Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 15)
The Tricycle 1K, a Prom Night, an Iowa American, and a teller in a bank robbery.
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CHAPTER 15
THE MERCY RULE
April, the “What Cheer Rains” blew down from Chicago, bringing a calendar of rainouts with them. Life that April went flat, even with your “May Flowers” and all the rest.
No one needs a chuckle more than a dirt-rich farmer, but a whole month they’d been counting on got washed away. The steeple leak that Ben was going to fix back in August flooded out the “Annual High Fructose Lutheran Pancake Festival.” And Crazy Frank still dragged his Christmas tree down to the firehouse for the bonfire. He always said, “dry as a firecracker,” and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but that year the Christmas lights wouldn’t spark on account of the mud.
Maury tried to win the “Tricycle 1K” drunk and backwards like every other year. Sure enough, he skidded into one of the old mining craters. If she could get a good grasp on their arm, Mary’d tell them what she’d told Maury. “You do it forwards this year, or I’m not coming.” She came.
Indoors wasn’t better—worse maybe.
“Captain Carbon,” got the third graders so riled up about clouds and animals, the kids shut down the Flea Circus, and “Fifth Wednesday in April,” when you hit one, and that year What Cheer hit one, the boys in the Auctioneer Club showed up at the bowling alley. The three of them ran up the bids slower than tractor out on 22.
And it wasn’t just the boys either. Set your watches, the Glee Club girls sang at the old Opera House, but listening was more of a have-to than a get-to, not to put too fine a point on it.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly prom night in a hayloft,” Mary said.
“If anyone would know,” said Maury.
Late April, the town got a jolt at the diner. For all the flags springing up on his lawn in January, it turned out Marty was a Democrat, and how do you like that? Both parties finally found something to agree on: any Democrat with a flag on his lawn wasn’t “Iowa American.” They shook on it, had a chuckle, the chuckles turned to drinking, and everyone drove home from the coffee caucus on the far side of sober.
“It won’t hold,” the waitress said, “They’re Cubs and Cardinals.” She said “Cubs and Cardinals” more times than anyone really needed to hear. You never had your coffee refilled faster once she got going on that one.
April 1st, over at the Little League parking lot, the moisture got so thick inside the Sleepmobile, Reginald had to blast that Mexican heater day and night. Some April Fool’s joker, and he knew exactly which one, tucked a bouquet of “Volkswagen Sunflowers” under the windshield wipers. “Happy Birthday! These are for the Sleepmobile garden. Ha-ha. Just kidding.”
Friday the 13th, Reginald thought he’d dodged a bullet, but by 11:59PM, those flowers got themselves wound so far around looking for the sun they tore the rubber off the wipers. Tax Day, someone stole half of them while he was at work. Earth Day, the dashboard was nothing but seeds and celery. Arbor Day, Reginald was snacking on those sunflower seeds when a blast of What Cheer sprinkled them all over the car seats. Thank the Almighty, the month was over.
As for Phineas, April couldn’t have been more of a disappointment. With the non-stop rain, he had every reason to believe he wouldn’t need to play, but the clouds cleared like clockwork for game day. As poorly as the Cougars were getting on with Phineas out in right, coach and player were both sticklers on the Rule Book.
Unless the game was called early on account of rain, a Little League coach still had to find an inning and play every boy, and a girl if you happened to have one. One thing the two of them taught me that year was seasons come and go, but the Rule Book matters, and we’ll come to that.
And coming to that, I’ll be straight with you.
I can’t remember what the Cougars record was in April. Maybe it was 7-11, possibly 4-13. I’m not a mathematician. But I can tell you, that when The Boil lowered the bar from “you have to go undefeated, Bigs” to “you only need a winning season,” things went off the rails. Losses racked up like an odometer on a ride to Sioux City.
But the boys still had a shot, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation staring out at the old Little League field.
On April 30th, right on schedule for game day, the skies cleared, and the score was tied in the bottom of the 3rd. . There was a distressing level of hope, not a state of affairs Reginald handled particularly well.
He still hadn’t put the kid in for his “one at bat and six defensive outs.” Reginald paced the length of the dugout swamp stepping around his grown players who were shooting up faster than spring corn. By May 1st, they were as big as sanitation workers and talked about as much.
So in the third, with the bases empty and two outs, the Cougars were in the field. Reginald made his way over to the kid. The kid was holding the rule book with one hand and tilting the ten-gallon cooler sideways with his chin so he could drain the last of the juice into a water bottle.
“Help me out here, kid. I’m officially begging.” He tried to say begging sort of funny so it wouldn’t be official he was begging.
“Is this or isn’t this the wrong time to put you in?”
“Did you think of it?” Phineas looked up from his chin. “Then it is automatically the wrong time.”
“Help me out, kid. Really, help me out... Just… hints.”
“Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”
Unfortunately, Reginald had a stroke of genius.
He turned away from Phineas and trotted cheerfully towards the home plate umpire. The ump scribbled something on the lineup card. Phineas saw the Cougars catcher hit the deck faster than a teller in a bank robbery.
The P.A. announced a defensive substitution. Reginald had taken out Billy “Burly” Bearson, who happened to be the Cougar’s best pitcher, and substituted Phineas “The Lance" Boyle.
The concession stand’s popcorn machine sputtered to a kernel, something probably metal stopped clanging on the state flagpole, and a gavel clicked politely from over at the courthouse.
Back in the dugout, Reginald greeted Phineas like a friendly neighbor. His idea still seemed like a good one at this point.
“All you have to do is raise your hand, and I’ll know you agree to giving me hints. Then I’ll get you back in right.”
But instead of his usual sass, Phineas looked panicked. While he searched high and low for his lost glove, a rainbow’s worth of colorful language broke the silence and groans and gasps erupted from the Cougars stands. Reginald saw a player drop kick his glove over the scoreboard. Suddenly, he didn’t like the direction this was going, but pressed on.
“One hint. One so small you’re not even helping. Just one.”
“No,” Phineas snapped at him.
Phineas found his glove in the deep end of the swamp under the bench, where courtesy of his teammates, he hadn’t put it himself. Then he stumbled over the lip of the dugout onto the playing field and headed down his plank to the mound.
Phineas struggled mightily, but he did it in earnest, but the pitching was, well, poor. Either the shortstop and second baseman were wandering around the infield grass like they were on an Easter egg hunt, or the balls ran out of steam on the way to plate. It was bowling at a birthday party out there, where somebody’s mom has to straddle her way down the alley to give the ball a nudge.
“Come on kid, come on,” Reginald muttered to himself, sloshing back and forth in the dugout. “Raise your hand.”
When Phineas had finally walked the bases full, Reginald made a sprightly half-jog to the mound.
Thinking he was being taken out of the game, Phineas went to hand him the ball, but Reginald wasn’t having any of it.
“Raise your hand. Like this.” Reginald showed him the smallest little hand raise, something like the new kid on the first day of school.
No response.
Reginald took the ball back.
“Do you have the rule book on you, coach? Phineas asked. The way he said “coach” was not a nice way to say coach.
“How bad does the score have to be before they invoke the Mercy Rule?” the kid continued.
“Approaching fast.”
Phineas snatched the ball right back from Reginald. Reginald startled. Things were going sideways. Reginald had accidentally lit his own fuse.
“You know you’re going to coach this miserable team, kid.”
“You know you’re going to teach me how to throw a knuckleball.”
Their wheels were spinning in a rut on a dead-end street in the middle of nowhere. From the upper decks, it’s easy to see a lose-lose was a missed opportunity.
“You’re absolutely sure you don’t want to raise your hand?” Honestly, Reginald couldn’t believe it.
Phineas looked straight at him. Something forgotten that Reginald wished stayed forgotten kept him from turning away.
Phineas kept staring.
“I threw them the whole afternoon, but nobody saw.”
“If you ask me, that might be a good thing.” Reginald took a deep breath.
“Maybe yes, but maybe no,” Phineas said. “But someone could have come out and watched after being asked eighteen times, but someone didn’t.”
When Reginald didn’t say anything, Phineas took a long pause, then blurted: “It’s not even remotely who you think, by the way. But obviously that person would have been nice.”
Reginald was sure something important was being shared, but ever since the Wilkes-Barre car loan in, Reginald was never gifted at connecting dots, or logic, or even adding two and two.
“Alright, then give me that.” Reginald took the ball from the kid as a let’s start from the beginning.
This time he came at it with common sense and good faith.
“Help me coach this miserable team, kid. More than hints. I need you to get us a couple of wins and that’s it, then you’re done.”
“A single knuckleball and we’re done.” Phineas kept staring at him with through those welders, but the kid didn’t see what he wanted. “Or even a few tries, but real tries, not blah-blah-blah tries.”
Unfortunately, Reginald had a second stroke of genius.
Reginald abandoned good faith and went with a new tack, what the “child spankers” call “Reading the Old Testament to the Boy.”
Reginald curled out one of his long knuckleball fingers like an insect.
“You know, kid,” Reginald said confidentially, “All I would need to do is touch you with my pitching hand. You’d get the yips as bad as I ever had ‘em. We might even be neighbors.” Reginald made a point of staring out at the parking lot.
“A lot worse probably because you’re shorter.” Reginald turned back to him.
Phineas took off his glove and held his hand out like he was daring a dog to bite him.
The kid wasn’t scared of any of the right things, and it was a move Reginald hadn’t counted on. For whatever reason, he could not negotiate successfully with this family. He slowly curled his insect finger back in.
Reginald handed the kid the ball back and turned away. “Congratulations, kid. The Cougars have a new starting pitcher for the rest of the season. Let your dad take the Última. I was going to lose anyway. All six innings. Pitch until the Mercy Rule.”
“You can’t give anybody yips. You have to give them to yourself.”
“Go get ‘em, son. You wave when you’re ready to coach this team. You got this.”
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