Free Ray & Me by Dan Gutman Page A

stabbed at it with the bat and dropped a perfect bunt in front of the plate. The catcher pounced on it and threw to first for the out. Jamieson advanced to second.
    â€œChapman will kill you with those bunts,” Ronnie said, as he marked the play on his scorecard. “He’s leading the league in sacrifices, again.”
    The Indians had a runner in scoring position, but they couldn’t bring him around. Tris Speaker flied out to centerfield. So did the next Indian. Three outs.
    â€œMays is looking sharp,” Ronnie remarked, as the Yankees jogged off the field. “This could be his lucky day.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” I replied.
    The Indians took the field, and the megaphone man announced that their pitcher was Stan Coveleskie. I knew that name, because he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
    â€œBoo!” Ronnie yelled. “You stink, Coveleskie!”
    Stan Coveleskie was a legal spitballer. When the pitch was banned—just this year, in 1920—he and 16 other guys who were throwing it were allowed to keep throwing it until the end of their careers. After that, there would be no more spitballs. Or legal ones, anyway.
    Before each pitch, Coveleskie put two fingers in his mouth. That didn’t mean he threw the spitter on every pitch, but you never knew when he would throw it. That’s why he was so hard to hit. Sometimes he pretended to throw the spitter but threw a fastball instead. Pitchers have to be psychologists too.
    Anyway, the Yankees couldn’t hit Coveleskie. They went down one, two, three in the bottom of the first. The fans got all excited when Babe Ruth came up to bat, but he hit a weak infield pop-up to end the inning.
    â€œYou’re a big bunch of cheese!” somebody hollered as Ruth ran off the field.
    â€œSo’s your old man!” he yelled back.
    I found myself enjoying the game. Here I was, sitting in the legendary Polo Grounds watching a day game played in 1920. No artificial turf. No designated hitters or steroid-inflated hitters. No exploding scoreboard or fancy computer graphics. This was real baseball, the way Flip always told me the game should be played. I was in the middle of the good old days. I wished they would never end.

    Stan Coveleskie
    One of the interesting things about baseball, they say, is that it has no clock. With football, basketball, soccer, hockey, and most other sports, the game ends when time runs out. But time never runs out in baseball. There’s no time limit. A team can’t build a lead and then just run out the clock. If you could keep getting hits and scoring runs, the game would go on forever.
    The Yankees quickly jogged onto the field to start the second inning. They didn’t have to wait for the TV commercials to finish. There was no TV in 1920. They didn’t even have radio yet. This game was going to go fast.
    I put my feet up on the seat in front of me and put my hands behind my head. And then reality hit me. I reminded myself—a man is going to die here, very soon.
    My dumb plan to supply Ray Chapman with a batting helmet hadn’t worked. But I was sitting no more than 30 yards from where Chapman was going to get hit. I couldn’t just go home after a few innings. I had to do something. I had to come up with a plan.
    If I was going to do anything, I’d have to do it soon. Maybe baseball didn’t have a clock, but Ray Chapman’s life did. And it was ticking away.

13
A Serious Disturbance
    â€œM AN , BALLPLAYERS SURE SPIT A LOT ,” R ONNIE SAID , AS THE Indians came up to bat in the second inning.
    I ignored him. There were other things on my mind. Like saving Ray Chapman’s life. I had gone over all the possibilities in my head. There weren’t a whole lot of options.
    My batting helmet was shattered, so there was no way to protect Chapman’s skull from the ball. I would have to come up with a way to stop Mays from throwing the ball in the first