Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 9)

Forgotten dollar bills, delivering a lamb, a purple umbrella, a depressed English bulldog, a highway billboard, two defensive innings, dashboard lights, mandatory play rules, and a big, fat butt.

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CHAPTER 9

THE ENGLISH BULLDOG AND A DEPRESSED BASSET HOUND

On the drive back from the field, the kid in the passenger seat stayed silent for a good thirty seconds. This was interrupted with a burst of clanging against the seat belt tensioner. Phineas was lifting his hips to dig something out of a back pocket. He dug around in there searching for something like a veterinarian trying to deliver a lamb.

Eventually, he removed a tattered copy of the “Little League Baseball Official Regulations, Playing Rules, and Policies.” For the benefit of no one in particular, he proceeded to give a monologue, by memory, on “Mandatory Play Rules,” peeking at the pamphlet from time to time to check his lines.

“The rules are quite clear. ‘Each child athlete must wear the team uniform in a presentable manner and participate in a minimum of two defensive innings.”

Phineas forgot the next section and had to look: “Bats shall be provided. Gloves shall not.” He raised his index finger high in the air for emphasis on the gloves part.

“Why are you telling me this?” Reginald refused to look the kid’s direction and made a point of being distracted finding his turn-off.

“I’m not telling you anything. This has nothing to do with you. I’m memorizing the rules, but, and this is a big fat butt, you are going to need to pay attention to the workarounds if you are forced to play me..”

“Stop saying ‘you.’”

Phineas shot back an “oh-my-god-you’re-impossible” eye roll, like a parent that had had just about enough of the children’s behavior.

“Fine. If one has thirteen or more players, each must have an at-bat, and one must also play six consecutive defensive outs... But – and this is another big, fat butt…

“Do you have a switch?” Reginald couldn’t help but look over.

“I’m not talking. I’m memorizing. You stop talking.” Phineas had never been so outraged in his entire twelve years.

Reginald vowed not to say another word until the kid was out of the vehicle. This went to plan until the Sleepmobile reached What Cheer’s Notoriously Slow Red Light. Phineas took off his seat belt and the warning alarm went off.

“Put your seatbelt on, Phineas. What are you, four?”

“May one speak? Or may one not speak?”

“Stop talking.” Reginald shook his head.

Phineas lifted his hips skyward to retrieve something, this time a cell phone from a front pocket. He began to text someone, pecking around the screen like his finger was on a miniature trampoline.

“And send.”

A moment later, Reginald’s phone trembled in the coffee cup holder and flashed an incoming message.

Reginald could barely make it ten seconds before he cracked and picked up his phone.

You stop talking 🤫 

They both shook their heads like trained seals. They were raising impossible children.

Without wasting another moment, Phineas dove back in the rule book. He no longer read aloud. Now, he silently read the rule book, first upside down, then sideways, then upside-down and closed. Finally he shook it out by the cover like there might be forgotten dollar bills tucked somewhere between the pages.

Somehow, and you have to give Reginald extra credit for this, he realized this performance might be a roundabout apology for the comment about Reginald’s disastrous baseball career, but if it was an apology, it was the strangest roundabout apology Reginald had ever received.

Phineas picked up stabbing at his screen like a silent woodpecker. It was going so slowly it looked like he’d only just learned the alphabet. Finally, the kid announced triumphantly, “and send” to no one in particular.

Reginald began to hold his breath for something to focus on while he waited for the notoriously slow red light to turn, but it was a lost cause: he couldn’t resist the temptation to read the text.

One’s ace in the hole for coaching terrible players is that if a game is shortened for any reason like, say,  ☔️, teams may not be penalized for failing to meet the minimum play requirements, so blah-blah-blah. ➡️ Me.

“What is that?” Reginald pointed at the purple dot. His eyes weren’t what they used to be.

“A purple umbrella. In other words, when it’s raining, you don’t need to play me.”

Reginald frowned. Things tended to come at him fast.

Another text:

I will keep track of when it is time for one to put me in. “One” is a team, and all “one” of us is trying to win at the end of the day.

The light finally changed.

“I’m just trying not to lose the Última,” he muttered and hit the gas. The Sleepmobile lurched. Reginald caught his reflection in the side-view mirror. He’d forgotten to turn it back after shaving that morning. He stared at himself. Cheryl was right – he looked like a depressed Basset Hound.

The car grew quiet. Reginald’s funk spread to the passenger seat. The kid stuffed his rule book back into his pants without a fuss. He took off his welding glasses, turned away from Reginald, and stared out his own window.

“Anyway, pray for rain. I always do.” It wasn’t clear if Phineas was speaking to himself or Reginald. When he looked over, Reginald noticed the side-view mirror wasn’t turned back on that side either. The kid looked like a depressed English Bulldog with his eyes closed tightly.

Well, the eyes closed was worrying. Only one other person had ever burst into tears in the Sleepmobile, and he was in the driver’s seat.

As they approached Phineas’s street, the kid pressed his glasses back onto his face and turned to Reginald. He was working up the nerve for something.

“I have thrown knuckleballs. Lots of them. You can’t always do everything in front of people.”

The depressed English Bulldog and the depressed Basset Hound looked at each other and then back out their windows again.

Reginald began texting Phineas back. With his long knuckleballer fingers, he looked like he was tickling the screen, but his hand paused right before hitting send. He tossed the phone on the dashboard in frustration. Whatever it was, he decided not to send it. Then he used a moderately strong bad word that made the kid’s welders jump up and down on his nose.

On every turn for the rest of the drive, the phone with the unsent text message see-sawed from one side of the dashboard to the other. It took some real effort to ignore the clatter.

But it was Phineas’ turn to burn with curiosity, and as he was getting out, he grabbed Reginald’s phone and hit send faster than Reginald could catch him.

Reginald watched the walk up his driveway and stop to read the text.

You couldn’t hit the side of a barn door with a tractor 🤣

The kid didn’t turn back to the car, and when he reached his front door, Reginald started whispering to himself. He used a stronger bad word.

“Please turn around, kid. Say something.”

Well, the kid didn’t, and the former Yankee who knew a thing or two about regret added that to a deep pile of them. He should have never written it.

The rest of the ride home in the Sleepmobile was an automotive disaster of engine sputtering and lurches. Her stick shift knob came off, and her dashboard lights that had been dimming for a decade suddenly went as dark as What Cheer’s highway billboard.

When Reginald got back to his parking spot at the Little League field, he paced in circles around the car. He couldn’t decide if his text officially counted as “mean” if he hadn’t hit send himself.

When pacing the car didn’t work, he slumped over to the tree line and stared into the poison ivy. Twenty-one years he’d been staring at that poison ivy on evening walks, and until earlier he’d never known it was a baseball cemetery.

Eventually, Reginald came to the firm conclusion that “it was definitely, 100 percent not mean. Maybe it was even kind – because the kid sure deserved to hear something back after the cemetery comment. Why, Reginald? Because he did, Reginald.”

He arrived at this conclusion thirty-seven times in a row and walked back to the car each time, but then he remembered the kid’s depressed English Bulldog face, and it was right back to the baseball cemetery and rethinking the whole thing from square one.

Two hours later, tossing and turning in the Sleepmobile Master Bedroom, when he thought he’d finally-finally gotten to the other side of the whole business, the phone rumbled in the coffee cup holder.

Whether “one” listens to me or not I’ll tell one when it’s the right time to put me in it’s a free country imho. 🇺🇸

Reginald didn’t text him back. He tossed the phone into the Sleepmobile’s Dashboard Conservatory. He flipped the other direction and slammed up and down into the back seat like an Orca.

The phone vibrated in the Conservatory. He grabbed at it:

The coach last year said I had a feel for not playing, but a big, big fat butt I am a better coach than the previous coach. At least I read the rule book. But also a better coach, imho. Muchacho.

He scrambled for the phone, stared at the screen, and texted back. The coach last year was The Boil.

Goodnight, Phineas

This was possibly another roundabout apology, but even I’m at a loss. There was dead silence on the other end.

Against every instinct in his bony 6’ 4” body, Reginald was disappointed he didn’t get a goodnight back from his 4’ 6” player, but he finally resolved the evening’s big question, this time in the opposite direction: maybe he shouldn’t have added the emoji. Maybe as the coach he should have been the “taller one.”

Well, this seemed to do it until he was woken by the phone rattling one last time on the dashboard.

I have thrown a knuckleball. Lots of them. Just because nobody came out of the house that day to see doesn’t mean I didn’t throw them.

Reginald stared at the text and something tugged at him. He was at a loss, because, truthfully, Reginald was always kind of at a loss.

Then out of the blue, well, not entirely out of the blue, Reginald remembered walking off the mound, through the showers, and straight out of Yankee Stadium in his uniform. He ended up at the far end of the subway platform with his shoulders sagging and his glove dangling from his hand.

It was the wrong place to stand. Twenty-one years later, he could still hear that Bronx Cheer of all Bronx Cheers.

That night in New York City, nobody came out of the “House that Ruth Built” to find him on the platform. For a minute or two, he’d hoped the old manager might have come down to say goodnight and see him off to Iowa.

It was on the tip of Reginald’s tongue why this was all coming up suddenly. At that very second in the back of the Sleepmobile, The Sleepmobile’s ceiling dots popped into 3D. It had been weeks.

Reginald breathed a deep sigh and vowed to do better at whatever it was he was supposed to do better at. He fell into a slumber.

For a good twenty-one minutes afterwards, the Sleepmobile’s dashboard lights glowed ever so faintly - and then never again.

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In case all this is too cheerful for you, and you missed Story #11. This will bring you down with a hard bump. ⬇️