Tess and the Invisible Inning — Every evening before the seventh-inning stretch, Tess climbed to the upper deck with a pencil stub and played Invisible Inning, her brand-new game. Read the full story →
Every evening before the seventh-inning stretch, Tess climbed to the upper deck with a pencil stub and played Invisible Inning, her brand-new game. She gave points for things nobody noticed: a vendor balancing twelve pretzels, a little kid returning a dropped glove, the groundskeeper smoothing dirt with a shhh-shhh rake. She wanted to fill a whole secret scorecard before the last out.
Until one day, the scoreboard blinked and copied her marks into its empty boxes. Because of that, fans cheered when the pretzel vendor finally sat down. Because of that, the vendor sent free mustard packets skittering down the row, and everyone laughed. Tess’s ears burned. “Uh-oh,” she whispered.
Then the tired visiting pitcher looked up at the glowing bonus run Tess had given him for tying his own shoelace twice. He grinned, loose as bubble gum, and tipped his cap to no one in particular. Tess erased her name from the card and added one final point: generosity nobody saw. Next time you spot the big score spaces, see if one still belongs to a quiet shhh-shhh rake.
