Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 26)

A seized combine piston, a pinball flipper, a clean-and-jerk, and a hijacked school bus.

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CHAPTER 26

The Legendary 5.09(b)(2)

Reginald looked on at Phineas shaking off pitch after pitch — then thankfully getting settled on one he wanted.

The boy went into his wind-up.

Maybe it was more of a pitcher’s grimace, but at the barbershop, Al still stops trimming and takes a moment to remember: it was the nicest grimace ever to light up a young face in What Cheer, Iowa.

Curly-haired kid.

Short.

The pitch was what the small claims judge—volunteering at the plate that night—now calls the Legendary 5.09(b)(2).

*

The 5.09(b)(2) surpassed all understanding from the first moment.

Mid-windup, Phineas’ leg stopped short at its peak and froze up like a seized combine piston. The boy held the baseball in his outstretched arm, wrinkled his nose, and dropped it like a rotten banana peel.

The ball puffed harmlessly into the mound dirt right smack on its Yankee Stadium scuff mark.

But just as the “Bud Selig 2003 Major League Baseball” was about to shiver …