Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 18)

A tiny baseball glove, a ping pong ball, a rubber ducky, a windmill, and a Barbie with a dislocated arm.

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CHAPTER 18

THE CATCHER

Phineas vanished behind Pinball’s house, and Reginald bolted to the Sleepmobile to head after him. He knew the route the kid would have to take to get back home, and he’d find him there.

Reginald’s decisive win in The Great Battle of the Pitcher’s Mound with Phineas—where he’d clearly been victorious, or possibly victorious, or lost completely—now struck him as less of a perfect outcome with every four-way stop sign.

And then he just missed the green light at What Cheer’s Notoriously Long Red Light. Phineas must have been well out ahead of him now.

Sitting at the stoplight, waves of worries started rolling in. He was 6’4”. The kid was 4’6”. He should have pulled him from the game once he started throwing towards the courthouse. He should have done… anything besides what he actually did.

Reginald got so caught up worrying what he hadn’t done and what he had, that he absentmindedly stuffed his hand into Phineas’ tiny baseball glove. Eventually, he got his long fingers in. The glove wasn’t big enough to chase down a ping pong ball. No wonder the kid couldn’t catch anything.

When What Cheer’s Notoriously Long Red Light finally changed, Reginald couldn’t get the glove off his fingers. He had to grip the steering wheel with a baby lobster claw.

The further he followed the kid’s route, calling out for him, the bigger the waves. He couldn’t put his finger on the feeling.

And then he could.

Panic.

Reginald drove through the kid’s neighborhood at the speed of a street sweeper. He called out the window for Phineas like he’d lost a puppy.

“Phineas! I’m sorry!”

As he rounded the corner at Bitter Cherry Drive, the first in a bunch of makeshift obstacles appeared. It was like chasing a retreating army of items grabbed from lawns: a toppled tricycle, skateboards stacked like a campfire, at Cracked Chestnut Lane, there were five hula hoops laid out like Olympic rings.

He drove past them.

“Phineas!” Finally, Reginald texted him. He felt rotten, like the kid might never pick up a baseball again, or leave his house, or his bedroom.

Phineas, come out wherever you are. You don’t have to pitch anymore.

Silence. Crickets from the kid.

It was clear to both of them he wouldn’t have to pitch again.

He typed and untyped about twelve different things, but nothing was right. But the moment he scratched his nose with his baby lobster claw, he had a brainstorm.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. 🐱

It took two minutes, but the kid responded.

What are you up to so far? The tricycle?

No, the hula hoops.

At Twilight Ash Circle, Phineas appeared suddenly in front of the car. He was dragging a splash pool with a rubber ducky out into the street.

Reginald pulled up to the side of him and rolled his window down with his baby lobster claw.

“Do you want to get in? I have your glove.”

“Nope.”

Phineas walked by the side of the Sleepmobile like the two were out for a neighborhood stroll. Phineas carrying a Barbie doll with a dislocated pitching arm. Neither spoke until Coal Garden Terrace.

Reginald was just so bad at this.

“I have thrown them, you know. Knuckleballs.”

Reginald kept driving at his side. A car honked to get around them.

“For a whole afternoon. I don’t know how I did it, but then something happened, then it stopped, and now I can’t even pick a ball up. You’ve seen me. I can’t do anything.”

The kid was telling him something important. Reginald didn’t know what to say, but he understood to keep the car speed constant.

“But I’m not making it up. I did throw them.”

They passed Wilting Willow.

“I threw hundreds of them. Nobody saw. First it was with a wiffleball, then I got a real baseball, then a softball, then a basketball. I couldn’t stop. They were dancing. And I didn’t know who to tell, and the one person who I asked to see didn’t come out and see.”

Reginald was pretty sure he knew who, but it felt helpful to ask.

“Do you mean your dad?” He almost said “The Boil.”

“Yes, of course, my dad. He asked me if I thought I was some big knuckleball artist, too. He said if there is anybody in the world you don’t want to grow up to be it’s The Knuckleball Artist... the two unluckiest losers to ever play baseball.”

“Why two? What two?”

“The Knuckleball Artist and The Boil,” Phineas answered.

Reginald couldn’t keep up. Phineas pressed on.

“Sometimes, I wouldn’t mind being either of them. Most of the time, though, I would absolutely mind, just in case you’re wondering.”

There were times in his life when a woman’s intuition would have been a huge help for Reginald.

The kid stopped short and stared at him through his glasses. Either Reginald stopped the Sleepmobile, or she stopped herself. He simply had no idea what to say to the kid, so he went practical.

“Give me your welders. They’re so dirty I can’t see.”

Today was the day everybody wanted to help Phineas with his glasses.

The kid handed them over, and—of course—as these things go with misfits in general, they have nice little faces, particularly when they are sad, or they’ve been through a public humiliation, or they’re talking about their horrible parents.

“Don’t,” Phineas said.

“Don’t what?”

“Clean them.”

“Somebody’s got to. They’re scaring me.”

Reginald reached into the backseat and pulled his prized Yankee pajamas from under the Sleepmobile master bedroom pillow. Phineas just stood there.

It was a challenge holding them with a baby lobster claw, but Reginald got there. Phineas fumbled with the Barbie’s dislocated arm.

Reginald strove for perfection cleaning the lenses. He hummed, because he didn’t know what to say next. So, he wiped all the way from the pajama leg bottoms to the belt buckle loops. Cleaning the kid’s glasses was the one helpful thing he could do for the kid, but the more he wiped, the more he felt was something he needed to say.

He stopped humming, and when he did, it came out as a blurt, as things often did with Reginald.

“Kid, I’ll never be able to teach you to throw a knuckleball. I don’t have it.”

“But you do have it.”

“Do you know how many guys throw a knuckleball in the majors now?”

“Exactly one. Uno.”

Reginald stopped wiping the glasses abruptly. This happened to be the correct answer. He also really couldn’t clean the glasses anymore. They sparkled.

“Kid, I can’t do it. You’re never going to learn to throw a knuckleball from me... Remember, I mean.”

He handed the glasses back. “Put them on. Let me see.”

To be extra polite, Reginald added, “Phineas.” The kid’s name was like a new word for him.

Phineas stared back at him. Without all the grime, the lenses magnified the boy’s eyes. They were large, telescopic large.

Whatever the kid had been fighting inside, he gave up. His shoulders slumped.

Reginald understood the glasses. It was clear as day: The kid didn’t want the world to see him with telescopically large eyes.

“I look like a goldfish.”

Reginald regretted every time he’d ever called his glasses welders. Hard truth is where jokes go to die.

“It doesn’t have to be in a game, Coach Perry.”

Phineas? Coach Perry?

It was like everybody suddenly remembered each other’s name.

“I just need to throw one somebody saw. It was the best thing I ever did, not like there’s some long list.”

“You get old enough, you don’t even need a witness… but a witness would be better.... No, I change my mind. It has to be at Yankee Stadium,” Reginald said softly.

“Mine could be in a backyard,” Phineas countered. They were either getting competitive or lost in conversations with themselves.

“I would take mine at the bottom of the ninth in Game 7. The grass would be electric green. The scoreboard would be flashing. Everything would be perfect.”

Reginald stared out towards the next intersection. He might have been stalling for time.

“And your dad would have to be there.”

Now Phineas didn’t know what to say.

“Mine wouldn’t even need to be a strike.” The kid took off his glasses, There was the boy with the puppy eyes again.

Reginald looked away, then played his last card. Mostly, he was talking to himself now.

“You know what, kid? You’re right. I’d only need to lean over and pick the ball up off the ground. Wouldn’t even need to throw it. Just know I was about to throw a strike.”

Reginald’s mind—feelings you could call them—caught up with his thoughts. “Maybe I wouldn’t need your dad to be there.”

Phineas had his own last card to play. He fumbled to wrench Barbie’s dislocated arm into her body, but it wouldn’t go. He was stalling for time.

“Well, I would need him to be there, but it would be best if you were the one catching it, so I’d have a backup witness.”

Reginald stretched out his lobster claw hand so that Phineas could help him take the tiny glove off. The kid removed it easily.

“So, that’s a yes? You’ll try to teach me?”

“It wasn’t a yes.”

“It was a yes.” Phineas looked like a smiling goldfish.

Reginald shook his head in disbelief. He could not negotiate with this family.

Reginald took the Barbie doll from Phineas. He effortlessly snapped her pitching arm back in to her relocated shoulder. He turned her pitching hand this way and that.

“Practice is Saturday morning, first thing, kid. And you’re coaching the Cougars and not just hints either. We’d better have a winning record… Coach Phineas.”

“Yes… Mr. Perry. I mean Coach Perry.”

I think we’re all aware that there was drama in the moment.

Kneeling down and staring into the Sleepmobile hood ornament that night, Reginald thought he’d see himself throwing the Greatest Pitch in the History of Baseball, no different than he’d seen nightly for the last twenty-one years.

But instead it was Phineas he saw in the hood ornament.

The kid stood on the mound at Yankee Stadium with his hand in a tiny glove. He shook off sign after sign, waiting to throw ping pong ball. The lights were hot and bright. The grass was electric green, powered by an extension cable that ran down from the outfield scoreboard. There wasn’t a Yankee or a Yankee fan in sight.

There wasn’t even a catcher…

But, no, that wasn’t true…

There did seem to be a catcher…

He was the catcher.

What could it all possibly mean? But he finally put it together. Kneeling down in front of the Sleepmobile bumper and looking into the hood ornament, it turned out he was a catcher.

And there was only one pitch he’d ever know how to call for.

Crouched there in front of the hood, Reginald wiggled all five of his skinny fingers and fluttered them around. It was the universal call for a knuckler. He’d never done anything easier in his whole life. He felt the Sleepmobile’s headlights glowing on his face.

Then it was as if the stadium itself took a breath.

The kid straightened up tall.

His glove grew.

The ping pong ball swelled to the size of a baseball.

Phineas checked an imaginary runner at first base, then went into an Iowa windmill of a windup.

That knuckleball floated towards the plate from whatever direction dreams come.

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