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players in the leg?”
    “She didn’t do it on purpose,” Santelli assured him. “Lori wouldn’t do that.”
    “I don’t know,” Tim piped in. “It looked pretty deliberate from where I was standing.”
    “How would you know?” Santelli demanded, an uncharacteristic edge creeping into his voice. “Are you some kind of mind reader?”
    “I’m just telling you what it looked like,” Tim replied.
    “Big deal,” Santelli replied. “ Th at’s just your subjective opinion.”
    “I’m an umpire,” Tim reminded him. “My subjective opinion is all I have.”
    “Really?” Santelli scratched his forehead, feigning confusion. “I thought you guys were supposed to be objective. When did they change the job description?”
    “All right,” said Tim. “Whatever. It’s my objective opinion, okay?”
    “Look,” I said. “We’re doing the best we can.”
    “I sure as hell hope not,” Carl shot back. “Or else we’re in big trouble.”
    Sensing an opportunity, Santelli cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “Hey, Lori, did you hit that kid on purpose?”
    Lori seemed shocked by the question. Her mouth dropped open and she shook her head back and forth, as if nothing could have been further from the truth.
    “It slipped,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”
    “See?” Santelli turned back to Tim with an air of vindication. “It was an accident.”
    “Jack?” Carl’s expression was a mixture of astonishment and disgust. “You really gonna let this slide?”
    I glanced at Tim for moral support, but his face was blank, pointedly devoid of sympathy. I wished I could have thought of something more decisive to do than shrug.
    “What do you want from me?” Th ere was a pleading note in my voice that was unbecoming in an umpire. “She said it slipped.”
    “Now, wait a minute — ” Tim began, but Carl didn’t let him fi nish.
    “Fine,” he said. “ Th e hell with it. If that’s the way it’s gonna be, that’s the way it’s gonna be. Let’s play ball.”
    Carl stormed o ff , leaving the three of us standing by the plate, staring at his back as he descended into the dugout.
    “You can’t know what’s in another person’s heart.” Santelli shook his head, as if saddened by this observation. “You just can’t.”
    “Why don’t you shut up?” Tim told him.
    Lori quickly regained her composure when play resumed. With runners on fi rst and second, she calmly and methodically struck out Antoine Frye to retire the side. On her way to the dugout she stopped and apologized to Trevor Mancini, resting her hand tenderly on his shoulder. It was a classy move. Trevor blushed and told her to forget about it.
    RICKY DISALVO was on the mound for the Wildcats, and though he had nowhere near Lori’s talent, he was pitching a solid and e ff ective game. A sidearmer plagued by control problems and a lack of emotional maturity — I had once seen him burst into tears a ft er walking fi ve straight batters — Ricky had wisely decided that night to make his opponents hit the ball. All game long he’d dropped one fat pitch a ft er another right over the meatiest part of the plate.
    Th e Ravens, a mediocre hitting team on the best of days, had eked out a lucky run in the second on a single, a stolen base, an overthrow, and an easy fl y ball to right fi eld that had popped out of Mark Diedrich’s glove, but they’d been shut out ever since. Ricky’s con fi dence had grown with each successive inning, and he was throwing harder and more skillfully than he had all game by the time Lori Chang stepped up to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the fift h.
    I guess I should have seen what was coming. When I watched the game on cable access a week later, it seemed painfully clear in retrospect, almost inevitable. But at the time, I didn’t sense any danger. We’d had some unpleasantness, but it had passed when Lori apologized to Trevor. Th e game had moved forward, slipping past the trouble as