The Year Mom Won the Pennant

by Matt Christopher

  “Wayne’s a funny guy,” Gale said doubtfully. “Think he’d get mad at us if he found out?”

  “Who’s going to tell him?” said Nick.

  Gale and Scotty looked at each other, then both shrugged. “Guess it’s all right,” said Gale.

  “Why not?” said Scotty. “We’re not going to hurt the water, are we? Even if Wayne does find out, he wouldn’t care.”

  “Let’s go!” cried Nick, so pleased with the idea he couldn’t wait to get to the pool.

  Each boy picked up his swimming trunks at his house. They met at the Snows’ house and changed into their trunks on the back porch. The gate was locked, so they climbed over the wire fence to the pool.

  The boys dived in and swam from one end of the pool to the other. Then they ducked each other and laughed, having the time of their lives. The water was warm, perfect.

  Nick didn’t know how long they had been in the pool — fifteen minutes . . . maybe twenty — when he saw that Gale suddenly had stopped swimming and was looking at something, or someone, beyond the pool. Nick followed his friend’s gaze and then froze.

  A tall, lean-faced man in a light gray suit and wearing a narrow-brimmed hat stood there on the other side of the fence, looking at them. He was smiling, but his smile wasn’t warm enough to ease Nick’s panic. They were caught swimming in the pool, in a private pool where they had no business being. That was all Nick could think about at the moment.

  “Hi.” The man greeted them in a voice so polite it surprised Nick. “How’s the water?”

  Nick stared at Gale, then saw Scotty pop out of the water a yard or so to his left. “F-fine!” he stuttered.

  He swam to the edge and climbed out. Gale and Scotty started to follow him.

  “You don’t have to get out,” said the man. “I’m Mr. Snow. I think I’ve seen you boys in the neighborhood, haven’t I?”

  Nick forced a smile. It was possible that Mr. Snow had seen them, but this was the first time he had ever seen Mr. Snow.

  “We live just a few blocks away,” admitted Nick, grabbing up a towel and drying himself. You’re not supposed to be here, Mr. Snow! he wanted to yell. You’re supposed to be going to your cottage. That’s where your wife is. And Ron and Wayne. You’re not supposed to catch us swimming in your pool!

  That’s what embarrassed him, getting caught swimming in the pool. Now he knew how terribly wrong it was. And it had seemed such a good idea.

  He looked at Gale and Scotty. They were drying themselves, too. And looking ashamed.

  “I — I’m sorry, Mr. Snow,” said Nick. “This was my idea.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Mr. Snow,” said Gale.

  “So am I,” said Scotty.

  A small peal of laughter bubbled from Mr. Snow. “You’ve repented! That’s good enough for me!” He waved to them. “Well, I’m on my way to our cottage to see the rest of my family. I wanted to stop here to drop off some of my work. So long, boys.”

  “So long, Mr. Snow.” They said it almost together.

  They were dressed by the time they heard Mr. Snow’s car backing out of the driveway. “He’s not a bad guy at all, is he?” said Nick, as he heard the car gun up the street.

  “No, he isn’t,” said Gale. “And for that reason, I’m sorrier for going into the pool than I would be if he was.”

  They climbed over the fence and started down the street.

  “Race you to the corner,” said Nick numbly.

  He didn’t feel like racing, though. He just wanted to say something to break the awkward silence.

  The Thunderballs beat the Stars on Friday. Wayne’s brother Ron had driven him to the game and Mom thanked them both.

  Then Nick asked Wayne if his father had told him about the swimming pool incident. “No,” said Wayne, looking surprised. “What happened?”

  “Nothing, except that Gale, Scotty, and I went swimming in your pool and your dad caught us. We told him we were sorry.”

  Wayne smiled. “That’s okay,” he said. “Come over anytime.”

  “Not unless you’re there,” replied Nick, shaking his head. Under no circumstances would he ever go there again unless one of the Snows was home. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how foolish his idea had been. Not only was it dangerous to swim in an unsupervised pool, but it was outright trespassing.

  On Tuesday the Thunderballs rolled over the Knicks, knocking Monk Jones out of the box in the third inning. Mom seemed especially pleased about that.

  On Thursday something unusual took place just before the game with the Zebras. A photographer from the local paper, the Flat Rock Sentinel, arrived. With him was a reporter who asked Mom all sorts of questions about herself, her family, when her interest in baseball had begun, and so on. The photographer took pictures of her and stayed for the game.

  The Thunderballs scored twice in the third, twice in the fourth, and once in the sixth. The Zebras piled up only three runs altogether, and lost the ball game 5 to 3.

  “Things weren’t looking so good in the first two innings,” said Cyclone as the team was loading the equipment into the car. “Those newspaper guys must have brought us good luck.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” said Mom. “You boys are getting good.”

  Mom, Dad, Nick, and the girls went to Wong’s Chinese Restaurant for dinner the next evening. Mr. Wong, Jerry’s father, came to their table to wait on them.

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Vassey,” he said. “Nice picture of you in the paper. Fine write-up, too.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wong,” said Mom, smiling modestly.

  “Well, hi, Coach,” said a voice from the other side of the room. “Heard the Zebras did some sloppy playing yesterday.”

  All eyes turned and settled on Coach Burt Stevens sitting there with his entire family. Mrs. Stevens, the coach, and their two children began to laugh.

  “Hi, Coach Stevens,” said Mom. “Yes, we won. But it was because the Thunderballs did some fine playing.”

  “Remember what I said before,” said Coach Stevens with a chuckle. “There’s still a long way to go.”

  Dad took a pencil and a small pad out of his pocket, wrote on the pad, tore out the sheet, and folded it. When a waitress brought the food, Dad handed her the sheet. “Give this to Mr. Stevens, will you, please?”

  “Certainly.” She took the note to Mr. Stevens, who read it, then burst out laughing.

  “You’re on, Craig!” he said to Dad.

  Everyone looked from him to Dad. “What’s that all about?” asked Mom curiously.

  Dad grinned. “A private secret between Burt and me. Let’s eat.”

  12

  The game Nick had dreaded was with the Tornadoes on Wednesday, July 27. He didn’t like that smirk on Mr. Stevens’s face. He didn’t like Bugs Wheeler’s sarcastic remarks. Matter of fact, he didn’t like the Tornadoes at all.

  “Let’s beat these guys,” he said as he squeezed in between Gale and Johnny on the bench. “We whipped them before. Let’s do it again.”

  He wasn’t starting at short. Jim Rennie was. That meant that he would go in for the last two or three innings.

  “Bill, Jerry, Jim,” Mom read off the names of the first three hitters. “Pick up your bats. Get up there and swing.”

  The Thunderballs had first raps. Lefty Burns was pitching for the Tornadoes, looking tall and confident on the mound. He got two strikes on Bill, then Bill laced a grounder through short for a single, and went to second on Jerry’s sacrifice bunt.

  Jim flied out. Then Tom Warren doubled, scoring Bill, and Mike Todey singled, scoring Tom. Wayne flied out for the third out.

  “Nice start, guys!” cried Nick as the guys came in for their gloves. “Now hold them.”

  The Tornadoes knocked in a run in the first and another one in the second. The Thunderballs crept ahead by one in the top of the third, but the Tornadoes picked up two to go into the lead 4 to 3.

  “Hey, Nick!” shouted Bugs Wheeler. “When are you guys going to bu
y your coach a uniform?”

  “When you buy a muzzle for your mouth!” Nick yelled back. He wasn’t going to let Bugs get away with every remark he made.

  “That’s telling him, Nick!” a Thunderball fan shouted.

  Frankie Morrow, batting for Johnny Linn in the fourth, poled a long homer. Bill Dakes flied out. Then Gale, batting for Jerry, singled. And Nick, going in for Jim, drove a streaking grounder over the third-base sack for a double. The coach held Gale up at third. Scotty, pinch-hitting for Tom, flied out to deep short.

  “Settle down, Lefty!” shouted a Tornadoes fan. “Smoke those pitches in there so they can’t see ‘em!”

  He didn’t smoke one past Mike Todey. Mike singled through second, driving in both Gale and Nick. Then Wayne flied out for the second time. Three away.

  The Tornadoes’ bench was extremely quiet. Mr. Stevens looked concerned, and Bugs Wheeler seemed to have already purchased a muzzle and was wearing it. Nick grinned. Wouldn’t it be something to beat the Tornadoes again? Then Mr. Stevens would think twice before considering the Thunderballs a pushover, and Bugs Wheeler’s mouth would be muzzled for good.

  The Tornadoes tied it up during their turn at bat, giving them, especially Bugs, an opportunity to blow their horns again. In the top of the fifth the Thunderballs failed to score. The Tornadoes came up and knocked in two to go into the lead 8 to 6.

  “Come on, Nick!” the guys shouted as Nick stepped to the plate to lead off the last inning. “Start it off with a long blast!”

  “You don’t really think you’ll do that, do you, Nick?” needled Bugs, smiling behind his face mask.

  “Watch me,” answered Nick.

  Nick followed Lefty’s first pitch carefully. Too low. The next one looked good. He swung. A long, clean, solid drive to deep left! The fans started to shout and whistle .. . even before the ball sailed over the fence!

  “Were you watching?” Nick said to Bugs as he crossed the plate.

  “Just lucky,” Bugs mumbled.

  “One more run ties it up!” Mom said excitedly. “Let’s go after it, Scotty!”

  Scotty tried. He singled. Mike flied out. Then Wayne singled, advancing Scotty to second. That’s where he stayed. Cyclone fanned and Pat popped up, ending the ball game. The Tornadoes won 8 to 7.

  Outside the Tornadoes’ dugout Coach Stevens’s face was beaming again. “Good game, Coach!” he yelled. “Gave us quite a battle!”

  “Glad you thought so!” replied Mom, with that cool, unruffled smile of hers. You’d think the Thunderballs had won the game instead of the Tornadoes.

  “I’d like to know what that secret is between you and Mr. Stevens, Dad,” said Nick as they rode home in the car.

  Dad grinned. “Sorry. A secret’s a secret,” he said.

  Two days later the Thunderballs redeemed themselves by beating the Stars.

  Wayne and Scotty came over at eight o’clock that evening and played chess in the tent. Wayne’s family had returned from their cottage two days ago and Wayne seemed glad to be back. Guess he would rather be with a lot of friends than spend a vacation at a lake cottage with a boat, a surfboard, and probably all the ice cream and soda he could eat and drink, Nick thought.

  Scotty easily beat Wayne the first game and also won the second, though not as easily. Nick, watching them play, was amused at how cautiously Wayne maneuvered his pawns and bishops. Chess was a game that took a lot of concentration and patience. Wayne was using both. In the third game Scotty still had several pawns left on the board when Wayne said, “Checkmate!”

  Sure enough, he had Scotty blocked from all directions. Then he challenged Nick. Nick beat him a game. By now it was getting dark and time for Wayne to go home.

  “How about playing tomorrow?” Wayne asked.

  “Sure. Come over in the afternoon. You’ve caught on pretty fast, Wayne. And you never played chess before?”

  Wayne shook his head. “Never. It’s a great game. I like it.”

  Wayne and Scotty went home and Nick went into the house. Mom was at the telephone. She seemed extremely concerned about something. Presently she hung up the receiver.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?” asked Jen. “What did Mrs. Maylor want?”

  “She called to remind me that I’m in charge of the program at the Women’s Club at church on Tuesday night,” said Mom, frowning thoughtfully. “It was planned so long ago that I had forgotten about it.”

  Nick went to the bulletin board where Mom tacked notes and looked at the baseball schedule. Next Tuesday the Thunder-balls were playing the Knicks.

  He turned to Mom, his face pale. “You didn’t say you’d do it, did you, Mom? We’re playing the Knicks on Tuesday.”

  She nodded. “I said yes, Nick. It’s too late to back out now. It wouldn’t be fair to make them find someone else at this late date.”

  He crumpled into a chair. Guess Mom was right. But you might as well consider that game lost even before it started.

  13

  Dad took over the coaching job on Tuesday against the Knicks. He quit work early purposely so he could. Johnny Linn pitched and had bad luck from the very start. He walked the first two men. Then an error by Nick gave the Knicks their first run.

  The Knicks stretched their lead to five runs after picking up two in the second and two in the third. Monk Jones, hurling for them, seemed to do everything right. Trailing 5 to 0, the Thunderballs came alive in the top of the fourth and knocked in two runs. Dad’s strategy to bunt Monk Jones as much as possible worked sometimes, but most of the Thunderballs weren’t able to bunt well enough.

  “We want Coach Mrs. Vassey!” a fan yelled. “Where’s Coach Mrs. Vassey?”

  Laughter started in the stands and presently the entire crowd had caught the laughter bug.

  Nick smiled at Dad, who was taking it in good fun. “Guess they want Mom, Dad.”

  “So I hear. And I wish she were here. Believe me!”

  In the top of the fifth the Knicks’ shortstop missed Bill Dakes’s skyscraping pop fly. Jerry Wong tripled, scoring Bill. But no one knocked Jerry in, and the score remained 5 to 3. In the bottom of the fifth, an error by Gale in center field and an error by Cyclone at third helped the Knicks fill the bases.

  “We want Coach Mrs. Vassey!” a fan yelled again. “Where’s Coach Mrs. Vassey?”

  “You think she could have kept those guys from making errors?” another fan piped up.

  “No! But I think the boys play better for her than they do for her husband!” answered the first fan, and then roared with laughter. A dozen or so other fans burst out laughing, too.

  “Mow ‘em down, Johnny!” another Thunderball fan shouted. “Smoke that pill by ‘em!

  The Knicks’ batter watched the first pitch breeze past him for a called strike. He struck at the next one and met it solidly. A two-bagger that cleaned the bases. The Knicks picked up another run before the Thunderballs managed to get them out. Knicks 9 — Thunderballs 3.

  The Thunderballs rallied for two runs in the top of the sixth, but could get no more. The game went to the Knicks.

  Mom had hardly entered the house that night when Sue yelled, “The Knicks trimmed the Thunderballs nine to five!”

  “Quiet, Sue!” Nick glared at her. “Can’t you let Mom get inside first before you give her that news?”

  Mom looked at the faces around her. Her gaze finally settled on her husband. “We can’t win them all, dear,” she said and grinned at him.

  Mom relaxed in an easy chair in the living room and told them about her program at the club. Nick and the girls filled her in on some of the things that had happened in the ball game. Dad seemed to have very little to add.

  At nine-thirty the phone rang in the dining room. Jen set aside the book she was reading to answer it. “For you, Mom,” she said.

  “It’s probably Mrs. Maylor,” muttered Nick. “She probably wants Mom to run another program.”

  Nick tried to strain his ears to hear Mom’s side of the conversation, but
he couldn’t. After a while Mom was back in the living room.

  Mom looked at Nick. She was frowning. “That was Mrs. Snow,” she said. “She and Mr. Snow just got home from seeing a movie and Wayne isn’t home. They had left the door open for him and he’s been home. His uniform’s there. But he is nowhere around and they’re worried.”

  14

  I haven’t seen him since the ball game,” said Nick. “I don’t know where he could’ve gone. He doesn’t seem to have any other friends he visits.”

  “Even if he does, he should have gone home by now,” said Dad.

  “I’ll call up Scotty and a couple of other guys,” said Nick. “Maybe one of them has seen him.”

  He made the calls. Scotty said no, he didn’t know where Wayne was. “How about me calling a couple guys and you calling a couple guys?” he suggested. “Then I’ll call you back?”

  “Good idea,” replied Nick and they decided who to call. Neither of the guys Nick called knew where Wayne was. When Scotty called, his news wasn’t good either.

  “Okay, thanks, Scotty.”

  “No luck,” Nick said to Mom.

  Dad looked at his wristwatch. “The Snows could call the local TV station and have them make an announcement that Wayne is missing.”

  “How about calling the police?” suggested Nick.

  Dad said, “That would be up to the Snows.” He shook his head. “Wayne’s never disappeared like this before, has he?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Nick. “I can’t understand it.”

  And then a thought struck him. Chess. The tent. “That’s a beauty,” Wayne had said the first time he had seen it. “Ever spend a night in it?”

  “Oh, sure,” Nick remembered saying.

  It was just possible . . . Without thinking further, he put on a light jacket, got a flashlight, and headed for the door.

  “Nick, where are you going?” Dad asked.

  “To the tent,” answered Nick. “I’ll be right back.”

  He closed the door softly behind him, then stole up to the tent, flashing the light ahead of him. He drew the flaps apart and looked inside. In the silence he heard soft breathing. He turned the light toward the cot and caught his breath. There was Wayne Snow, stretched out under a blanket, fast asleep!