Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 27)

The small print, the sweetest little bark, a kitten, trophies, a barber's chair, and a $500 small claims limit.

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CHAPTER 27

A Small Claims Court Judge

After all the hullabaloo and Cracker Jack, Reginald returned from Yankee Stadium and slow-walked out to the mound.

Phineas dug into his back pocket and handed his coach his tattered rule book.

The kid was practically tickling himself. He was giddy.

“5.09(2)(b)!”

Reginald had barely started reading from section 509, when Pinball fired up on all cylinders out in right.

“When a runner abandons their position and the base paths, they shall…”

He sounded like Moses out there.

Reginald picked up where Pinball left off, no further along understanding any of this, but he read out loud where Phineas was stabbing away like a woodpecker.

“… be ruled out…” Reginald continued.

“Now… right there… Subsection 2,” Phineas chimed in. “Read that.”

Reginald: “unless there is a mitigating circumstance…”

Phineas couldn’t wait for Reginald to sort it out. He butted in. “Like, say, for example, a three-legged greyhound happened to run out onto the field.”

Meanwhile, Pinball was unstoppable. “Rule 5.09(2)(b)!” He was angrier than ever, but also a little relieved somebody else understood him for the first time in twenty-one years.

Phineas gave Pinball a thumbs up, and, for a moment, you almost thought Pinball might give him a thumbs up back, but you kind of needed to know him.

*

I knew him. But we’re coming to that.

*

Pinball slammed the back porch screen door twice, once with his left, then once with his right and headed back into the house.

He yelled out ‘Game Over,’ a breakthrough in his pinball vocabulary, and you could hear him repeating it several times from deep inside the house. He’d been waiting a long time to spit that one out.

His refrigerator door slammed twice.

Phineas wasn’t done.

He snatched the rule book back. “There’s more, Coach. In very small print, so small you probably can’t even see it…”

Pinball cried out from somewhere even deeper in his house. “But no dog ever ran out onto the field that day…”

“Right there, Coach,” Phineas said. “B. That’s the ‘b’ part.”

Reginald tried to tease it apart out loud: “What did happen… was a dog’s nose peeked out from the “O” in Cougars to watch the game...”

“Yes, the town’s biggest three-legged baseball fan,” Phineas added. The boy was still shaking from the miracle. “It’s not my fault that all the runners…”

Reginald: “That everyone was terrified of a three-legged greyhound. But why… I’m still not…”

Pinball, raging: “They ran for no reason, man! All three of them are out. Out.”

“The dog stayed, dammit.” You could hear him kick his rocking chair. He was back on the porch. “That’s what I told the judge at the time.”

Reginald: “How many runners are on the bases?”

Pinball and Phineas: “Three!”

Reginald: “So, they’re all out because they had no reason to leave the basepaths? What? Who’s on first?”

Phineas, with exasperation: “Yes!”

Reginald: “Oh, I get it. So, we won? Or we lost?”

Pinball went back inside and slammed the kitchen window down as far as it would go. It took him two tries.

“Tripod had an unassisted, three-legged triple play,” Phineas said. He was so happy for the dog, he could barely get it out. You’d think it was the boy’s unassisted triple play.

Behind the “O” in Cougars, there was the sweetest little bark.

Wouldn’t scare a kitten.

*

It was now safe enough for the small claims court judge to come out from hiding in the chalk machine storage closet.

He hadn’t raced off like the rest of What Cheer. The small claims court judge—and volunteer umpire of exactly twenty-one years to the minute since he’d banned Pinball from the field—walked out to the mound to interrupt the big conversation.

“Let me explain it to you, Reg. You won,” the small claims court judge said. “We all know about the car. She’s yours. And she’s under the $500 small claims limit, so end of the day, in What Cheer, I get the say-so.”

After that, nobody said anything. Iowans know how to let a big conversation settle. We’re not big city, and not planning on it anytime soon. A quick visit, in and out—maybe catch a game—that’s best case.”

*

Afterward, Phineas, Reginald, and the small claims court judge wandered around the field collecting abandoned gloves, bats, hats, and a pair of cleats. They stacked them by the “O” in Cougars.

Once they’d packed the whole pile down with a batting donut, they saw Tripod’s terrifying, wet, brown button nose still peeking out at them from under the flap.

As usual, he’d gotten stuck.

“Tilt,” cried out Pinball from his living room, though he barked it out a bit calmer than he’d been up to now.

With that small reminder, Tripod, the three-legged greyhound, freed himself from his stuck position and hopped the rest of the way through the “O” in Cougars. He looked at the boy and the two men already heading off to the parking lot.

When they were a safe distance away, Tripod began barking something ferocious, mostly to keep himself company, fetched his baseball trophies, and poked them one-by-one through the “O” in Cougars.

Afterwards, you’d see Pinball out walking him from time to time.

*

Well, we’ve come to it.

It would always start out civil enough, but the small claims court judge would have quite a few barber’s chair dustups after that game. The whole “who won and who lost” business.

The judge would try to make his case for the Cougars winning the game and the wisdom of Rule 5.09(2)(b), but nobody would listen to him. He’d bend ears till folks ran for cover when they saw Al giving him a trim.

Fair was fair, whether anyone agreed or not, and the small claims judge ended up banning himself from the field. He was, mostly, a just and reasonable man.

I like to think.

And it’s high time I fessed up.

I’m the one carrying that heavy, heavy gavel down at the courthouse, none other than What Cheer’s involuntary ump and small claims court judge.

Never even been much a fan of the game. But somebody had to fill in for Pinball after I banned him from what I call The International What Cheer Little Yipper Baseball Field and Reginald Perry Parking Lot.

Unofficially speaking.

👉🏻 “The Knuckleball Artist” concludes Sunday morning.

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