Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Chapter 24)

A slow clap, a railroad spike, an AM radio, a mushroom cloud, scrap metal, a fib and a beep-beep. Everyone's at the field now.

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CHAPTER 24

The Boil

2003.

June 3.

4:59 PM.

The Bronx.

Pitching mound.

Reginald Perry, the Yankee rookie from the Wilkes-Barre AAA RailRiders, had just thrown the Greatest Pitch in the History of Baseball.

Funny the things you don’t remember even at the center of them. The stadium erupted after that pitch. Scoreboard bulbs popped. The veteran umpire fell in the dirt from terror right after Reginald’s pitch dropped into the NASCAR straightaway. The Yankees’ old manager trotted to home plate to save the pitch as a souvenir for the kid.

Reginald didn’t remember any of that.

He didn’t hear the skipper ask the umpire if he was okay. He didn’t see the Yankee manager juggling the ball like a schoolboy who’d caught a big league foul. He didn’t remember the old guy dropping it and leaving a dirt scuff.

What he did remember was that everyone rose up behind the home plate fence to cheer for him.

Everyone except one man. The man had a team jacket and a Wilkes-Barre RailRiders baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes.

It was his best friend, The Boil, the guy who was “going to get called up to the Bigs first” and “sorry Reg, but you’ll follow after, maybe.”

But nothing had gone to The Boil’s plan. It was Reginald and his dancing knuckleball that were being celebrated in Yankee Stadium.

Reginald waved hello from the mound, but The Boil was clapping so slowly at this point, it took the air out of the stadium. And, seeing how The Boil was his only friend, a RailRider iron spiked through his heart with every slowing clap.

For reasons beyond me, all Reginald wanted to do was apologize for making it to the Bigs first.

There is a moment when you know the Yips have got you, and that was the moment. By the time The Boil quit slow clapping for him, Reginald Perry knew he’d never throw a strike again.

The last clap made him The Yipper.

Far away in Pueblo, Mexico, someone else felt it, too.

At that very moment, 4:59 PM, The Sleepmobile, the last Volkswagen Beetle ever made, burped off the assembly line’s car wash and out into the parking lot.

The game was playing on her radio at the time. It was the Dodgers and the Yankees.

She heard the pitch. The Shimmy High and the Shrug Low. The Bee and the Tulip. She’d already heard she was bought sight unseen by a rookie Yankee. Without a doubt, the pitcher on the radio was her future owner, and somehow she knew that the two of them would spend a life together in a Little League parking lot.

And even with all the factory workers crying and kissing her hood ornament goodbye, it was all too much for her. Her AM radio went out.

This pitcher was her rookie.

2024.

June 3.

4:59 PM.

What Cheer.

Pitching mound.

Looking out from the dugout, on the other side of a pitching miracle, Reginald knew what was at stake for the boy.

When the deal for ownership of the Sleepmobile started, Reginald’s bar was sky-high: he had to go undefeated coaching the Cougars. And when they did start winning, The Boil made the deal easier. All Reginald had to do was have a winning season. Then the wheels came off. By the time The Boil said all The Yipper had to do was lose, easiest became hardest of all.

Which left Reginald with a bit of a conundrum. He was like a farmer trying to get his tractor back to the barn without messing up all the nice straight rows.

To win, Reginald would have to vote against the boy. The Boil would have to vote for him. And there was no way Reginald was ever going to vote against the boy, so in a roundabout way, they were all on the same side.

All of What Cheer stood for Phineas. The volunteer umpire finally got himself back up from the dirt, and the Misfits manager made sure the old man was alright, but the kid wouldn’t remember any of that.

What he would remember was his dad standing behind the fence at home plate clapping for him, and not a slow clap either, a big slap-up banger that could sting your palms or take a finger out.

Even after everyone else in the Cougars’ stands picked up their drinks and settled down again, his dad was still standing up rooting for him. He’d never seen his dad so happy.

“That’s my boy! That’s my boy! A winner!”

Not knowing anything about his dad’s side of the deal, joy filled his twelve-year-old heart to the brim. His dad had seen his knuckleball, just like he’d always said he could throw it. The kid felt 6’4”. He was in the Cooperstown of the heart.

He spun the ball in his hand and looked at his little miracle. It had a scuff where the Misfits’ manager tried to juggle the ball and dropped it.

But the moment he rubbed his thumb over that spot, he felt a cold breeze blowing in from center, and somewhere behind him, he heard the Iowa state flag clanking.

The yips struck.

It was like his dad was saying from deep inside some place where only family can get to: “What if you can’t do it again? What else you got for me?”

Even a coach as fine as Reginald Perry can’t get in far enough to help you there. It’s family business, and when you’re Iowan, you know to stay out of it.

The son looked back at the Cougars’ stands and saw his father sit down. His father was still clapping and calling the whole way.

“That’s my boy!”

All Phineas wanted to do was apologize to him.

Go figure.

You don’t need to be a die-hard movie sports fan to guess that the next pitch was wild and not ordinary wild. It ended up in the concession stand popcorn machine. Funny thing is, that was the least of the wild pitches he would throw from there, because things only got worse in a hurry.

The 1-1 was so far off course, no one could track it with their phones.

2-1 shot through the bottom of the sixth inning on the scoreboard and kicked out of the “O” in Cougars like a pinball.

3-1 landed behind the boy with a sad plunk and a little mushroom cloud.

He’d walked him.

After 16 pitches, and walking his first three batters, Phineas walked a run in to tie the game.

It got dicier. With the go-ahead runner at third, and the count 3-0, the town of What Cheer was a pitch away from the end of the season.

Finally, Reginald flashed a time-out to the umpire and slow-walked out to the mound.

The kid and his coach stared at each other without too much to say, then kind of looked around and took in the scenery. Eventually, they handed the ball back and forth. There was confusion because neither could remember who was coaching that inning and who could yank who out of the game. Bottom line, Reginald wanted the boy in there so the kid wouldn’t spend his life living in his car. Maybe Phineas wanted out for the very same reason.

“You got it son! That’s my boy! Don’t dare take him out, coach!” Listening to The Boil yell, you couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying. There sure were some strange sounds coming out of him.

The little 4’6” was one bad pitch from winning him The Sleepmobile.

He’d wanted that car for twenty-one years, if only to sell it for scrap metal.

That’s when Pinball piped up for the first time, and he was particularly riled up about it, too. If this was coming from a place of love, it was on the outskirts of town.

“Rule 509 (2)(b).”

Whatever that was about, it wasn’t helping. If you were paying attention, you might have seen the town’s small claims court judge squirming a bit. Maybe nobody in What Cheer knew Rule 509 (2)(b) better than the two of them. Long ago, they’d tried to hash it out by the gavel. To that day it still kept the judge up midnight to three thinking about it. Every old judge has a handful of blown calls, even in small claims.

Over at the concession stand, maybe the last kernel popped and maybe it hadn’t, but the not knowing was something painful.

With the boy deliberately smearing his glasses again, Reginald got confused. Nothing was harder for him than waterworks.

So, he sure had a conundrum, practically asked himself in his own head, “What would The Sleepmobile do?” It panged him to be asking her with all the rest going on, but she was family for Reg, and his thoughts went to her because they had nowhere else to go. His mom’s old tea towel was quite clear on this. “Family is where you go where they have to take you in.”

Honk is too strong for what the old girl did. Tooted, maybe.

“Ba-da-da-da-da. Beep-beep.”

And that sure turned heads, whatever was going on in the parking lot. Even after she did it a second time, nobody understood.

It was the Misfits who recognized baseball’s oldest fanfare and put two and two together. They were so excited when little Abhishek got it, they roared out “Charge!” for Phineas, and, I suppose, accidentally for the Cougars.

“Ba-da-da-da-da. Beep-beep.”

“Charge!”

Everyone got distracted with it for a bit before she tuckered out.

Meanwhile, Reginald headed over to the Cougars’ stands. The laugh-crying was getting worse.

“Don’t you take my kid out, Reg,” The Boil shouted, slapping at his thighs and wiping his laugh-tears. The Boil needed one last bad pitch to win the deal.

Reginald needed the same pitch but a good one so he wouldn’t see the kid fail. So did Phineas because his whole world was watching. You’ve never seen two men and a boy rooting harder for the same thing for completely different reasons.

“Get on down here, Boil,” Reginald commanded. “Now.”

Sometimes you can catch a bully off guard, and they’ll listen.

The two long-ago friends from the Wilkes-Barre RailRiders were eye-to-eye, except Reginald was still several eyes taller than The Boil.

“You remember our deal, Boil?”

“Yup. I get to make it easier on you, because the easier it is for you, the harder it is for you, which still tickles me.”

Reginald looked back at the mound where the boy was staring over.

“But there was more to it, Boil.”

For the first time in twenty-one years, it was The Boil struggling to remember. Something was sure on the tip of his tongue, though.

“I get to make it harder,” Reginald reminded him. “You were on one-armed pushup number seventy-two.”

“Rule 509(2)(b),” Pinball interrupted from out in right.

He was splashing his double-fisted beers everywhere like he was starting to boil over. The small claims court judge had to look away from Pinball. Twenty-one years of regret over the whole business were rushing back at him.

The Boil and Reginald didn’t hear any of it.

“The new rules are this, Boil: I’m betting on the Cougars to win. Even with your kid wilder than a safari park, I think he’s got it in him.”

This was a bit of a fib. He was definitely not sure that the kid had it in him.

“Oh, and I quit, and while I’m at it, you’re fired.”

Oddly enough, even with Reginald’s surprise rule change, the three of them were still voting for the same thing.

As for The Sleepmobile, she had one last “Charge!” in her that she gave all she had.

Reginald looked up and down at his nemesis of twenty-one years. He took him in, maybe understood him for the first time, and he didn’t like what he saw one bit, but maybe felt a little sorry for him, too.

“No man who’d bet against his own son was ever called a Yankee,” Reginald said. “That’s the real reason you didn’t make it.”

Reginald shook his head and went back to the mound.

“No pressure, but I just bet your dad The Sleepmobile and $401,230.54 that you’re going to win this.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. There’s not enough room in the parking lot for the two of us. This is my parking lot.”

The thought got ahead of even Reginald, and they both took a moment and considered it.

One more wild pitch, and Phineas would force in the winning run. The old man was beside himself.

“Five point zero nine, subsection B, number two, dammit!”

It was the “dammit.”

That’s strong for small town Iowa, but it worked.

The kid was struck sideways by something happier than a “Free Game” on your last quarter.

The kid reached into his back pocket, fumbled out his worn rule book, opened it up and flipped through it before he found 509 (2)(b).

The whole town watched him and was wishing he’d read it out loud.

He sure didn’t.

But he closed his eyes and smiled and stood on that mound as tall as a 4’6” knuckleball artist can.

Somewhere a million miles away, maybe he heard his dad, or his coach, or a Volkswagen Beetle tooting for him, or maybe he didn’t, but none of it mattered.

Because he was on the mound at Yankee Stadium, holding a pocket-sized, torn-up rule book. It was standing room only, and every last fan under those heavenly hot lights was a Yankee fan.

“Rule 509(b)(2), Reginald Perry,” the boy said, mostly to himself. “Go on, Coach. I need you to go back to the dugout. I’m okay.”

Reginald had no idea about rule whatever-it-was. As you know, he couldn’t keep track of anything with numbers, but he decided to let go and let the kid take it from here. When he walked back to the dugout steps, he started smiling. He’d let go.

The boy was about to pitch it wherever it ended up, which, if you’ve been paying the slightest bit of attention, is the Art of the Knuckleball.

As for Phineas standing there ready for his moment: well, the boy never knew his dad wasn’t really rooting for him that day, and you’ll never be welcome in the good state of Iowa if you ever let that spill.

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