In every baseball movie ever, it's the same.

Bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. Two out.

The crowd breathless at the batter’s back. The players in the dugout on their feet. The opposing pitcher staring daggers from the mound with steam pouring from flared nostrils.

At the plate: the team’s star, bat pointed toward the wall, challenge clear.

In real life—in softball—it doesn’t exactly work out that way.

It’s close.

But not as if penned by a writer’s hand.

It’s the bottom of the seventh—there aren’t nine innings in high school softball. But the bases are loaded. And there are two out.

The crowd is breathless, the players in the dugout are on their feet, and the opposing pitcher has got the raging-bull thing going on from the mound.

But the team’s star isn’t at the plate.

She’s on it.

Wilted in the dirt after taking a sixty-mile-per-hour fastball to the back. Motionless. Eyes stunned open. All senses on pause, a rolling clap of pain drowning out everything else.

As the crowd holds its collective breath, I search for mine. My lungs don’t seem to be working, and the catcher and umpire both loom over me, outlines blurry with the same fuzzy energy as a 3-D movie left to the naked eye.