Catcher with a Glass Arm (5 page)

“Rabbit,” said Jody, “everyone calls him Jim. What’s his last name?”

Rabbit looked at him. “You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t,” said Jody.

Rabbit jerked his thumb at the boy beside him. Jody leaned forward and looked at Moonie Myers—Moonie, whose face was red as
a beet, and who was the only boy on the top seat besides Jody who wasn’t laughing.

“That’s Mr. Myers,” said Rabbit. “Moonie’s father.”

J
ody was stunned. Moonie’s father … no wonder he came to all the games! No wonder he always had a carload of kids with him.
Jody had never really thought much about who he was. He had just figured that he was a good Dolphins’ fan.

“Strike three!”

Mr. Myers went down swinging. It was an awkward swing, as if he had decided to cut at the ball at the very last moment.

The crowd roared. A lot of the fans poked fun at him. It was happy fun. Nobody was serious. But still, the way Mr. Myers turned
away from the plate and walked to the dugout, anybody could tell he was far from happy.

Jody took another look at Moonie. Moonie was sitting like a statue. He was staring straight ahead, his arms crossed. A couple
of other kids looked at him, too. But Moonie didn’t move a muscle.

Two innings went by, and Mr. Myers was up again. There was a man on first base, and no outs.

“Let’s get two!” Jody’s father yelled as he stood in front of the first-base bag, holding the runner on.

The first pitch breezed in, and Mr. Myers moved back from it.

“Strike!”

The fans laughed and poked fun at Mr. Myers again. Jody looked at the faces around him. Some of them looked sorry for Mr.
Myers. But most of them just thought it
was very funny that Mr. Myers was afraid of the pitches.

“Stay in there, Jim! Hit it!”

The folks sitting in front of Jody looked around at him and smiled. Rabbit grinned at him, too, and poked him lightly in the
ribs. His face turned red a little. He really hadn’t meant to yell out like that.

He saw Mr. Myers dig his toes into the dirt, tap the bat against the plate, and then hold it above his shoulder. The pitch
came in, and Mr. Myers didn’t move his feet an inch.

Two more pitches whipped in and Mr. Myers just stood there watching them.

“What’re you waiting for, Jim?” somebody yelled. “Get that bat off your shoulder!”

“Hit it, Mr. Myers!” Jody whispered to himself. “Hit it! Show ’em you’re not afraid!”

The pitch came in. Mr. Myers moved his
foot forward and swung.
Crack!
The ball sailed out like a ship over the second base-man’s head for a clean hit. The runner on first went around to third.
Mr. Myers made his turn at first, then went back to the bag, a happy, proud smile on his face.

The fans cheered. It was the loudest noise they had made since the game had started. Jody, Rabbit, and all the kids on the
top row stood up and clapped thunderously. All… except Moonie.

“Come on, Moonie!” cried Rabbit. “Give your dad a hand! That was a beautiful hit!”

Moonie’s face colored. His eyes blinked a couple of times, and then a smile burst over his face. He stood up and began to
clap as hard as he could.

“Thataboy, Dad!” he shouted. “Thataboy!”

The game ended with the Blues winning, 7-6.

The boys walked out of the ballpark and began to talk about Mr. Myers’s being afraid of a pitched ball and about that nice
single he had hit.

“He’s just like you, Jody,” Frank York said. “Maybe that’s why he always tries to help you when you bat. You’ve been awful
scared of those pitches, too, ever since you got beaned.”

Jody nodded. “Could be,” he said.

“Did your dad get beaned sometime when he was playing baseball, Moonie?” Frank asked.

Moonie shrugged. “I don’t know. If he did, he never told me.”

They kept talking about their fathers. Jody learned some things he had never known before: that some of them had played with
teams in the International League, which was just one jump below the major leagues. His own dad had played semipro.

They were approaching Jody’s house when he heard a dog barking loudly nearby. The boys stopped talking and looked for the
dog.

“There he is,” Johnny Bartho pointed. “At the bottom of that pole.”

They saw a German shepherd standing at the foot of the light pole in front of Jody’s house. He was looking up at something
on the pole and barking his head off.

Jody looked up to see what he was barking at. A cry started in his throat, then stuck there.

Sitting on the very top of the pole was Midnight!

T
he German shepherd belonged to the Slater family, who lived two blocks away. He was kept in their yard most of the time, but
sometimes he would leave and roam the neighborhood. His name was Firpo.

“Firpo!” Jody shouted. “Get away from here! Go on home!”

The big dog merely looked at him, then kept barking at Midnight.

Johnny Bartho picked up a large stone and threw it at the dog. It missed Firpo by inches.

“Don’t!” said Jody. “You might hurt him. I’ll get him away from here.”

Cautiously, he started walking toward the big dog.

“Careful, Jody,” warned Rabbit. “He might bite.”

“He’s not dangerous,” said Jody. “I’ve been close to him before.”

Slowly he walked up to the dog, talking softly all the while. “Come here, Firpo. Come here, boy.”

Firpo stopped barking and looked at him. As Jody approached him, Firpo stepped away. He barked a few more times, but now his
bark was only half as loud as it was before.

“Come here, Firpo,” said Jody quietly. “Let me take you home.”

Firpo stopped moving and began to wag his long tail. His ears stood up straight and
his tongue hung out of his opened mouth. He was looking directly at Jody, and he didn’t seem dangerous at all. Jody took hold
of his collar and gently led him down the street.

Behind him he heard the boys laughing. “Well, how do you like that?” said Johnny. “Who said Jody Sinclair hasn’t got nerve?”

Jody took Firpo home, then ran all the way back. Midnight was still on top of the pole. He was like a fluffy black ball. Only
his head and his shining eyes moved.

“We tried to call him,” said Moonie, “but he won’t budge.”

Jody looked up. There were six wires on the crossbars of the pole, just a couple of feet under Midnight. Dangerous wires that
could mean death. Jody was reminded of the trip back from Lincoln Park when they were trapped by the same kind of electric
wires. The thought made him shudder.

“Jody,” Johnny Bartho said suddenly, “Moonie’s dad works for the telephone company. He has climbers. He can bring Midnight
down. Can’t he, Moonie?”

Moonie shrugged. “He doesn’t climb poles any more.”

“But he can still get a pair, can’t he?” Johnny said.

Jody wiped sweat from his brow. “Maybe he wouldn’t want to climb that high up,” he said. “And those wires. They could be real
dangerous. Maybe he wouldn’t want to take a chance.”

“Oh, sure, he will,” said Johnny. “I’ll go ask him. Okay, Moonie?”

Moonie stood there a moment, chewing on his lower lip and thinking. “I’ll go,” he said then.

Just then Jody’s dad and mom stepped out of the house. Mr. Sinclair’s hair was uncombed, and he was wearing only his pants
and a T-shirt. Jody knew he must have just finished taking a shower.

“What’s going on, boys?” he asked.

“Midnight’s on top of the pole, Dad,” Jody said. “Firpo chased him up there. Moonie was just going to call his dad to bring
some climbers.”

Mr. Sinclair came off the porch and looked up the pole at Midnight. “Can you beat that?” he said.

“Meow!”
said Midnight.

“That’s a job for the SPCA,” suggested Mr. Sinclair. “They have experts who handle jobs like this. No need to bother Jim.
Anyway,” he chuckled, “after that hit he got he wouldn’t feel like climbing a light pole!”

“That’s right! The SPCA!” said Jody. “I’d forgot all about them!”

Mr. Sinclair put in a call to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Within an hour a man drove into the driveway in a pickup truck. The boys pointed at Midnight, sitting on top of the pole.
They watched the man put on his climbers and a long pair of gloves and climb up the pole. Nobody made a sound as the man put
his gloved hand around Midnight, clutched him by the back of his neck, and lifted him off the pole.

Midnight let out a loud
“Meowr!”
and started to claw at the air with his paws. But the man had him well under control. He climbed down the pole with Midnight.
When he reached the ground, he handed Midnight to Jody, and Jody hugged him fiercely.

Jody thanked the man, who smiled and left. Mom and Dad went back into the house. Johnny Bartho and the other boys departed,
too. Only Jody and Moonie remained.

“Moonie,” Jody said. “I want to thank you, anyway, for wanting to go after your father.”

Moonie shrugged. “That’s okay, Jody. I think he would have been glad to rescue Midnight for you. He likes you a lot.”

“I know,” said Jody. “I like him, too.”

“Jody, how about playing catch?”

“Okay. I’ll go in and get a ball and a couple of gloves.”

He brought out his own glove and the one Dad had. They started playing catch.

The very first ball Jody pitched was a looping throw that barely reached Moonie.

“Oh, come on, Jody. Throw ’em up, will you?”

Jody tried again, and again Moonie had to rush forward a few steps to catch the ball before it hit the ground.

“I don’t know, Jody,” said Moonie, shaking his head. “I don’t think you’ll ever be able to throw.”

Jody had forgotten all about his poor throwing. Now that he was reminded of it, he became worried all over again.

He had twice the problem Mr. Myers had! Mr. Myers was only afraid of a pitched ball. He, Jody, was afraid of a pitched ball—
and
he couldn’t throw.

T
hrow that ball! Hit me on the head with it! What are you afraid of? Hurting my hand?”

It was Jim Myers talking. He was on the mound, Jody was behind the plate, and Moonie was on second. Jody didn’t have his catching
equipment on. All they were doing was throwing the ball. Jim would hurl it to Jody, and Jody would either throw it back to
him or to Moonie.

He was doing better than he had all season. The ball snapped from his hand like a shot. He was throwing accurately, too, right
at Jim Myers’s head. And, when he pegged it to Moonie, the ball whipped through the air directly into Moonie’s glove almost
every time.

After a half an hour of this throwing practice, Jim and the boys pulled the batting cage up behind the plate. Then Jim Myers
had Jody put on a helmet and pick up a bat.

“Stay in that box and don’t move,” said Jim Myers. “Watch some of those balls go by. Look them over as well as you can.” He
grinned. “Remember what you yelled to me at the Old-Timers’ game? ‘Stay in there!’ you said. Well, I stood in there. Now let
me see
you
do it… . Okay, son. Pitch ’em in.”

Moonie pitched them in. Jody stood in the batting box, his bat held high over his shoulder. He watched the first ball come
in and goose pimples popped out on his arms. But he stood there, and the ball zipped by and hit the batting cage. Moonie pitched
in a
dozen balls. Twice Jody was tempted to dodge back. But the ball breezed by him, missing him by almost a foot.

“Fine!” said Jim Myers. “Okay, now. Let’s see you hit it, Jody. Just take a short step forward.”

A half a dozen neighborhood kids were in the outfield. They all had gloves. Jody began swinging, taking a short step forward
as Jim Myers had advised him to do. Gradually he began to hit the ball. Gradually he began to feel more comfortable at the
plate. He kept hitting until he was tired, then he pitched to Moonie for a while.

“Okay,” said Jim Myers. “We’ll do this every day between practices and games. Can you be here tomorrow evening, Jody?”

Jody thought a little. “We play the Bears tomorrow,” he said.