Hard Drive to Short

by Matt Christopher

  Well, he had started it off. Let’s keep it going! he thought. Don’t let me die here.

  Oink Decker answered Sandy’s wish. He belted a single, scoring Sandy. Marty walked. Then Stubby got a free pass, filling the bases. Nibbs smacked a grounder to second, and it looked as if it were going to be a double killing for sure. But the second baseman muffed the ball and couldn’t retrieve it in time to throw anyone out. Oink scored.

  The Spacemen bench was wild with excitement. Now they had the game going like a roller coaster.

  Ken Bockman went down swinging for the first out. Then Duke Miller hit a slow grounder to short. All the runners took off. Marty scored. The shortstop fielded the ball and made the play to second, throwing out Nibbs. With Stubby on third and Duke on first, leadoff man Kerry Dean singled, bringing in the fourth run of the inning. Jules belted the first pitch out to deep right, but it was caught. Three outs. But the fat inning put the Spacemen into the lead, 6 to 4.

  It was nearly six-thirty. Sandy became anxious as one by one the Batwings belted Duke for safe hits. A run scored. Then another, and the score was tied!

  It must be twenty minutes of seven now, thought Sandy worriedly. It must be. A hard grounder sizzled down to him. He reached for it but missed it. Another run scored.

  “Time!” yelled Coach Malone. “Sandy, come on out!”

  Impatience was written all over Mom’s face as Sandy pounded into the house. He waited anxiously for almost an hour for Nibbs Spry and Jules Anderson to come by. They told him that the Spacemen had won, 11 to 8.

  7

  ON Saturday morning Mom sent Sandy to the store to purchase two dozen eggs. She had forgotten to include them on the list of groceries she had purchased Friday morning. Sandy crossed the tree-shadowed street so that he would walk by Rod Temple’s house. He hadn’t seen Rod in three days.

  Rod was in the driveway, working on the motorbike.

  “Hi, Rod,” Sandy called, stopping at the edge of the sidewalk.

  “Hi, Sandy. Where are you going so early in the morning?”

  “Got to buy eggs,” replied Sandy.

  Rod said the gas line had sprung a leak and he was fixing it. The sound of loud voices came from the house, and Sandy thought it must be Rod’s mother and father. He looked toward an open screened window from where the full volume of the voices seemed to come, then turned quickly away with embarrassment. Mr. and Mrs. Temple were arguing fiercely.

  Rod grinned at Sandy and shrugged his shoulders. “They’re at it again this morning. My old man came home plastered to the gills last night and he doesn’t want to go to work this morning, so Mom is giving it to him.”

  The argument kept on. And the longer Sandy stayed the more uncomfortable he felt.

  “I wish they’d cut it out,” grumbled Rod.

  Sandy started to leave. “See you, Rod,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Sure,” said Rod.

  Sandy was glad to get away from there. What a miserable household to live in! It seemed to bother Rod, too. Maybe more than he showed.

  Sandy purchased the eggs and returned home. About half past one Nibbs Spry, Jules Anderson and some other guys came to the house. They were carrying their swimming trunks. The sun had risen high, the sky was clear, and the temperature had soared to ninety-six degrees.

  “Come on swimming with us,” Nibbs said. “Let’s get out of this heat for a while.”

  Sandy stood on the threshold of the front door, feeling the heat envelop him. The cool pool was indeed the place to be now. He was about to tell them to wait while he got his trunks when he spotted Rod Temple coming out of his house and heading for the garage.

  “Ah… no, thanks,” replied Sandy, cracking a weak smile. “You guys go. I’ll see you later.”

  Jules frowned and looked over his shoulder. Rod was opening the garage door.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re going with Rod Temple on his motorbike.”

  Sandy shrugged. “I might.”

  Ike Norman yanked Nibbs’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Punk Peters was already on his way. “Come on, guys,” he said curtly. “I can’t hang around all day.”

  The others turned and followed him. Sandy hopped off the porch and ran across the street. Just as he reached the garage Rod came out and closed the door. He had a couple of wrenches in his hand.

  “Hi, Sandy,” he said. “What’s new?”

  Sandy’s smile faded. “Fixing something, Rod?”

  “Not me. My father is. The kitchen sink sprung a leak.”

  “Oh. Well… see you later, Rod.”

  “Sure thing, kid.”

  Sandy went back across the street and looked for the guys. They were out of sight. Well, heck, he didn’t feel like going swimming now, anyway.

  8

  THE Spacemen were up first in their game against the Sharks on Tuesday, June 21. Red Billings, the Sharks’ tall right-hander, got easily by Kerry Dean and Jules Anderson. Kerry flied out to short, and Jules fanned. Then Sandy stepped to the plate.

  Sandy knew that Red had a pitch that curved in toward a right-hand hitter. A lot of batters tended to hit that curve near the handle of their bats, knocking the ball weakly to the infield or popping it up. Sandy stepped a few inches farther back from the plate, dug his sneakers into the dirt and waited for Red’s first pitch.

  “Ball!” shouted the ump.

  Sandy tapped the bat against the plate and got set again.

  “Ball two!”

  Then Red placed one down the center of the plate. “Steeerike!”

  “Wallop it out of the park, Sandy!” cried a fan.

  Red’s arm came over, and the ball whistled in toward the outside corner of the plate. Sandy started to swing. Held up.

  “Strike two!”

  Sandy stepped back and looked at the umpire. The umpire smiled at him. “That was in there, Sandy,” he said.

  Sandy didn’t argue with him. He stepped back into the box, tugged on his helmet, held his bat high. In came the pitch, letter-high, slightly close. Sandy swung. A smashing drive to deep left center field!

  Sandy rounded first, second and was held up at third by third-base coach Punk Peters. “Nice hit, Sandy,” said Punk.

  Oink Decker cracked out a single through the pitcher’s box, and Sandy scored. Marty Loomis got a lucky break when the shortstop missed his grounder. Dick Regan was lucky, too. The right fielder missed his high fly, advancing Oink to third and Marty to second, filling the bases.

  “A grand slammer, Stubby!” yelled the Spacemen fans. “Now’s your chance, boy!”

  Red Billings was sweating. He took off his cap and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jersey. Then he looked around at the men on bases and finally at Stubby Tobin. Stubby was short and stout and didn’t look dangerous at all. As a matter of fact he looked scared facing tall Red Billings.

  Red pitched. “Strike!” yelled the ump.

  “Come on, Stubby! Come on, boy!” cried the men on the bench. “Show ’em you can do it!”

  “Strike two!” the ump yelled again.

  “Red’s going to mow him down one, two, three,” muttered Kerry Dean.

  Red delivered. The ball smoked in. And Stubby swung. Crack! The ball shot like a white meteor toward left field and every head in the stands turned. Every pair of eyes seemed to pop. The ball sailed over the fence for a home run!

  “He did it!” yelled Nibbs, jumping to his feet in the on-deck circle. “Stubby did it! He blasted a grand slammer!”

  You never saw a happier guy than Stubby Tobin as he trotted around the bases and into the dugout, where Coach Malone and every member of the team shook his hand. It was the first home run of his career.

  “Keep it going, Nibbs!” someone yelled. But Nibbs flied out, ending the top half of the first inning.

  Five runs, thought Sandy, as he hustled out to short. That wasn’t a bad start. Lucky Stubby. Sandy was glad for him. Stubby was a nice kid.

  Dick Regan,
pitching for the Spacemen, struck out the first Shark. The next socked a hard grounder to first baseman Ken Bockman. The ball struck Ken on a toe of his right foot and glanced out to the outfield.

  “Get two!” yelled Sandy.

  But it was the Sharks who got two. Two runs. The next hitter blasted Dick’s third pitch over the left-field fence.

  The two runs seemed to perk up the Sharks’ confidence. They knocked out another single. Then Sandy leaped for a line drive that streaked like a bullet over his head. He caught it one-handed and whipped it to first. The runner didn’t get back in time to tag up. A double play!

  “Terrific play, Sandy,” said the coach as Sandy trotted in. “You robbed that guy of a hit.”

  Sandy grinned. “He hit it hard, too. It really stung.”

  Ken Bockman led off the top of the second and flied out to center. Leadoff man Kerry Dean singled through short, then was put out on a double play on Jules’s grounder to the second baseman.

  The Sharks picked up a run, giving them three to the Spacemen’s five. But the Spacemen had a field day again in the top of the third. Sandy, first up, singled over short. The third baseman fumbled Oink’s grounder, advancing Sandy to second. Then Marty struck out, and Dick popped out to the pitcher. It looked as if that might be it for the Spacemen. But Stubby Tobin came through again, this time with a single, scoring Sandy. Nibbs kept the rally alive by blasting a drive down to third, which the third baseman also missed, scoring Oink.

  Then Ken Bockman came to the plate, tall and skinny as a beanpole, and drilled Red Billings’s first pitch to right center field for a clean triple. Kerry, up again, struck out, ending the half-inning. The Spacemen had scored four runs.

  Sandy looked at his wristwatch. He was wearing it now. He wasn’t going to ask anyone to hold it while he played. It was six-thirty-five.

  “Coach,” he said, “I have to leave in five minutes. You want to put someone in my place now?”

  Coach Malone looked at him. “Sandy, why do you have to leave every game just about the same time?”

  Sandy’s neck turned scarlet. “I — I have to watch my little sisters,” he confessed. “My father works late, and my mother has to leave for work at a quarter of seven. But, please — please don’t tell the guys. They wouldn’t understand.”

  Coach Malone grinned. “So that’s it. Well, okay. Go right now if you want to.”

  Sandy didn’t, though. He stayed till the last minute. The Sharks didn’t score in the bottom of the third. It was exactly six-forty when Sandy sprinted for home.

  “Hey, look!” Ike Norman shouted. “There he goes again!”

  “And the game’s only half over!” said Marty Loomis.

  “How do you like that?” said Stubby. “And he leaves without saying a word to us!”

  Sandy ignored the remarks.

  He read the results of the game in the paper the next day. The Spacemen had beat the Sharks 12 to 6 with “spectacular hitting by Sandy Varga, Stubby Tobin and Ken Bockman for the Spacemen, and Ron Halsey for the Sharks. Tobin had a grand slammer and Halsey a homer with one on. Varga turned in some sparkling plays at shortstop for the Spacemen,” the article added.

  Sandy wondered if Rod would see that.

  On Thursday the Spacemen played the Minutemen. The two times that Sandy was up to bat he flied out to center and tripled, scoring a run. In the third inning he fumbled a hard-hit grounder that resulted in a run for the Minutemen. He wished he could play longer to make up for it, but he couldn’t. Six-forty came, and he had to leave. The Spacemen were leading 4 to 2.

  He stayed in the backyard with Elizabeth and Jo Ann, hoping the guys would drop in after the game and tell him how it had turned out.

  Pop was already home when Sandy saw Nibbs, Jules, Punk and Ike walking by. He stared at them from the yard. They could see him easily if they looked. But they were across the street, and always before they had walked on this side of it.

  And not one of them looked toward him. Not one.

  9

  SANDY VARGA read the results of the Spacemen-Minutemen game in Friday’s Sharil Journal. What a surprise. When he had left the game the Spacemen had been leading 4 to 2. It had ended 6 to 5, the Minutemen winning!

  The box score:

  AB R H

  Dean 3b 4 1 0

  Anderson lf 1 2 1

  bLamarr 2 0 0

  Varga ss 2 1 1

  cMintz 2 0 0

  Decker cf 2 0 1

  dPeters 2 0 1

  Loomis c 4 0 0

  Miller p 3 0 1

  Tobin rf 2 0 1

  Spry 2b 3 0 0

  Bockman lb 1 0 0

  aNorman 1 1 1

  Totals 29 5 7

  a-Walked for Bockman in 4th.

  b-Flied out for Anderson in 4th.

  c-S truck out for Varga in 5th.

  d-On base by error for Decker in 5th.

  Spacemen 103 001-5

  Minutemen 020 220-6

  Frankie Mintz, who had replaced Sandy at short, had not gotten a hit. Neither had Kerry Dean, Marty Loomis or Nibbs Spry, of all whom had played the entire game. Mark Davis, the Minutemen’s skinny, left-handed pitcher, wasn’t that good. But, then, maybe he was.

  Well, at least the score was close. And it was the first game the Spacemen had lost.

  After lunch Mom asked Sandy and Peter to carry the vacuum cleaner into the basement and clean it up.

  “The spider webs, too,” she said. “They are making the cellar look like an old deserted house. We are here, aren’t we? Let us make the spiders know that.”

  Sandy chuckled. He didn’t mind spiders. He found them interesting creatures after reading how they wove their webs and how cunning they were in capturing flies and moths. He’d had a collection of them once — all large — and had to throw them away when Pop found out about it. Pop had no stomach for spiders.

  Peter left at a quarter of one to be at the supermarket by one o’clock. Sandy grumbled about doing the rest of the work by himself, but remembered that Peter had to work to help pay for his way through college. He was hoping he could make the freshman basketball team in college.

  Sandy finished the job, put the vacuum cleaner back into the closet and went outdoors. Just as the screen door slammed shut behind him, he heard Elizabeth shout, “Jo Ann! Come back here! I told you!”

  Sandy saw his little sister next door, crouched beside Rex, petting him, while the big shepherd lay there, resting his long jaws on his forepaws. Sandy shook his head and wondered how long she had been there.

  Well, there was no need to fear Rex. But Sandy went over and got Jo Ann anyway, and told her that her place was here, not there.

  As he walked back with her, Sandy glanced between the two houses toward the Temples’ and saw Rod in the driveway, checking the gas in the motorbike. Rod was wearing his Redwings baseball uniform.

  “Hi, Rod!” Sandy yelled over.

  Rod turned and waved. “Hi! Hey, Sandy, want to come along?”

  “To the ball game?”

  “Yeah!”

  Sandy beamed. “Wait a second! I’ll see!”

  He rushed into the house and asked Mom if he could go. He was all excited. It was the first time Rod had asked him to go with him to a Redwings ball game.

  She gave him permission, and also the five dollars he asked for, promising he’d work it off the next two weeks.

  “Just make sure you are home by half past six,” reminded Mom.

  “Oh, sure, Mom!”

  He ran over to Rod’s as Rod started the motorbike, and he hopped on the rear seat. Seconds later they were buzzing down the street, the motor cracking and spitting before it settled down to a loud, even roar.

  The roar softened as the bike made a left turn at the next block, hopped over a little hump in the street and picked up speed again. This was the life, thought Sandy. Here was a brand-new world of fun and excitement.

  Presently, ahead of them, Sandy saw Nibbs Spry, Jules Anderson and Punk Peters walking on th
e sidewalk. Sandy turned his head. They would just think that he hadn’t seen them.

  10

  THE bike breezed along the black ribbon of highway that ran alongside Deerhead Lake, a glossy, flat mirror of water that stretched out for miles ahead of them. Five miles farther on they crossed a steel bridge. The water underneath flowed from a hundred-foot-high falls that was hidden beyond the curve of the gorge cut out by glaciers millions of years ago and emptied into the lake.

  A quarter of a mile past the bridge, a road turned off from the main highway and up a steep hill. Rod swung onto it, and the motorbike slowed down almost instantly. Higher and higher they climbed, and farther and farther away from the lake. Soon dense trees separated them from it, and the lower road could no longer be seen.

  Many times Mom and Pop had driven the children along that lower road, absorbing the beautiful scenery. They said that the view reminded them of parts of Hungary.

  Sandy hadn’t realized that this road was also a shortcut to the next town, where the Redwings were playing today. They reached the baseball park five minutes before the game started. The Rock Salts, the team the Redwings were playing, were already having their final infield practice.

  “Where’re you been?” the manager snapped at Rod as he trotted to the dugout. “We’re almost ready to go.”

  Sandy didn’t hear Rod’s answer. He walked behind the backstop screen, looking for a seat in the crowded stands. He found one halfway up and sat down.

  The Redwings were up first, and Rod was third man up. The leadoff man struck out, and the second batter walked. Then Rod stepped to the plate.

  “Come on, Rod! Drill it out of the lot!”

  You could tell that Rod had a lot of fans by the way they shouted for him. Sandy felt lucky to be Rod’s pal.

  Rod leaned into a pitch. Bat met ball solidly. Like a white bead shot from a gun, the ball sailed in a high arc to deep center field. A yell burst from the crowd at the same time. Then it faded with disappointment as the ball came down inside the park and was caught.