Catch That Pass!

by Matt Christopher

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1969 by Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

  Hachette Book Group

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  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

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  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: December 2009

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Matt Christopher® is a registered trademark

  of Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09546-4

  To

  Helen L. Jones

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Matt Christopher®

  THE #1 SPORTS SERIES FOR KIDS: MATT CHRISTOPHER®

  1

  Third and eight.

  The pass down. The Cadets had to pass. They weren’t gaining enough yardage on the ground.

  Jim Nardi stationed himself in the middle linebacker slot in front of the Cadets’ center. To his far left was Bill Brown, to his far right Yak Lee. The cornerbacks and safety men were spread wide in a parallel line behind them.

  “Hup one! Hup two!” yelled Terry Jason, the Cadets’ quarterback.

  The snap from center. Jason faded back. The Vulcan and Cadet lines tore into each other in a crash of helmets and shoulder pads.

  Jim bolted through the narrow hole between right guard and center, then stopped. Jason had thrown a pass, and the ball was lobbing over Jim’s head!

  Jim leaped. His hands wrapped around the ball and brought it down. In the same instant, he saw a red-and-white helmet and blazing red jersey coming at him. The thick padded shoulders looked like the shoulders of an angry, charging bull.

  Jim’s nerves shattered like glass. Frantically he flung the ball to the ground.

  Shreeeeep!

  The whistle stopped the would-be tackier. Less than a yard from Jim, he grinned behind the double bars of his face mask.

  “Why didn’t you hang on to it?” he said. “I haven’t had a tackle yet.”

  “I’m sorry,” replied Jim. “Why don’t you ask Terry to try it again?”

  He spun on his heel and started back to his position when a hand grabbed his elbow. He looked into the angry eyes of Hook Wheeler, the left safety man.

  “You had it in your mitts! Why’d you knock it down?”

  Their eyes clashed. “It was slipping out of my hands,” said Jim. Darn Hook! Why didn’t he mind his own business?

  “Slipping, my eye! You had it in your mitts! I saw you! Everybody did!”

  The whistle shrilled. “Come on,” snapped the ref. “Let’s hustle it up.”

  Fourth down and eight. The ball was on the Cadets’ twenty-seven-yard line. The Cadets went into punt formation. Their fullback kicked the ball—a long, spiraling aerial. Hook Wheeler caught it on the Vulcans’ thirty-eight and carried it across the forty— the middle of the Midget football field—to the Cadets’ thirty-one.

  The defense went out; the offense came in. Someone slapped Jim Nardi on the back. “No harm done, Jim. We got the ball anyway.”

  Jim looked at Bucky Hayes, the husky left tackle and Jim’s close buddy. “It … oh, never mind.” He wanted to tell Bucky, too, that the ball had slipped, but why lie about it? Why talk about it at all? He’d hang on to it the next time, if there was a next time.

  He trotted up to the bench, avoiding Doug’s eyes. Doug was his brother and coach of the Vulcans. He was in college and had played football his freshman year. In high school he had made All-State end.

  “What happened out there, Jim?” he asked quietly.

  “You mean when I—”

  “When you knocked the ball down.”

  “Well, that’s all. I knocked the ball down.”

  “But you had it in your hands.”

  Jim flushed. “No, I didn’t! You don’t think I’d knock it down if I—”

  “Okay, okay Forget it.”

  Chris Howe quarterbacked the Vulcans. He got the ball to the Cadets’ nine-yard line. Then the Vulcans lost five yards on an offside penalty. On the next play, Chris flipped a spiral pass into the end zone, hitting left end Ben Trainor a yard inside the out-of-bounds line for a touchdown. Fullback Ronnie Holmes kicked the conversion. Seven to nothing.

  In the second quarter, a Cadet safety man picked off a pass Chris had intended for Pete Witz, the flashy right end. The Cadet was pulled down on the Vulcans’ fourteen. They tried a double reverse and gained six yards. Jim Nardi made up his mind that no runner was going through the middle. He’d stop any man cold who would try.

  “Hup one! Hup two!”

  The quarterback faked a run through right tackle, drawing some of the players toward that side of the line. But the fullback had the ball! He was fading back behind the right side of his line. He was looking toward the coffin corner. And then he passed.

  He was clever. Instead of throwing to the coffin corner, he threw to the right center of the end zone near the goalpost. Jim, breaking back away from the scrimmage line, sprang a couple of steps toward it, leaped, and caught the ball!

  As he came down with it, he saw a bright red helmet with a white stripe through its middle. He saw the bulging shoulders of a blazing red jersey.

  He got panicky. He didn’t want to be hit. He was afraid to be hit.

  He let the ball drop. The Cadet fell on it. So little time elapsed between the moment Jim caught the ball and dropped it that the call could’ve been either way—a completed pass or an incomplete pass.

  Shreeeeep! went the whistle. “Incomplete pass!” yelled the ref.

  Jim turned and almost bumped into Hook. “What’s the matter, Nardi?” Hook snarled. “That’s the second time you dropped the ball! I suppose it slipped through your hands this time, too.”

  2

  Third and four.

  The Cadets’ tight seven-man line looked like a red wall facing the Vulcans. The Vulcan linebackers played up close, intent on plugging every possible hole. Only the two safety men played deep, watching for a forward pass.

  The snap from center. Jason handed off to his fullback. The fullback cut toward right end. For a split second, Jim wondered: Was this another pass play?

  It wasn’t. The fullback plunged around end, and Hook Wheeler pulled him down on the five. On the next play, Terry bucked through for a yard. It was close to a first down. The men with the chain ran out and measured. A first down!

  “Hold that line! Hold that line!” shouted the Vulcan fans.

  “We want a touchdown! We want a touchdown!” chanted the Cadet fans.

  First and goal to go. Four yards for a touchdown.

  Terry barked signals. He took the snap, faded back a few steps, and passed. His left halfback caught it on the one-yard line and plunged over for the score. They tried the conversion and missed. />
  “See what happened?” Hook bellowed at Jim. “If you had held on to that ball, it would’ve still been seven-oh!”

  Right safety man Dil Gorman tapped Hook on the shoulder. “Leave him alone, Hook. You ever notice his narrow waist?”

  Hook grinned crookedly. “That’s right,” he said. “He hasn’t got room for guts!”

  Again Jim saw red, but this time it wasn’t the color of an opponent’s jersey. It was hot, flaming anger. He knotted his fists and stepped toward Hook, ready to let him have it. Then he stopped. No, he thought. No matter how badly he wanted to make Hook eat those words, he wasn’t going to fight here. He’d be thrown out of the game. Maybe Hook would be thrown out, too. The only thing to do—the best thing to do—was to ignore the wise guy.

  It was awful to admit that both Dil and Hook were right. But they were. Every time Jim tried to intercept a pass, he would see an opponent come at him and that terrible fear would sweep through him and rush to his head and swell as if it were ready to explode. He had to get that feeling out of his system. He had to or he’d never play football in high school. Doug might not even let him keep playing with the Vulcans after this, their first game of the season.

  Someone slapped him on the back. “Did you hear a time-out or something?” It was Bucky.

  Jim forced a smile. “C’mon! Let’s go!”

  They lined up for the kickoff. The whistle shrilled. The Cadets’ line sprang forward. The fullback booted the ball. It sailed end over end into Vulcan territory. Hook caught it on the twenty-two and bolted up the field, twisting and dodging.

  “C’mon! Give me interference!” Hook shouted.

  Jim Nardi fell in front of a Cadet, then got up and blocked another Cadet as he headed toward Hook. The block helped Hook gain another six yards. He was tackled on the Vulcans’ thirty-four.

  The defensive unit trotted off the field. The offense took over.

  “What went on out there?” Doug asked when Jim reached the sideline.

  “Nothing,” said Jim.

  “Did Hook or Dil say something to you?”

  Jim unbuttoned the chin strap of his helmet and took the helmet off. The cool air refreshed his sweating head. “Okay. They made me sore. But I didn’t do anything, did I? I didn’t start a fight, did I?”

  Doug looked at him hard. “No, Jim, and I’m glad you didn’t. I’m darned glad.”

  Jim met Doug’s eyes evenly. Doug was tall, close to six feet. His steel-blue eyes were steady. They had had their arguments, with Doug usually winning them. But afterwards, when Jim had a chance to think, he’d always agree that Doug was right. Like the time Doug had warned him about riding the bike with weak brakes. Jim had been too lazy to fix them and did so only after Doug had started to take the brakes apart himself.

  The game went into the fourth quarter with the score still 7 to 6 in the Vulcans’ favor. At the four-minute warning signal, the Vulcans had the ball on their own nineteen. Chris Howe faked a handoff to right halfback Ken Morris, who started to plow through right tackle. But it was fullback Ronnie Holmes who took the ball and galloped for eight yards through the left side of the line.

  A wild scramble followed. And loud shouting. Ronnie had fumbled the ball. A red-jerseyed player began jumping up and down. The Cadets had recovered!

  “Oh, no!” cried Jim.

  “Get in there!” yelled Doug. “Hold them!”

  Terry Jason flung a long pass on the first play. He hit his man perfectly, and the runner carried the ball to the Vulcans’ eighteen before Hook nailed him.

  “I think there’s a magnet in that ball and another one in that receiver,” observed Bucky Hayes. “No man can throw a pass that perfect.”

  “I hear he wears telescopic contact lenses,” said Yak Lee, the right linebacker.

  “That answers it,” replied Bucky.

  In two downs the Cadets moved the ball to the nine. Then Terry tried a quarterback sneak, but lost a yard.

  Fourth down and two.

  The Cadets called time.

  “I’ve got a magnet at home,” said Jim. “I’ll bring it with me next time.”

  Dil Gorman looked at him. “A good idea,” he said. “You should’ve thought of it sooner.”

  Jim flushed and looked away. He had really opened his trap at the wrong time then.

  Time was up. The Cadets went into a huddle, then broke out of it and got into position at the line of scrimmage. Jim saw that Jason was standing back and that the fullback was a couple of yards behind him. They were going to try a field goal!

  “Hup one! Hup two!”

  Jason caught the snap and put it in position on the ground. Jim blasted through a narrow hole between center and right guard. He heard the sound of shoe meeting football and saw the pigskin sailing over his head.

  A shout rose, and Jim knew that the ball had gone between the uprights. 9–7.

  That was the final score, too.

  3

  The Porsche Carrera 6 sped down the straightaway, then zoomed around the turn and along the wall that was almost vertical. It cut sharply around the second curve, buzzed down the straightaway on the opposite side of the track, and passed the red Lotus 30 as the cars sped around the 45-degree bend and under the overpass.

  Chuckie Gorman laughed. “I’m a lap ahead of you!”

  Jim Nardi depressed the plunger of his controller all the way to the bottom for a split second, then quickly let up on it as the Lotus 30 reached the curve on the left side of the track.

  “Two more laps to go,” he said after a quick glance at the counter. “Guess you’ll win this race.”

  “Well, I have more experience than you have,” Chuckie said, sitting forward in his wheelchair with a wide grin on his face. “You know what I’m going to be when I get out of this chair, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “A race driver!”

  Click!

  “There’s the counter!” cried Chuckie. “Ten laps! Want to race again?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  They stopped their cars. Jim lifted them off the track and placed them on the starting line. The track was on a platform in Chuckie’s room. It had two lanes, a grandstand, pit stops, mechanics, spectators, and trees and shrubbery that made it look real except for its being miniature.

  Model car racing was Chuckie’s favorite sport. He was always calling up Jim to come over and race with him. Of course Chuckie’s brother Dil raced with him, too. And so did Hook Wheeler. But of all the guys, Chuckie liked Jim the best, and Jim liked him.

  Chuckie had become crippled from a car accident when he was five. He was sure that someday he was going to get out of that wheelchair and walk. And maybe he would. He did exercises every afternoon at the clinic, and his muscles seemed to be getting stronger.

  They had just started the race when someone came into the room. Jim glanced over his shoulder, and all at once his spirit melted like butter on hot pancakes.

  “Hi, Dil,” he said. “Hi, Hook.”

  The boys greeted him and then exchanged greetings with Chuckie. Jim jiggled the plunger up and down with his thumb to slow down the Lotus 30 as it completed its first lap and headed for the first sharp curve. Chuckie’s Porsche Carrera 6 was only a foot or so ahead of his Lotus.

  “Who’s winning?” asked Hook.

  “We’ve just started our second race,” replied Chuckie. “I won the first one.”

  “That’s nothing to brag about,” said Dil. “Maybe you’ve got Jim shook up.”

  “Sure, that’s why you beat him,” Hook joined in. “Jim doesn’t like contact. He might’ve been afraid you’d crash into him.”

  “Will you guys pipe down?” cried Chuckie irritably. “Who can race with you guys shootin’ off your mouths?”

  The controller was hot in Jim’s hand. Weren’t those guys ever going to get over his dropping those passes yesterday? Darn ’em, anyway.

  The little red car twisted around the curve at the right, shot up the wall and then along
the short straightaway, its tail wagging as if it were trying to shake something off. Chuckie’s Porsche Carrera 6 came speeding up behind it, gulping up a big gain on the straight.

  The Lotus 30 looked fuzzy as it headed for the overpass. Jim blinked to clear away the fuzz. He was thinking of Dil and Hook watching them, of what they had said about him, and of the terrible feeling that had come over him just after he had intercepted the passes. The controller was hot, and he was sweating. Man, that terrible feeling. He could remember it as if it had happened only a little while ago.

  The Lotus 30 tore through the overpass and up the short straightaway to the curve. It was going fast. Too fast!

  Jim let up on the plunger. But too late. The car jumped the track. It crashed against the white fence, tore loose a post, zoomed over the edge of the platform, and plunged to the floor.

  Jim stood paralyzed. A long minute passed before he could unglue his feet from the floor. Then he went and picked up the car. The front axle had broken loose from the chassis. The front end of the car was split open. And the windshield had come off.

  4

  Don’t worry about it, Jim,” said Chuckie. “I can fix it.”

  Jim wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “No, I’ll take the pieces home. It was my fault. I’ll fix it.”

  Chuckie glared at Dil and Hook. “It was you guys’ fault!” he cried. “You kept shooting off your mouths!”

  “We’re sorry, Chuckie,” Dil apologized. “We really didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Sure,” said Hook. “We were just kiddin’. Are you sure you can fix it, Jim? You got tools?”

  “My dad has tools,” replied Jim quietly He was holding the car body in one hand, the pieces in the other. “I’ll bring it back as soon as I finish it, Chuckie.”

  “Take my tube of epoxy,” offered Chuckie. “It’s good to cement stuff.” He wheeled around to the left side of the track, lifted a yellow tube off one of the shelves on the wall, and handed it to Jim.

  “Thanks, Chuckie,” said Jim.

  No one said a word as he walked out.