Read Online Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jerry Spinelli
Tags: JUV007000
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of rhubarb pie.
After a story like that, Maniac couldn’t just stay behind, so he tagged along when Grayson went back to work. He helped the old man raise a new fence around the children’s petting farmyard. When the park Superintendent came around and asked about the kid, Grayson said it was his nephew come to visit for a while. The Superintendent, who managed the budget, said, “We can’t pay him, you know.” And Grayson said, “Fine, no problem,” and that was that.
From then on Maniac was on the job with Grayson every afternoon. They raised fences, mended fences, hauled stone, patched asphalt, painted, trimmed trees. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, sometimes in the equipment room, sometimes at a restaurant. They spent weekends together.
All the while Grayson told baseball stories (insisting, all along, “I ain’t got no stories”). He told about the Appalachian League and the Carolina League and the Pecos Valley League and the Buckeye and the Mexican Leagues. About the Pedukah Twin Oaks and the Natchez Pelicans and the Jesup Georgia Browns and the Laredo Lariats. All Minor League teams, Minor League baseball.
Sleazy hotels. Sleazy buses. Sleazy stadiums. Sleazy fans. Sleazy water buckets. 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 ol’ 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.
26
I t was impossible to listen to such stories empty-handed. 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
After a story like that, Maniac couldn’t just stay behind, so he tagged along when Grayson went back to work. He helped the old man raise a new fence around the children’s petting farmyard. When the park Superintendent came around and asked about the kid, Grayson said it was his nephew come to visit for a while. The Superintendent, who managed the budget, said, “We can’t pay him, you know.” And Grayson said, “Fine, no problem,” and that was that.
From then on Maniac was on the job with Grayson every afternoon. They raised fences, mended fences, hauled stone, patched asphalt, painted, trimmed trees. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, sometimes in the equipment room, sometimes at a restaurant. They spent weekends together.
All the while Grayson told baseball stories (insisting, all along, “I ain’t got no stories”). He told about the Appalachian League and the Carolina League and the Pecos Valley League and the Buckeye and the Mexican Leagues. About the Pedukah Twin Oaks and the Natchez Pelicans and the Jesup Georgia Browns and the Laredo Lariats. All Minor League teams, Minor League baseball.
Sleazy hotels. Sleazy buses. Sleazy stadiums. Sleazy fans. Sleazy water buckets. 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 ol’ 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.
26
I t was impossible to listen to such stories empty-handed. 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
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