Read Online Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jerry Spinelli
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Curveballs and bus fumes and dreams, dreams of the Majors --- clean sheets and an umpire at every base.
Funny stories. Happy stories. Sad stories. Just plain baseball stories.
The happiest story being the one about Willie Mays's very last at-bat in the Minor Leagues, before he went up to the New York Giants and immortality. Well, it was of Grayson himself who had last crack at Mays, in the ninth inning of a game with Indianapolis --- and what did Grayson do? All he did was set the Say Hey Kid down swinging --- on three straight curveballs.
The saddest story was the one about the scout who came down from the Toledo Mud Hens. The Mud Hens had a roster slot, and the scout had a notion to fill it with the pitcher with the wicked curveball, name of Earl Grayson. This was Grayson's big chance, for the Mud Hens were Class AAA ball, one short step from the Majors.
The night before the game, Grayson spent half of it on his knees by his bed, praying. And even five minutes before the game, in the dugout, he bent down, pretending to tie his shoe, and closed one eye and prayed: "Please let me win this ball game." Which was something, since he had never gone to a church in his life. ("God musta fainted," he said to Maniac.)
And indeed, maybe God did, or maybe He only listened to Major Leaguers, because Grayson took the mound and proceeded to pitch the flat-out awfulest game of his life. His curveball wasn't curving, his sinker wasn't sinking, his knuckler wasn't knuckling. The batters were teeing off as if it were the invasion of Normandy Beach. Before the third inning was over, the score was 12-0, and Grayson was in the showers.
He was twenty-seven years old then, and that was the closest he would ever get to the Big Show. He hung on for thirteen more years, a baseball junkie, winding up in some hot tamale league in Guanajuato, Mexico, until his curveball could no longer bend around so much as a chili pepper and his fastball was slower than a senorita's answer.
He was forty, out of baseball, and, for all intents and purposes, out of life. All those years in the game, and all he was fit to do was clean a restroom or sweep a floor or lay a chalk line --- or, far, far down the road, tell stories to a wide eyed, homeless kid.
*¤* nihua *¤*
Chapter 26
It was impossible to listen to such stories emptyhanded. As soon as Grayson started one, Maniac would reach into one of the equipment bags and pull out a ball or a bat or a catcher's mitt. Sniffing the scuffed horsehide aroma of the ball, rippling the fingertips over the red stitching --- it's hard to say how these things can make the listening better, but they do, and, for Maniac, they did.
And of course, as happens with baseball, one thing led to another, and pretty soon the two of them were tossing a ball back and forth. And then they were outside, where the throws could be longer; where you could play pepper on the outfield grass of the Legion field, the old man pitching, the kid tapping grounders; where you could shag fungoes, the old man popping high fliers, the kid chasing them down.
And now the stories were mixed with instruction: the grizzled, rickety coot showing the kid how to spray liners to the opposite field; how to get a jump on a long fly even before the batter hits it; how to throw the curveball. Stiff, crooked fingers. that grappled clumsily with Krimpet wrappers curled naturally around the shape of a baseball. With a ball in his hand, the park handyman became a professor.
As to the art of pitching, of course, the old man could show and tell, but he could no longer do. Except for one pitch, the only one left in his repertoire from the old days. He called it the "stopball," and it nearly drove Maniac goofy.
The old man claimed he'd discovered the stopball one day down in the Texas League and that he was long gone from baseball when he perfected it. Unlike most pitches, the stopball involved no element of surprise. On the contrary, the old man would
Funny stories. Happy stories. Sad stories. Just plain baseball stories.
The happiest story being the one about Willie Mays's very last at-bat in the Minor Leagues, before he went up to the New York Giants and immortality. Well, it was of Grayson himself who had last crack at Mays, in the ninth inning of a game with Indianapolis --- and what did Grayson do? All he did was set the Say Hey Kid down swinging --- on three straight curveballs.
The saddest story was the one about the scout who came down from the Toledo Mud Hens. The Mud Hens had a roster slot, and the scout had a notion to fill it with the pitcher with the wicked curveball, name of Earl Grayson. This was Grayson's big chance, for the Mud Hens were Class AAA ball, one short step from the Majors.
The night before the game, Grayson spent half of it on his knees by his bed, praying. And even five minutes before the game, in the dugout, he bent down, pretending to tie his shoe, and closed one eye and prayed: "Please let me win this ball game." Which was something, since he had never gone to a church in his life. ("God musta fainted," he said to Maniac.)
And indeed, maybe God did, or maybe He only listened to Major Leaguers, because Grayson took the mound and proceeded to pitch the flat-out awfulest game of his life. His curveball wasn't curving, his sinker wasn't sinking, his knuckler wasn't knuckling. The batters were teeing off as if it were the invasion of Normandy Beach. Before the third inning was over, the score was 12-0, and Grayson was in the showers.
He was twenty-seven years old then, and that was the closest he would ever get to the Big Show. He hung on for thirteen more years, a baseball junkie, winding up in some hot tamale league in Guanajuato, Mexico, until his curveball could no longer bend around so much as a chili pepper and his fastball was slower than a senorita's answer.
He was forty, out of baseball, and, for all intents and purposes, out of life. All those years in the game, and all he was fit to do was clean a restroom or sweep a floor or lay a chalk line --- or, far, far down the road, tell stories to a wide eyed, homeless kid.
*¤* nihua *¤*
Chapter 26
It was impossible to listen to such stories emptyhanded. As soon as Grayson started one, Maniac would reach into one of the equipment bags and pull out a ball or a bat or a catcher's mitt. Sniffing the scuffed horsehide aroma of the ball, rippling the fingertips over the red stitching --- it's hard to say how these things can make the listening better, but they do, and, for Maniac, they did.
And of course, as happens with baseball, one thing led to another, and pretty soon the two of them were tossing a ball back and forth. And then they were outside, where the throws could be longer; where you could play pepper on the outfield grass of the Legion field, the old man pitching, the kid tapping grounders; where you could shag fungoes, the old man popping high fliers, the kid chasing them down.
And now the stories were mixed with instruction: the grizzled, rickety coot showing the kid how to spray liners to the opposite field; how to get a jump on a long fly even before the batter hits it; how to throw the curveball. Stiff, crooked fingers. that grappled clumsily with Krimpet wrappers curled naturally around the shape of a baseball. With a ball in his hand, the park handyman became a professor.
As to the art of pitching, of course, the old man could show and tell, but he could no longer do. Except for one pitch, the only one left in his repertoire from the old days. He called it the "stopball," and it nearly drove Maniac goofy.
The old man claimed he'd discovered the stopball one day down in the Texas League and that he was long gone from baseball when he perfected it. Unlike most pitches, the stopball involved no element of surprise. On the contrary, the old man would
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