Free Highpockets by John R. Tunis

youngster.
    Highpockets dropped baseball with regret. In despair he asked, “What school d’you go to, Dean?”
    “Franklin.”
    “What grade you in?”
    “Eighth.”
    Well, that’s something. For the first time since entering the room the ballplayer felt on surer ground. “That so, that so? Now, I have a kid brother down home in Bryson City, boy ’bout your age; he’s in the eighth, too. Then most likely you’ll go to high school next fall.”
    “Yeah.”
    The patient seemed less than enthusiastic about his promotion, yet Highpockets had no choice save to proceed along the same conversational road. “Well, now, what d’ya study in school, Dean?”
    He ran his fingers nervously through his tousled hair. “Oh, I d’know. English. History. Oh, an’ geogerfy, too.”
    “Which d’you like best?” At this point Highpockets began to feel like a reporter assaulting a baseball star with a series of senseless questions, talking merely to keep things going, hoping to strike on an angle for a story. An angle, an angle, that’s what they were all after as they asked those stupid questions, invariably the same ones. How did it feel ... your greatest thrill ... what do you find different in the majors ...
    Suddenly he realized that he too was asking the lad in the bed the same sort of questions. For the first time Highpockets understood why sometimes sportswriters left him after an interview with a worried look upon their faces; for the first time he had some slight feeling of sympathy for those pests of the baseball world. It was a revolutionary idea, although Highpockets hardly appreciated this at the moment.
    “Oh ... I guess ... geogerfy. We study that book ... now ... Our World Today .”
    This was the first time the boy had volunteered a thing. Naturally the ballplayer had never heard of the book, so that topic was soon finished.
    “Well, what d’you study next year in high school?”
    Again that apathetic glance and the everlasting, “I d’know.”
    Highpockets was really discouraged. This was work, real hard work. He thought of his own kid brother, same age, same blue eyes, same yellow hair sticking up straight that never seemed to have been combed. Only if Henry Lee were in the same room with, say, Roy Tucker or Harry Chase of the Giants or Razzle Nugent, he would be sitting up straight, talking. He could talk with them, too, for he knew the batting averages of everyone in the league last year, and when they came up, and how. What he didn’t know, which would be little, it wouldn’t have taken him long to discover. Henry Lee McDade was a question machine from which questions poured endlessly whenever baseball was at issue. The questions usually came so fast he could hardly ask them, one after another, in such excitement that he stumbled and stuttered slightly as he tried in his haste to find out everything he wanted to know: what really happened in the third game of the ’44 Series, and whether Raz minded pitching to left-handed batters, and what kind of a manager Spike Russell was, an’ was he a better manager than Spunky Stowell of the Braves, an’ ... an’ ... an’ ...
    He heard his brother’s high-pitched tones, saw his tense face, his concentrated, wide-open eyes. This boy was different. What did he like, what interested him, how on earth could you talk with such a kid? The ballplayer became aware of the faintest tinge of respect for his enemies, the sportswriters, a feeling that was distinctly novel. It must be like this interviewing that rookie Ted Harkins of the White Sox and Judson Strong of the Cards. Yep, and Highpockets McDade of the Brooks, too.
    He also discovered that he had assumed a knowledge of kids he did not possess. The whole thing was disconcerting. The silence persisted. The kid ran his fingers through his mop of hair and said nothing, which didn’t help.
    Highpockets rose. “Gotta be going. Gotta get moving. I’m playing in the All-Star game in Cincinnati tomorrow