The Year Mom Won the Pennant (2 page)

When Nick and Gale ran up, puffing, in front of the dugout, Mom was handing a ball to Johnny Linn to hit to the infielders.
Near
first base, Bill Dakes, a utility infielder, was hitting flies to the outfielders.

“Well,” Mom said a bit firmly, “I wondered whether you boys had decided to play baseball or go fishing. Nick, work out there
with Jim. Gale, trot to the outfield and shag flies with those other boys.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Vassey,” Gale started to apologize. “It was my fault that we —”

“Never mind,” Mom interrupted. “Get going. We don’t have much time.”

Johnny’s hits to the infielders were soft and easy to handle. They were nothing like the hard grounders Dad used to hit to
them. As far as Nick was concerned, the practice meant nothing more than a little exercise.

Then it was time for the Tornadoes to take their turn on the field. While they did so, Mom reshuffled the lineup slightly.

It was as follows when she was done:

An umpire of the regular season had accepted the job of umpiring this non-league game. Nick picked up a bat and crouched on
one knee in front of the dugout. Waiting for the first pitch from the Tornadoes’ tall left-hander, Lefty Burns, was Cyclone
Maylor.

Lefty breezed the first pitch by Cyclone for a called strike, then slipped another one by him. Cyclone yanked nervously on
his
helmet while Mom yelled to him to “Swing when it’s in there!”

Crack!
A high soaring fly to center. The Tornadoes’ center fielder moved forward three steps and caught it easily. Jerry Wong socked
a grass-cutting grounder down to third for out number two, and Nick was up.

“Here he is!” shouted Bugs Wheeler, the Tornadoes’ catcher. “The big one, Lefty!”

And to Nick: “What’s your mother been doing, Nick? Taking coaching lessons? She’ll need more than that to beat us!”

Nick glared at Bugs and set his teeth. He watched the first pitch come in, but he was too rattled to be ready for it.

“Strike!” said the ump.

Bugs laughed again. “’Ataway to go, Lefty! Pitch to me, baby! I think I got his number!”

N
ick braced himself for the next pitch. He tried to ignore Bugs’s taunts and concentrate on the game.

The pitch. “Ball!”

The next was in there and Nick swung.
Crack!
A sharp line drive over third! Nick dropped his bat and started to bolt to first base. But he saw the ball curve and strike
the ground just inches outside the foul line and he stopped.

“Tough luck, Nick!” shouted Mom.

Bugs was grinning when Nick picked up the bat to try again. “Too bad, Nick. Maybe
your coach could tell you what you did wrong that time.”

Shut up!
Nick wanted to say. But that would only make Bugs realize his remarks were hitting home.

“Ball two!”

Lefty couldn’t get the next two pitches over either, and Nick walked. He flashed a quick grin at Bugs as he tossed the bat
aside. But Bugs wasn’t looking at him now.

Gale Matson fouled the first pitch, then drove a sky-rocketing fly to short center field. The shortstop, second baseman, and
center fielder all ran after it. It was the center fielder who yelled for it and caught it. Three outs.

A pop fly to Nick, a grounder to Jim, and a caught foul tip on the third strike ended the half-inning for the Tornadoes. In
the top of the second the Thunderballs picked up their first run, but the Tornadoes put across three
on a home run by Bugs with two on. Bugs Wheeler. The guy Nick least wanted to see crack out a homer.

In the top of the third, with one out, Cyclone scored from second on Nick’s double. Gale singled, a worm-wiggling grounder
that just got by Lefty Burns. Russ Gray walked, filling the bases. Then Wayne Snow hit into a double play, leaving two stranded.

The Tornadoes started to hit Frankie hard in the bottom of the third. They scored a run and still had three men on. Nick looked
at Mom sitting in the dugout and wondered why she let Frankie continue pitching. It just proved that she didn’t know enough
about baseball.

Another run scored and Nick wished now that the Thunderballs had not voted Mom in to coach. She just didn’t know what to do
at the crucial times, that’s all there was to it.

Somehow the Thunderballs got the third
out and went to bat, hoping to start a rally of their own. They couldn’t. The Tornadoes came back up in the last of the fourth
and started where they had left off in the third inning. They were knocking Frankie’s pitches all over the lot, and Nick wished
he and Gale had stayed away entirely. Mom just was no coach.

And then, after three runs scored and only one out, Mom decided to do something. “Time!” she yelled, running out of the dugout
and waving her arms at the umpire. “Johnny! Johnny Linn! Come on!”

“Now we’re going to see some strategy!” yelled Bugs Wheeler from the Tornadoes’ dugout.

Johnny Linn trotted in from the bullpen, where he had been warming up, took the ball from Frankie, and stepped onto the mound.
He threw a few pitches to Wayne
Snow, then stepped off the rubber. The umpire called, “Play ball,” and the game resumed.

Nick saw Burt Stevens sitting in the Tornadoes’ dugout with a Cheshire-cat grin on his face. Matter of fact, the whole team
seemed to be grinning like that. He just could not understand why Mom got a practice game with them when there were weaker
teams in the league. She just could not have been thinking.

Johnny Linn got the next two men out without letting the Tornadoes score. But the Tornadoes picked up three more runs during
the next two innings to the Thunder-balls’ two and won the game 11 to 4.

“Better luck next time, Coach!” Coach Stevens yelled over at Mom, the cat grin on his face.

Mom smiled back. “We’re not worrying,
Mr. Stevens! The real fight has not yet begun!”

Nick stared at her.
What
was she saying? Wasn’t it enough that they had lost so badly? Why’d she have to say a thing like that?

The next day Jerry Wong came over with Scotty and took turns playing chess with Nick. Jerry’s father ran the only Chinese
restaurant in Flat Rock.

Next to baseball, Nick liked chess best. Matter of fact, now that Mom was coaching, he probably liked chess better.

Nick won once, Scotty once, and Jerry twice. In both of Jerry’s games his queen and rook tied up his opponent’s king so quickly
that the guys hardly knew what had happened.

After their chess games the next day, they went outdoors to skateboard. Most of the kids in the neighborhood skateboarded
at
one time or another on the sidewalks. Even Jen and Sue had skateboards of their own.

“Nick, look!”

Nick swung around at Jen’s voice, almost losing his balance and falling off the skateboard. There was Jerry Wong on his skateboard,
standing on his hands. The guys and girls looked at him as if transfixed.

“Hey!” Nick said. “You practicing for some show or something?”

Jerry grinned at him. “No. I just learned this yesterday.”

A chess hotshot, now a skateboard hotshot, thought Nick. What was the guy going to do next?

“Hah!” smirked Scotty. “He’s just showing off for the girls.”

That did it. Jerry got off his hands and back on the board with his feet.

“You moron,” snapped Jen. “You embarrassed him.”

“I didn’t mean to,” apologized Scotty.

Jerry was smiling, however, his face red from having stood on his hands. It was hard to tell whether he was embarrassed or
not. But he wasn’t annoyed. That was the important thing. He was sensitive, but seldom had Nick seen him annoyed.

The boys rode down the sidewalk and started to turn past the corner drugstore, when something in the field across Columbus
Street caught their attention. A boy was riding a shiny black horse, sitting straight on its bare back while it trotted as
hard as it probably could. The boy was Wayne Snow. He looked at the guys for an instant, and then looked away.

Scott sighed. “Well, la de da!” he sang. “Isn’t it nice to be rich? You can pretend you don’t know the guys you play baseball
with.”

Down the highway a bit was a big white
house where Wayne lived with his parents. When they were home, that is. Otherwise there was no one except him, his older brother
Ron, and a housekeeper. Mrs. Snow traveled around the country putting on fashion shows, and Mr. Snow was usually away on a
business trip. Nick didn’t know exactly what he did.

Just then two kids on skateboards rounded the corner a block away and started up the sidewalk toward the boys.

“Hey, look who’s here!” one of them shouted. “Nick, I heard your mom’s coaching the Thunderballs!”

Jabber Kane was one kid with the perfect nickname.

“So what?” said Nick. The kid with Jabber was Steve Dale. Both boys played with the Stars.

Jabber laughed as they approached. “I
heard you got beaten badly by the Tornadoes,” he said. “Trouble with your new coach?”

“My mom probably knows more about baseball than your whole bunch of Stars put together,” snapped Nick.

Jabber’s wide smile showed large teeth in front, teeth that Nick felt like knocking down Jabber’s skinny throat.

“I can’t wait till we play you guys,” said Jabber. “I can picture your mom yelling from the dugout, ‘Come on, boys! Don’t
slide unless you have to! You mustn’t get your pants dirty!’ Ha!”

The guys laughed. Including Scotty and Jerry. Nick saw red. He squared his jaw and went after Jabber, his fists clenched.
Jabber whisked around on his skateboard and sped off down the sidewalk, his laughter trailing after him.

“Forget it,” said Scotty. “He’s only kidding.”

“I know,” replied Nick. “But I don’t like it. I hope that when we play those Stars we’ll beat them twenty to nothing.”

What he really wished, though, was that someone else was coaching the Thunder-balls. Someone else, not Mom.

M
ake a lot of noise out there,” Mom told the boys. “Let Johnny know he has nothing to worry about.”

With that final order from the coach, the Thunderballs ran out on the field. It was July 5, the Thunderballs’ first game of
the season. At bat were the Knicks, a scrappy bunch of guys who were talking it up loudly in and around their dugout as if
they had the game sewn up already.

Johnny Linn, on the mound for the Thunderballs, threw in several warm-up pitches
to Wayne. The umpire yelled “Play ball!” and the Knicks’ first hitter stepped to the plate. He was short and his uniform was
almost too big for him.

“Ball!” cried the ump, as Johnny’s first pitch zipped high over the plate.

The infield chatter grew louder but it didn’t help Johnny’s control. He walked the batter. The next man bunted down to first.
Johnny threw him out but the other runner was safe on second.

The next man lined a single over short, scoring the runner.

“Just lucky, Johnny,” Nick said. He caught the throw-in from left fielder Gale Matson and tossed it to Johnny. “Let’s go for
two.”

The Knicks’ batter socked a bouncing grounder to short. Nick caught it and whipped it to second. Cyclone caught it, snapped
it to first. A double play!

“There you go!” Nick said with a smile.

“You asked for it.” Johnny smiled back at him.

“Cyclone Maylor! Jerry Wong! Nick Vassey!” Mom read off the names of the first three hitters. “Let’s get that run back!”

Cyclone let two strikes go past him, then socked a cloud-high drive above the pitcher’s mound. The Knicks’ third baseman took
it for the first out. Jerry let a strike go by, then took four straight balls for a free pass to first. Nick came up, looked
over a couple, then hit a slow grounder to third. The third baseman fielded it, looked toward second, saw that he couldn’t
get Jerry, and threw to first. Out.

Gale pounded a long fly to center. Three away.

The Knicks came up, eager to pile up runs. But they didn’t get any. Instead it was the Thunderballs who began popping the
ball in between the Knicks. Russell Gray started it off with a single, followed by Wayne Snow’s hot grounder over the third-base
bag. Scotty Page drove a long fly to right, which was caught, but which advanced Russ to third.

“Only one out!” yelled Mom, standing in front of the dugout with a finger jabbing the air. “Play it safe!”

“Thataway to talk to ‘em, Coach!” a fan yelled from the stands. Other fans made remarks, too.

The remarks embarrassed Nick as he stood in the third-base coaching box. The people were having a good time, all right. But
it was mostly over watching and listening to Mom. The game had little to do with it. That was how it seemed anyway.

Pat Krupa singled, driving in Russ. Wayne advanced all around to third. Then Johnny Linn singled to left, scoring Wayne. The
fans stood up and clapped their hands thunderously, particularly the young fans. Jen and Sue were with a bunch of girls and
they were shouting louder than ever.

The lead-off man, Cyclone, was up again. Monk Jones, the Knicks’ tall right-hander, breezed a third strike by him for the
Thunderballs’ second out. Then Jerry popped up to the catcher, ending the rally and the bottom of the second inning.

Mom patted Johnny’s back as he started out of the dugout. “Keep your pitches in there, Johnny,” she said. “You’ve got good
boys behind you.”

Johnny simply nodded. He was a quiet kid. A half-dozen words from him equaled a thousand from Cyclone.

The Knicks started to hit. A double over second base. A single between third and short. A long fly to second, which Jerry
caught, but which accounted for a run after
the runner tagged up. Two more runs scored before the Thunderballs could settle down and make the second and third outs.