Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 21)

A sad sermon, two hockey masks, two six-packs of Special Beer, a trash bag, one lightning rod, one tiny hiccup, an empty tank of gas, and a big unit.

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CHAPTER 21

PINSTRIPES

Saturday morning knuckleball sessions were not going well, and a year of Saturday morning practices was not going to fix the problem. Neither wanted to be the first to say it, but there’s only so long you can keep hunting through unmowed outfield grass chasing down wild pitches.

Reginald’s instructions couldn’t have been simpler: stay relaxed, fingernails lightly into the “horseshoe” above the seams, no wrist flick or spin. Push the ball with your fingers—smooth and steady. Stay relaxed. Stay relaxed. Relaxed, like you’re throwing the ball at the bottom of a pool. Then nothing but the last task: watch the ball float and whiffle.

Hard to believe, but out of all the instructions, it was the “stay relaxed” that gave them both fits. They both wanted it in the way that never worked. The two could talk about it all day, but it hardly mattered. Their discussions were a masterclass in the art of something you forgot how to do, and eventually there was nothing left to say. Between the two of them giving lessons, everyone in What Cheer could have learned to throw a knuckleball.

It came to a head. Reginald was trying to retrieve a baseball with his arm down the spout in the center field septic tank, when he saw Phineas slumping towards the dugout. The kid looked like a twelve-year-old question mark with his head hung low and his back curled over. His arms hung limp and his glove dangled from a single finger.

In short, Phineas had given up.

When Reginald stepped down into the dugout, Phineas stared out at the field with a mitt covering his face like a hockey mask. He held his glasses in his hands and smeared dirt into them with his thumbs.

Reginald sat beside his player. They looked at the field, both slumped, and—really—what was there to say? There’s a point when not having anything to say even runs out of things to say. The frustrated twelve-year-old overhanded his glasses onto the field and turned to Reginald. His face was still completely covered by his baseball glove.

“Yeah,” said the player.

“Yeah,” said the coach.

I’m not entirely sure what they were agreeing to, but at this point the two of them spoke each other’s language. Reginald let out a deep sigh, pulled his own glove over his face, and the two of them stared at each other through the cracks between the leather fingers.

Out in right, Pinball’s porch door creaked, then slammed. The old man emerged from his house, with his wild, white hair and his dirty underwear shirt. He was holding two six-packs. Tripod poked his head out from the flap of the “O” in Cougars and rested his chin on the bottom of the “O.” He put his third paw over his eyes. The coach, the player, the old man, and the three-legged greyhound took turns staring at each other in defeat.

This field of dreams didn’t want any part of them.

Pinball lifted up both his six-packs at the defeated coach and player. Phineas wished he hadn’t thrown his glasses onto the field so he could see better.

“What is he doing?” Phineas asked through his mitt.

“The man’s a mystery, but he might be toasting us for reaching the bottom.”

Moments later there was a crack of beer for the old man’s right hand, then a second crack of beer for the old man’s left.

The two cracks gave Reginald an idea that shot him up so straight the jolt knocked the mitt off his face.

“Don’t move. I’m going to the car,” Reginald announced.

“Should I leave my mitt on?”

When Reginald came back, he carried a giant trash bag and had a spring in his step. He walked straight over to home plate, reached into the bag, and pulled out a six-pack of beer. This is the Special Beer I’ve been promising we’d get to.

Reginald set the beer on home plate. Then he walked out and set a second six-pack on the pitcher’s mound. Phineas’ mitt fell off his face onto the dugout floor.

“I have one last idea,” Reginald said. “This comes with a twist, kid, but come out here and drink a Special Beer first. That’s your six-pack.”

The idea of the beer fumes alone overpowered him. Phineas staggered across the infield like he’d gotten lost in a desert. When he finally arrived at the pitching mound, he shrugged like he was looking at a police officer through a driver’s side window.

“I apologize, officer. Never again. May I go?”

Reginald watched quietly. He sipped his own Special Beer.

The boy hiccuped.

“You’re not drunk, kid.”

“Then why’m I tho increthibly drunk?” he slurred.

Phineas opened a second beer for his left hand and raised a toast out to Pinball in right.

Reginald watched patiently.

“Tell me when I’m—hiccup—standing on the mound.” Phineas started to list sideways and spin off like a fighter plane.

“Alright, Phineas, let’s wrap it up. There’s no beer in the beer. It’s Special Beer. It’s near beer. I don’t drink beer that has beer in it.”

Hiccup.

“Alright, here’s how it is going to go, kid.”

Hiccup.

“We’re going to try to throw the knuckleball back and forth to each other until one of us succeeds.”

Phineas struggled to point accusingly at Reginald like he realized he’d been tricked, but his index finger wandered around with the confusion of a compass needle.

“We should have tried drinking weeks ago,” Phineas said.

“I haven’t gotten to the idea yet.”

There was a long, how-do-I-break-this-to-you pause. Reginald looked at his own beer, swirled it, and drank it to the bottom in one go.

“One of us throws a knuckleball, or we wet ourselves trying. No pressure.”

Phineas looked towards his spot out by the Poison Ivy.

“Pressure.”

“Or we’re done with it. We’re giving up. Together.”

“Two guys who live in their cars?”

“Two guys who live in their cars.”

Phineas considered the prospects.

“Two guys who pee in their cars.”

The matter was settled over a chuckle and a giggle. Six-four and four-six toasted each other.

Reginald threw Phineas the trash bag.

“There are some fresh clothes in there. Go change. They’re going to be a little large.” Phineas looked at Reginald out of his smeared glasses. They had twisted sideways on his face from all the near beer.

On his way back to the field, you’d think the kid was in a sack race at the county fair. The change of clothes was definitely large. He’d gotten so tangled in the oversized fabric he’d accidentally put a leg through a hole in the knee.

And—with all the fuss—he hadn’t noticed what he was wearing.

It was only when Phineas leaned over and peered in for the sign, that the boy realized he was wearing Yankee pinstripes. He looked like he’d received an electric shock. He hoisted a giant flap of uniform cloth over his shoulder and saw he was wearing an upside-down 21.

Phineas looked at Reginald and looked back at his pinstripes. He tugged the uniform every which way to see it all.

“They fit, right?”

“They fit. You’re a pitch away from being a Yankee.”

The kid wearing his own uniform brought it all back: how he’d walked out to the mound from the bullpen in left. The memory gripped him so hard, Reginald had to turn away from his player.

He reached down to open a third beer and drank it in a gulp. It did not wash away the walnut in his throat.

It all came back to him. Funny the things you forget, then come back at you like a high hard one: the public address system, announcers in their booth, a little girl who wanted an autograph.

Randy Johnson was the starting pitcher that day, and when Reginald got to the mound, it was “The Big Unit” who handed him the baseball.

“Don’t blow the save. I’m taller than you, kid,” he’d said. “But mostly good luck.”

And with that, the six-foot-seven Randy Johnson left the mound to a well-earned standing ovation.

Under stadium lights so bright you could have seen them from the Empire State Building, Reginald rubbed up a baseball to settle himself. He had so many butterflies in his stomach he’d hopped.

His manager and the Big Unit looked out at him from the dugout. Guys he only knew from baseball cards were leaning against the railing to see the AAA Wilkes-Barre Knuckleball Artist, a rookie they’d heard so much about.

He looked in at the plate. The umpire settled behind the catcher and gave him the go-ahead.

He checked his runner on first.

Reginald took another sip to steady himself.

There was a final thought before the pitch that changed his life: He was major league baseball’s newest player. He was a Yankee, like all the Yankees before him, great and small. He had a record of 0-0, with no balls and no strikes, and a clean slate for the rest of his life.

And he was The Knuckleball Artist.

Reginald interrupted himself. He shook his head and turned back to the mound.

Now a four-foot-six kid in the middle of Iowa, wearing the number 21, stared back at him from the mound. He was a memory that came from the future, a memory that had been waiting for him on a Little League field a thousand miles from the Bronx.

It was him out there on the mound. Number 21, rubbing up a baseball, trying to see through his smeared glasses and staring in for the sign.

Reginald crouched down, fluttered his fingers and called for a knuckleball.

The kid’s pitch was so wild it knocked the reverie completely out of him. While he headed to the backstop, Reginald felt his first, gentle, “how much time do I think I have” twinge from all the Special Beers.

Then it was nothing but wild pitch after wild pitch, an Iowa hailstorm of them. Coach and player stood, threw the ball, wiggled, then picked them up, over and over. Four beers in, there was some concern the one sprinkler might set off the other.

Out in right, Pinball was two six-packs deep—one in the left hand, one in the right—but his porch chair had started to rock with some urgency, all the more surprising because generally speaking, this was a fellow who could outlast a doubleheader rain delay.

Reginald began to hold forth. Philosophy seemed to settle his mind.

“You know, the knuckleball was a pitch of love, Phineas. It wasn’t something you tried to do. It’s something you got to do. You can’t control the ball, it controls you.”

Reginald was retrieving a ball that had slipped out past the concession stand, when he turned and asked the kid, “What knuckleballer said that?”

A trick question.

“How about ‘all of them?’” Phineas yawned and gave an over-the-top seventh-inning stretch that took him right up to nature’s edge.

“Correct,” Reginald continued. “Holding steady on the tap?”

“Hmm. Hmm,” he answered, which was probably a yes.

A few pitches later, the sad sermon started to build again.

“You know, my whole life is trying to control my whole life… Did you know that I live in a Volkswagen with no battery, I talk to my car, and I stare at a hood ornament?”

This felt rhetorical, so Phineas didn’t answer. He squinted.

“It’s not a pitch. A fastball is a pitch. A curve ball is a pitch. A slider. They’re all pitches. But a knuckleball? It’s a planned accident. You step on the accelerator, let go of the wheel and let it happen.”

Phineas felt he needed to add something.

“But you’re driving very slowly.”

Reginald countered. “In a packed parking lot.”

“With your eyes closed.”

That seemed to settle the matter. A last sip of beer five and they threw their cans towards the dugout at the same time. Quite a driving range was building up over there.

“You know, on a good day, Phineas, you let it drive around and you don’t run into anything. The ball just steers around cars, and you let it and watch. It is a miracle.”

“I do know, you know,” said Phineas. For all of the skipping and bouncing around, he’d never sounded so grown up in all his twelve years.

At the hour and fifteen mark they were both in distress and well past philosophy. They retrieved baseballs like they were walking on hot sand. They threw like they were drinking sour milk. For an outsider, it wasn’t quite clear what the gloves were for.

When the porch chair suddenly stopped creaking out in right and a screen door slammed angrily, it was clear the two of them weren’t going to be fighting for third place.

Then, right before the biggest, meanest, greyest Iowa storm cloud appeared on the horizon, Reginald looked at the baseball in his hand, rubbed it against his shirt like an apple, and said, “I just had the craziest thought. Maybe I don’t even care if I could throw one again.”

The next part wasn’t for anyone but him and the baseball.

“But I’d sure like to see him throw one.”

Far off lightning lit up What Cheer’s modest stadium.

It was like the kid heard him.

“I think maybe you were supposed to be a coach. I’m not saying a good one, because you lose all of your games, but lots of coaches lose all their games. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be one.”

“Losing isn’t everything,” the old Yankee said.

“Losing isn’t everything,” repeated his Little Leaguer.

And the moment the kid said it, after his sixth and final beer, the heavens parted and the rains began to pour. Lightning lit up the state of Iowa.

The boy was checking an imaginary runner at the time, snapping his knee up and going into his windup, when oh, my how the thunder did roll.

Phineas had a complete and utter loss of control.

His spring had sprung.

The knuckleball didn’t matter to him anymore.

And the moment it didn’t need to, the baseball herself took over. It fluttered down, skidded over, fastened its seatbelt, and held its arms up for a roller coaster photograph.

Then it landed softer than a diaper on a baby’s bottom.

Was it ever raining now.

Reginald got so lost in the wiggle and the waggle and the wiffle and the waffle of the kid’s knuckleball that his own heavens parted.

There was a second crack of lightning, this one in the parking lot.

It took out the Sleepmobile antenna like a lightning rod, knocking it clear off the hood of the car. For the first time since he’d driven her off the lot, The Sleepmobile’s car radio began to play, her music drifting across the parking lot.

Coach and player stood there in the pouring rain.

“We’re Tinkler and Sprinkler,” Phineas giggled, and then he couldn’t get a grip after that. He got so caught up in middle-school giggling, he threw another knuckleball.

Then another.

And Reginald threw knuckleballs right back to him.

“That’s the best one yet,” they kept saying. It was like they were arguing with each other.

That afternoon, neither of them could throw anything but knuckleballs. It didn’t matter what grip, what temperature, what angle of elbow. None of the instructions mattered. They couldn’t not throw them. They played catch with butterflies. One popped up to throw. The other dropped into a catcher’s crouch, like two unattended children bouncing each other off a seesaw.

Tinkler threw it high. Sprinkler caught it low.

Sprinkler threw them behind his back, Tinkler caught them under his knee.

There was joy in Mudville. Not once did the ball hit the ground.

You can’t get the truth out of anyone anymore, but Pinball certainly could have told you about that day, not that you’d dare to ask him.

And then, at last, there was nothing left for Tinkler and Sprinkler to prove. The coach nodded at his player.

“Let’s stop here.”

“I agree.”

The two headed back to the car.

“You’ve earned your stripes, 21.”

“So, you definitely saw, then?” Phineas asked. It was a real question.

Reginald gave the kid a pat on the back.

“I saw.”

After he dropped Phineas at his driveway, Reginald let go of the steering wheel and didn’t touch it again the entire ride home. Back at the field, The Sleepmobile still had almost a full tank of gas, and neither wanted to stop.

That night, she circled and spun through the Little League parking lot like a runaway bumper car.

Reginald held his hands out the Sleepmobile living room windows and laughed. It was a real laugh, a laugh he’d been saving up for some time, one of those “it’s gonna be okay laughs,” and he let The Sleepmobile drive wherever she wanted to go, and for the first time in twenty-one years, he let her take him there.

Just before dawn, Reginald fell sound asleep against the car window, and she rounded the bases one final time. She parked in her favorite spot and ran out of gas with a tiny hiccup.

Speaking for The Sleepmobile, in twenty-one years, the old girl had never been happier.

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