159 Game: VS Katella High School 3 (1/2)

Top of the third inning, our team took the field. Garret stepped on the mound and started to throw some practice pitches to Jordan.

”At least Garret is doing better than that Brett guy.” Kyle commented. ”One hit versus no hits.”

Noah rolled his eyes. ”Stop thinking like a pitcher and comparing stats. What we need is to score.”

Garret was able to get the seventh batter to groundout to John at second. And then struck out the eighth batter.

”Now he's even beating him in strikeouts.” Dave added.

Unfortunately, he couldn't keep up the perfect game and gave up a single to the ninth batter, bringing up Brett McCauley. For a sophomore, I felt that Brett was pretty tall compared to Sean.He stood in the box and faced down Garret.

”Get him, Gare!” Jason hollered. The rest of us bench guys clapped and cheered as well to bring life to the game. The stands only held parents since it was a weekend and the students wouldn't usually come, especially for a mid morning game.

Garret went at him with his cut fastball from the start, getting a couple of swinging strikes. Then he threw a ball to the outside, hoping to get him to chase but the guy didn't fall for it. With a 1-2 count, he connected on a fastball slightly out of the zone and got it past the shortstop, earning him a single and advancing the other runner to second.

”I could have gotten that.” Noah huffed, then he glanced at the twins. ”Look at you two, jinxing Garret. Now he has more strikeouts and hits.”

The twins ignored him and watched as Garret struck out batter number two with ease.

”Not even shaken after giving up back-to-back hits.” Kyle said.

”Averaging more than one strikeout an inning.” Dave mumbled.

”Pitchers..” Noah just shook his head.

With our offense back up in the bottom of the third inning, we failed to even get on base. John grounded out to third. Daniel pop out to left. And Julian sent a long fly to center.

Top of the fourth, Katella High School up to bat. Groundout to second. Groundout to short. Then a surprising walk from Garret to the fifth batter. But nothing came of it as batter number six hit a soft roller to short, and Daniel lightly tossed it to John at second to get the runner. Three outs.

Bottom of the fourth brought up our better batters and it showed. Garret and Mahki both got singles and stood on second and first, respectively, as Zeke stepped up to bat. Zeke wasn't held down to just a single this time...instead...he smash another homer. His sixth of the season. Zeke made the score 3-0. The team crowded and congratulated him and the other runners as they made it back to the dugout.

”Finally.” Noah let out.

I raised an eyebrow. ”Were you worried?”

He gave me a weak smile. ”Just a smidge. Can you blame me? Three straight scoreless innings stresses me out. Especially when you have someone like Zeke on your team. With him in our lineup, could you ever see us being shutout?”

I shook my head. ”That would take a very good pitcher.”