Read Online Ted & Me by Dan Gutman - Free Book Online Page B

“Louisville.”
    â€œLouisville?” Ted asked. “Did you run away from home? You’re gonna get yourself killed, Junior! There are all kinds of nuts roaming the streets at this hour, y’know. I’m sending you home. What’s your name?”
    â€œNo, don’t send me home!” I exclaimed. “Look, my name is Joe Stoshack. I’m not lost. I didn’t run away from home. I’m fine. It’s a long story.”
    And this wasn’t the time to tell it. I knew that if I told Ted Williams I came from the future andthat I can travel through time with baseball cards, he would be sure I was crazy. He might take me to a mental hospital or something. No, I would have to win his trust before telling him the truth about why I was there. I would wait until the time was right.
    Famous people, I’d heard, usually care about one thing more than anything else: themselves. I thought it would be best to change the subject—to Ted.
    â€œWhat are you doing out here so late?” I asked him. “Don’t you have a game tomorrow?”
    â€œTwo,” he replied. “A doubleheader. I like to walk at night. It helps me think. You wanna keep me company for a while, Junior?”
    â€œSure.”
    He pulled a shapeless, rumpled hat out of his pocket and put it on.
    â€œI don’t want to be recognized by anybody else,” he said.
    I glanced at a sign on the corner and saw that we were on Chestnut Street. Ted seemed to know where he was heading. I followed. He walked quickly with his head down, as if he was looking for change on the sidewalk.
    I noticed for the first time that he had a pink rubber ball in his right hand, and he was squeezing it.
    â€œWhat’s the ball for?” I asked.
    â€œIt makes my hands strong,” he replied.
    We crossed 5th Street. A park was on the right, and there was a homeless man wrapped in a blanket asleep on a park bench. There was a shopping cartnext to him with some bags in it. Ted stopped for a moment in front of the guy.
    â€œLook at that,” he said disgustedly, “a block from the Liberty Bell. How could a country as rich as America have people living like that? It’s a sin.”
    Ted pulled a bill out of his wallet and slipped it into the homeless man’s bag. The guy never woke up.
    â€œYou said walking helps you think,” I said to Ted as we crossed 4th Street. “So what are you thinking about?”
    â€œI got the heebie-jeebies,” Ted said.
    â€œHuh?” I had no idea what that meant. It sounded like a disease.
    â€œYou probably know about the whole .400 thing,” Ted said.
    â€œYeah,” I said, “your batting average is .399, and tomorrow’s the last day of the season.”
    â€œIt’s .3995535, actually,” he said. “If I stopped playing right now, it would be rounded up to an even .400. We’re not fighting for the pennant or anything. The games tomorrow don’t matter. So Cronin said I could sit out the doubleheader if I want to. It would go into the record books as .400.”
    I remembered the name Joe Cronin. I had read about him in my baseball books. He was a Hall of Famer who became the manager of the Red Sox after his career was over.
    â€œSo that’s why you have the heebie-jeebies?” I asked. “What’s the problem?”
    â€œThe problem is, that’s not the way The Kid doesthings,” he replied. “You don’t become great by sitting on a bench.”
    The Kid. That was another one of his nicknames, I remembered, and he used it himself.
    I wondered if the athletes of the twenty-first century would feel the same way as Ted. If any of today’s players hit .400 for a season, it would be huge . The guy would be all over the news. He’d get his picture on a Wheaties box. He would make millions of dollars doing TV commercials. And if he was hitting .3995535 going into the last day of the season, I would