Story #10: "The Knuckleball Artist" (Epilogue)

A tearful factory worker, some sunflower seeds, talk radio, a Mother's Goodbye, and a writer who thought he'd read the last one out loud.

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CHAPTER 28

Cooperstown

After the game, while it was still light out, Reginald and Phineas sat cross-legged in front of the hood of The Sleepmobile. For a long time, the two took turns reading Rule 5.09(2)(b) and sipping the last of Reginald’s Special Beers.

When it was too dark to read, but still bright enough to stare into The Sleepmobile’s hood ornament, they took turns looking in. Secretly, Phineas was hoping Reginald would see a Yankee rookie throwing the Greatest Pitch in the History of Baseball, and just as secretly, Reginald was hoping Phineas would see a Little Leaguer from What Cheer throwing the Other Greatest Pitch in the History of Baseball.

Instead, The Sleepmobile showed them a coach and a player on a Saturday morning jumping up and down like they were trying to knock each other off a see-saw because they’d suddenly remembered how to throw a knuckleball.

Playing catch.

If you ask a dad—or the right kind of coach, say—playing catch is still the best part of baseball.

*

Eventually, the field lights on the timer turned off, and there was only orange and red in the Iowa sunset. Reginald needed to get the boy home.

When Phineas got into The Sleepmobile, she started to slip backwards down the hill the way she did. Reginald went to reverse bump start her, the way he did, but this time she only fussed and sputtered, the gravel crunching under the car.

Reginald looked in the rearview mirror and the Poison Ivy at the bottom of the hill was coming right at them. He pumped at the foot brake and tugged at the handbrake, but maybe a little too hard, because the handbrake popped clear out of the floor like one of Reginald’s lobster claws.

The old Volkswagen Beetle gathered some speed, not a lot, and continued clumping and banging over her hissing tires all the way into the Poison Ivy. Every time you thought she’d had enough, and you looked through the rust hole in the floor, she picked up speed again.

Clearly, she had a destination.

The old girl bumped her back through the Poison Ivy, then past the tree line, and at last deep into the Baseball Graveyard. Towards the end, a branch caught on her crooked antenna and pulled it smack out of the spot the Tearful Factory Worker forced it on years before.

She came to a stop under a great, mossy oak tree scattered about with acorns.

*

It was very quiet in the car.

Phineas was about to say, “I’ll go play catch with myself for awhile,” so he could have something to say, but he didn’t. Then he was going to say, “I can walk home by myself.” He didn’t say that either. In the end, he asked, “What did you call her sometimes?” That question came out of nowhere, and stranger still is he was asking a question he knew the answer to.

“Called her Ú.Ú. The Última Última. She was a 2003.”

After that, everyone ran out of things to say, until Phineas said it was getting steamy, and he’d head back up to the field.

The boy forced his door open through the ferns and mossy sticks, headed towards the tree line, hopped through the Poison Ivy like a snake pit, then started jogging midway. Before you knew it, he was back to walking again. The whole business went on like this all the way up the parking lot hill.

The boy couldn’t make up his mind about how to get from here to there.

*

Reginald wasn’t a man of many words, as you know, at least not when he needed them most, but he rose to the occasion in other ways. He grabbed The Sleepmobile’s leather stick shift good and tight, shook it left and right for a bit.

That led to him noticing dried-up sunflower seats in the dashboard vents. He’d meant to clean them. He looked around the car where there used to be a Sleepmobile Kitchen, and Foyer and Master Bedroom.

Now there was a torn passenger seat and springs poking through yellow foam in the rear seat. He tried to shut the broken glove compartment where there used to be the Sleepmobile refrigerator.

The whole thing was sadder than visiting a yard you used to play in. On top of that, it was getting much darker which didn’t help his spirits.

Phineas was up top of the parking lot hill. He was throwing the ball as high up in the air as he could, playing catch with himself.

*

Reginald stretched his long legs to get out of the car, stumbling a bit like always. He folded up his Yankee uniform pajamas on the front hood, made a perfect triangle out of them, with the “2” on the one side and the “1” on the other.

He popped the hood and gently placed the pajamas in her battery compartment.

A second time, he tried to think of a few words, but in the end, he only shut the hood and shined her ornament for a bit with his sleeve.

“I should have polished that more,” he said out loud.

It was one of those thoughts that hits you sideways when you’re talking to yourself, pushes you right up against whatever it is you get pushed up against. He shook his head a few times for the benefit of himself.

Reginald started out of the Baseball Graveyard carrying nothing but the beat-up suitcase he brought back to What Cheer twenty-one years before. It was still dangling from his long fingers, and the man still slumped. You couldn’t deny it.

His slouching still left him well shy of 6’4”. Just like they always said in town, with his hunched head and his dangling suitcase, Reginald Perry had always been something of a human question mark.

*

It was when he stepped past the tree line and into the Poison Ivy that he heard the static.

It was a radio.

The Sleepmobile’s radio.

She was scanning the dial, in and out of AM stations, Iowa news, a hymn, somebody losing his wits on talk radio.

That radio hadn’t worked a single minute since he drove her off the Cougars Volkswagen parking lot, probably on account of the crooked antenna and the Tearful Factory Worker.

Reginald stood there, knee-deep in the Poison Ivy by the quiet woods, and listened to his car.

Eventually, she settled on a station.

*

It was a ballgame.

Reception came in and out like it did on some of the longer stretches on the ride in from Des Moines, the kind where you need to pull over in the breakdown lane so you don’t miss the third out.

In and out, the radio went with balls and strikes. Somebody was playing somebody.

Then he heard it.

Took him a minute.

Well, John, here’s the kid from Wilkes-Barre coming in, the one we’ve been hearing so much about… Barely had time to put his uniform on... Iowa kid… Didn’t get to the park until the third inning they’re telling me…

Reginald set his suitcase down in the Ivy.

Tall fellow, Charley… but don’t look for lights out with this one. He’s a knuckleballer...

Randy had a pretty great outing. He’s saying something to the kid. Iowa must be feeling some nerves, first appearance in the Bigs…

Reginald put an arm across his chest and his palm on his chin, like every fan who’d ever waited to hear if his team was going to pull through.

Taking the ball from coach now… getting set… looking in for the sign, bases empty, two outs.

And he’s into his windup…

After that, there was a very long pause with nothing but the sound of static in the Baseball Graveyard and the big mossy oak brushing about.

Then that static faded so soft for a second you could hear the baseball hit the catcher’s mitt.

It was the Pitch.

He had just thrown The Pitch.

*

Reginald’s heart was racing as fast as it had the day he threw it. It was pin drop quiet, and there was a very long wait, but still the umpire hadn’t called ball or strike.

Finally, there was some clanging and crashing about in the radio booth. The play-by-play announcer and the color man must have been crawling out from underneath the desk.

The two of them whispered like they were in a church.

“Charley,” John said. “I’ve never seen anything like it… ”

“That baseball slid up a NASCAR wall, John….”

“Ping-ponged to the left… Shimmied high and shrugged low...”

This, by the way, was an awful lot of poetry for such a stocky former catcher and first baseman.

The two had worked themselves out of whispering and well north of church volume.

But the umpire still hadn’t called ball or strike.

Reginald might have been the only man in the world who cared one way or the other about the call itself, but it was Reginald’s Strike, and it meant something big to hear it said out loud.

The pause was so long, his heart started to race, wondering if he’d got it wrong, and maybe he really wasn’t a Yankee somehow because he’d never even thrown a strike.

He waited.

“You know what that was, Charley? Cause I’ll tell you what that was.”

“What was it, John?”

“That was a bee letting down its landing gear and dropping into a tulip.”

You’ll find this hard to believe, but Reginald had never heard about a bee and a tulip. He laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes.

Finally, the umpire remembered to call the pitch a strike.

And that was all the ballpark needed. Yankee Stadium erupted so loud for a minute, you couldn’t hear the radio static.

“Listen to this crowd, Charley. I think we’re all Yankees fans right now.”

Reginald stood in the Poison Ivy and nodded, his chin still on his palm. He understood. He was a Yankees fan, too.

After that, The Sleepmobile’s radio grew quiet. Reginald spent some time standing there, couldn’t decide whether to go or stay.

Then, right as Reginald started to turn away, The Sleepmobile’s headlights came on.

She lit up the Baseball Graveyard like a night game.

Everywhere in the twigs and dirt and ferns of the Baseball Graveyard, you could see beat-up, waterlogged baseballs and unstrung leather mitts and cracked bats. Team hats. Baseball cards in the trees. Stretch socks. Jerseys with numbers one to ninety-nine. Batting gloves and bent home plates.

If it had ever meant something to a Little Leaguer in the town of What Cheer, Iowa, then it had found its way back there.

Reginald stood a long time staring into The Sleepmobile’s headlights. Then, probably from standing so long and having time to properly think about it for once, he found his words.

“Sweet dreams, Ú.Ú.” he said.

Then she faded out, the old girl.

Our Yankee took his cap off. He was an Iowa boy. He didn’t need somebody to nudge him and tell him when you’re supposed to take your hat off.

*

It was nearly dark by the time he walked out. The moon was coming up over the field, shining off the Iowa state flagpole, a crescent moon like he liked them. He could make out the edges of the What Cheer? water tower.

Up top the hill, a silhouette of a boy, a cap, a bat and a ball was playing catch with itself— throwing the ball up in the air, dropping it, calling out the play-by-play on a big leaguer, coincidentally named Phineas.

Could have been any boy, really. Quite a few girls, too, if you asked Dottie.

Reginald looked down into the Ivy, then up at his Iowa moon.

Stood up straight after that, all 6’4” of him – I can’t remember if I mentioned Reginald was a very tall man.

And the one-strike Yankee knuckleballer who’d thrown the Greatest Pitch in the History of Baseball stepped out of the Poison Ivy and headed up the hill.

The man had shaken off his question mark.

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