Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 19)

A drunken stork, a springish summer, 3/4 time, a baby dust cloud, two kinds of Bronx cheers, and a three-pointer with a child's balloon. And also a zipper and a miracle.

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CHAPTER 19

THE BEE AND THE TULIP

Reginald set up a small lawn chair behind home plate and angled it toward the sun. It was 6 AM. It was Saturday. What was he doing out here with this kid? Why was the kid wearing his game uniform? How could he possibly teach him to throw a knuckleball?

“Go stand on the mound facing home plate and close your eyes.”

Reginald walked over and cracked a Special Beer as quietly as he could, so the kid wouldn’t hear it spray.

He handed him the ball. “Make a knuckleball grip.”

Phineas’ grip might have been a distant cousin twice removed of a knuckleball grip. Reginald corrected the kid’s hand, and Phineas began to giggle. There was no hiding the fact he was happy to be up at 6 AM learning to throw a knuckleball.

“You’re tickling me. Can you do it without making it tickle?”

Phineas started to wriggle uncontrollably like he was receiving shock therapy.

“Stop that,” Reginald ordered, and Phineas stood stock still.

Satisfied with one hundred percent obedience, Reginald guided the kid’s fingernails into the hard flesh of the baseball and corrected the angle of his wrist. When he’d finished fixing the grip, he went back to his lawn chair and his Special Beer. The Iowa State Flag pole clanged.

“Now stand on one leg like a stork.” He’d seen this somewhere, but he was stalling for time. It wasn’t pretty watching him try to balance, but Phineas remained upright like a terrified tightrope walker.

“And no talking,” Reginald stretched out in his lawn chair and relaxed in the sun. The kid’s obedience was as pleasant as being up early and greeting the day.

Twenty minutes passed, and the kid still stood there, wobbling the entire time like a drunken stork, with the ball perched in his fingertips. There’s something deeply athletic about almost, but not quite, toppling over for twenty straight minutes.

Instead, our stork stood there with a knuckleball grip grinning. Reginald smiled despite himself. He made the mistake of picking up a baseball from the batter’s box and making a Snow Cone, shooting it back and forth, palm to tips, tips to palm, lightning fast, in his spider-long fingers.

It was all very, very pleasant, a “springish summery.” As you’ve guessed, this was not going to last.

Somewhere out in right, he heard a back door slam. Two more beers cracked open. Pinball must have been on his porch. Reginald could hear Tripod behind the fence, pogo-ing around in three-four time. Reginald hummed Take Me Out to the Ballgame to the rhythm.

Phineas forgot himself and started singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

🎵 if I don’t win it’s a shame… yes, it’s one, two, three strikes I’m out at the old ball game… 🎵

“No singing! There’s no singing in baseball!” Reginald scolded him, and, well, that felt good. He hadn’t felt like more of a coach the entire time he’d spent with his Little League team.

“Zipping, zipping, zipped,” he cheeped back.

It was possible there might have been humming coming from Pinball’s back porch, but if there was, it zipped, too.

“There,” he thought. Reginald let the baseball settle deep into his palm in a knuckleball grip, tight as a diamond in her setting, locked in, almost too good to be true.

He was on the edge of feeling that if he got up right that minute, he’d throw a perfect knuckleball. Then a horrible memory came at him, like a comebacker at the mound. Waves of cheers at Yankee Stadium—and not the good kind, the Bronx kind.

Reginald tossed the ball in his hand onto the infield like a hot potato. He should never have picked it up.

No, there was no baseball left in him.

They were approaching twenty-one minutes of this when Reginald finally spoke. He had Exercise #2, and it would chew up the clock.

“If you want to throw a knuckleball, then you need to learn its history.” This really wasn’t true.

“Not only can't pitchers control it, hitters can't hit it, catchers can't catch it, coaches can't coach it and most pitchers can't learn it. The perfect pitch.”

“And?” the kid said.

“And…,” Reginald let that hang in the air until it felt important. “Who said that?”

“Jim Bouton,” the kid answered. Reginald unfolded his legs and sat up straight in his lawn chair.

It was impossible the kid would know this. Reginald pressed on to get the upper hand.

“What team?”

The second it came out of his mouth, Reginald wished he hadn’t asked.

The kid wobbled so terribly, he had to stork hop to get back into position.

“Four teams. The Pilots, the Braves, the Astros, and….”

Phineas wobbled like a top now, and after twenty-one minutes of nearly crashing over, his toe finally touched the ground.

“… the Yankees.”

A baby dust cloud stirred from where his toe hit the ground and slowly drifted off.

“I need to pee, coach.”

Reginald ignored him.

“How about this one: "Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor's mailbox.’”

“I really need to pee.”

The kid raced off the mound, untying his uniform belt as he ran and disappeared out of sight.

Reginald yelled after him. “Not near the concession stand.”

A little voice peeped back. “It was Willie Stargell.”

There was no way he’d made it down to the Poison Ivy by the Baseball Graveyard.

And Willie Stargell also happened to be the correct answer. Reginald stood up from his chair, folded and unfolded it for some reason.

Two more beers cracked out in right. An ornery old man’s throat cleared, and when Reginald looked over two greyhound eyes looked back at him through the “O” in Cougars, before disappearing out of sight again.

“Zipping and zipped,” Phineas announced, as if he was in boot camp. You could hear the kid hopping foot to foot in 3/4 time.

Then it turned out Phineas had his own question. “The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.”

Reginald wasn’t sure his player should be quizzing him.

Phineas raced back onto the field as fast as he had left it, paused for Reginald to reset his knuckleball grip, and resumed the eyes-closed stork pose.

“Bob Uecker,” Reginald answered at last.

Reginald began to pace in a circle around the mound. When he spoke again, it was in a new voice, as if in conversation with himself. He started off in a whisper.

“The grip is hard, wind is hard, temperature is hard. It’s hard to repeat the mechanics. You need to throw the ball with no spin, and your entire body down to the little wires in your you-know-whats want to put spin on a ball when you throw one and...”

This went on for some time. By the time he peaked, he was practically yelling at an umpire.

Phineas interrupted him.

“You.”

Reginald looked over at the kid with his big, sad eyes. His arms hung limply.

The kid stared back at him.

Reginald couldn’t believe he was saying, but it had been bottled up so long, he couldn’t stop.

“You have no control over anything. The crowd is watching. The pressure. The booing.”

The two stared at each other.

“That’s what. Is that what…” Phineas began but cut himself short.

This whole morning was not what Reginald had planned, but the eye contact was surprisingly helpful. Out of nowhere, he had Exercise #3.

A brainstorm.

“Put down your leg. Shake it out.”

Phineas shook it out like a dog that had wet himself.

Reginald walked over behind home plate and looked out at Phineas on the mound. “You’ve been telling me over and over about your miracle knuckleballs. Show me your best one.”

Phineas had no idea what to say, but his face said it for him. How could he throw a knuckleball? He couldn’t have made the problem any clearer.

“No, I mean guide the ball through the air like the knuckleball when you threw it. Just carry it from your release point to my mitt. Show me your little miracle.”

“It wasn’t a little miracle. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There were tons of miracles.”

It was less outrage, than pleading.

Now, it was only for a flash, but for that flash, Reginald believed him, and Phineas knew it.

As hard as this is going to be to believe, sometimes Reginald could see the kid in himself.

Reginald descended into a catcher’s crouch.

“Then show me the best one, Phineas...”

Phineas went into something that resembled a pitcher’s wind-up, then began to trace the ball’s path through the air, hopping up and down erratically. Flight in twenty-seven different directions eventually knocked his smeared glasses off, but he pressed on. His face was wistful, then aggressive. He stumbled and skittered, skipped and soared. He worked the baseball angle by swoop towards home plate. There were times that baseball seemed to drag the boy along on the tips of his toes.

Now, that pitch wouldn’t have meant much to you or me, but the former Yankee’s jaw dropped. He had to reach to the dirt to steady himself.

Twenty feet from home plate, Phineas began describing the course of the knuckleball out loud.

“They were like shooting a three-pointer with a child’s balloon.”

Reginald lost his balance and fell into the dirt.

“The baseball slid up the NASCAR wall, then shot down the straightaway. It ping-ponged to the left, skipped like a stone to the right, cartwheeled through the air. It shimmied high and shrugged low.”

Phineas approached in a whirl like a sugar plum fairy. When he reached home plate he gave out a deep sigh, pushed the ball firmly into Reginald’s mitt like a thumb pressing a stamp onto an envelope.”

Reginald dropped the ball, his glove fell off, and he knocked over his Special Beer. He covered his face with his hands. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen.

Out of nowhere, he remembered the explosion of fifty-five thousand, four-hundred and eighteen fans cheering for him.

“That’s the pitch you threw? Are you sure?” Reginald asked, turning back to him. Reginald traced the path of the ball through the air himself, repeating the whole thing, checking the kid’s face for every NASCAR straightaway and shimmy high and shrug low.

Phineas nodded. He looked heartbroken.

“Exactly the pitch. I think about it all the time. I can’t forget it, and nobody saw it, and nobody believes me.”

But Reginald had seen it.

He took off his baseball cap and ran his long, skinny fingers through his thinning hair. He looked at the Iowa State flag pole. He looked out to the “O” in Cougars.

Yup, he’d seen it alright.

He knew the straightaway, the child’s balloon, the skipping stone. He knew the moments when the ball would swoop and when it would soar. He’d seen that sugar plum fairy dance. So had the fifty-five thousand, four-hundred and eighteen fans that were cheering for him, and by cheering, I mean the best kind, the kind you only hear at Yankee Stadium.

And why was this?

It was because Phineas traced the exact same path of the last pitch Reginald ever threw for a strike.

It was the Knuckleball Artist’s masterpiece. It was a bee pulling up his landing gear and dropping inside of a tulip. It was the pitch in the Sleepmobile’s hood ornament.

It was the greatest pitch thrown in the history of baseball.

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