ordered a sausage-and-egg cheese wrap with a waffle, a side of sausage, a side of bacon, and hash browns. Yet they were, as Lewis says, “the same kind of weird.” Everything between them was an inside joke. But when Brendon took the mound, all that changed; out there he had a swagger, and the Wildcats fed off that confidence.

Now it fell to Zach to lead. So as he walked out to the mound against Liberty, he tried to act self-assured as Brendon always had, even if he knew he was overmatched. The afternoon before, Warrenfeltz had told the players what to expect emotionally. “All we are is a baseball team,” he said. “We can't make this situation right. All we can do is make the best of what we can do.”

That was going to be hard against Massey. He retired the side in order in the first, struck out the side in the second, and went 1-2-3 in the third. Meanwhile Liberty touched Zach for two runs. Usually a 2–0 lead didn't seem insurmountable, but with Massey on the mound, it did.

Then, in the top of the fourth inning, Tyler Nally got lucky. Or maybe Massey made a bad pitch. Either way the ball shot up the middle for a single. And, just like that, it began: a Liberty error; then Zach crushed a double to make it 2–1; an inning later Williamsport added three more runs, then another in the sixth to make it 5–3.

Heading into the bottom of the seventh and last inning, Williamsport clung to its two-run lead. Out to the mound walked Tyler Byers, bad ankle and all. Warrenfeltz had expected to use him for one inning at most. This would be his second. It showed. He hit one batter, gave up a double to another, and soon enough it was 5–4, with two outs and a runner on third. Tyler got ahead 0-and-2. The Liberty batter sent the next fastball screaming over the Williamsport dugout. Twice more Tyler threw heaters, and twice the batter fouled them off. If there were ever a time to call for a change-up, it was now. Warrenfeltz considered it, then gave the sign. Tyler reared back and unleashed an eye-high heater. The boy didn't stand a chance. He swung, and the umpire yelled, “Strike three!”

On the mound Tyler rejoiced, then looked up and raised one arm straight above his head, as if signaling a first down to the sky. All around him the Wildcats hugged and yelled. On the other side of the diamond Liberty coach Erik Barnes walked over to Warrenfeltz. “Great job,” he said. “Now go on and win this thing.”

 

Win it? Hell, Warrenfeltz was ecstatic just to have another day of practice. Yet two days later Williamsport won again, beating South Carroll 5–4 on a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the seventh. The following afternoon, in the regional final, the Wildcats beat Century High of Sykesville 11–6. It was Williamsport's fourth game in six days, yet, improbably, the team was only getting better. During the regular season the boys had occasionally played selfishly, concentrating on putting up numbers and earning college scholarships. Now the chemistry was back. No one cared about anything except not being the guy who ended the season. In one game reserve Aaron Green came up with a huge pinch-hit RBI single. In another Nick Sauble pitched two much-needed innings. If there was a concern, it was over the team's bunting, in particular that of sophomore shortstop Brandon Toloso. Three times in the playoffs Warrenfeltz had asked Brandon to sacrifice, and three times he had failed.

With each win the buzz built. The NBC affiliate in Hagerstown, WHAG, featured Williamsport on the evening news. Players on eliminated teams told the Wildcats on Twitter:
Win this s—
. Williamsporters patted the boys on the back at the Waffle House, flew blue-and-white flags on their cars. The Wildcats were back in the state semis.

It was a bittersweet time for the Colliflowers. Chad, a youthful-looking 41, couldn't stop thinking that his son would have reveled in the moment. The two of them, occasionally mistaken for brothers, had gone to rock concerts together and played video games in Chad's two-bedroom apartment. “He really was my best friend,” Chad says. Yet he was amazed by Brendon's patience and drive, unable to believe this was his son. “Don't be like me,” he often told Brendon. “Be better than me.”

So on Tuesday, May 22, when Williamsport traveled to College Park to face Loch Raven on Maryland's turf field, Chad was there. He stood and cheered when Zach took the mound, wearing Brendon's number stitched on his hat. Chad roared when, two innings later, Zach jacked a triple to right-center to give Williamsport a 2–0 lead. And he high-fived everyone when Tyler Byers closed out the 3–0 win.

That night the Wildcats headed to the Waffle House, as they always had. They sat in their favorite booths, near the counter, and antagonized the night waitress, Minnie, as they always did, dipping their napkins in their water glasses and firing wet fastballs at each other and the front windows, the gobs sticking on the glass for a moment before sliding down, the streaks looking from the outside like tears.

 

The same night, as the clock neared midnight, Warrenfeltz huddled in his living room with his assistants, eating from cartons of Chinese food and preparing for the title game. Earlier that day Warrenfeltz had sent two of them to scout the other semifinal, instructing them to track pitch location. Now the coaches broke down Williamsport's opponent, Patuxent, a southern Maryland powerhouse with a 19-4 record. Patuxent was the clear favorite, a deep, pitching-rich team that excelled at small ball. But as Lewis pointed out, “We're not good enough to be here in the first place, so let's not worry about that.”

Two afternoons later, on May 26, the team boarded a charter bus—the first one the boys had been on—and headed two hours east to Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen, home to the Class A IronBirds, an Orioles affiliate. The Wildcats peered up at the ballpark's towering brick facade, then walked through the tunnel to the field, staring at the two decks of stands and the big video scoreboard. Later Lewis would compare the boys' reaction to “the awe of
Hoosiers
combined with the excitement of getting dropped off at Disneyland.”

Presently Warrenfeltz gathered the team and talked again about bunt defense. For nearly an hour on the previous afternoon they'd practiced it: covering first, the wheel play, guarding the line. The players loved to complain about it, but Warrenfeltz didn't care. As his father always said, “You can't expect them to do something that they've never practiced.” His dad said something else too: there's no way to defend against a well-executed squeeze play.

While the position players warmed up, Zach sat in the dugout, icing his left arm. He was the kid who didn't stretch, who needed only three warm-up pitches. Now, however, Zach's shoulder and elbow were rebelling. He'd loaded up on four ibuprofen, swabbed on Icy Hot, and taken herbal medicine. His arm still shook involuntarily, but he didn't care. Besides, his friend Tyler Byers was playing on an ankle that was so badly busted that Warrenfeltz had told him to not run out ground balls. Ryan Butts had recently shaken off the lingering effects of a concussion suffered during a home plate collision late in the season. And, somewhere up there, Brendon was watching him. Zach was damned if he was going to give up the ball.