Katherine Flint, or Kat, meets her teammates as she starts playing for the Grand Rapids Chicks. The players wear dresses to play, and Kit is disturbed to realize she has not brought her gum with her. The team is part of the All-American Girls Professional Ball League. The other women on the team do not warm up to Kat immediately. The players go to the field, and Kat sees thousands of people ready to watch them play. She is uncertain about whether they are calling it baseball or softball. She feels that her old life—where her mother constantly works and her father is away in the war—is far away from her now. Kat is impressed with her team’s pitcher, Connie Wisniewski, who “had a big windmill windup” (175). Kat does well hitting in her first game, and the team wins because of her. 

Kat learns that her roommate is Connie, and Connie apologizes to her for being rude when they first met. The other girls are kind to her now that Connie has allowed them to be. Kat had not realized that her mother’s scorebook was missing, but she gets it back. She explains that it contains every single game she ever went to with her mom as well as all of the Robins games her mother went to as a child.