Free Ray & Me by Dan Gutman Page B

place.
    I had to distract him. Interrupt the game somehow. Maybe I could throw something on the field. No, that would only postpone the inevitable. I would have to cause some kind of a serious disturbance.
    In the twenty-first century, crazy people charge onto ball fields to disrupt games all the time. Usually the cops get to them pretty quickly and dragthem away. But charging the field would probably be a novelty in 1920. I bet nobody had ever done that before. The cops wouldn’t be able to react in time. That might be my only option at this point.
    Then another thought crossed my mind. Streaking! I could streak! That would totally blow their minds if I ripped off my clothes and ran across the field.
    No, streaking might be going a bit too far. I would probably be beaten up by people in the stands before I even got my clothes off. And where would I put my new pack of baseball cards? I couldn’t lose it.
    I looked around. About ten yards away was that security goon who took away my foul ball. He was eyeing me suspiciously.
    There was only one thing I had going for me—knowledge. I knew exactly when Chapman would get hit. He would lead off the fifth inning. The third pitch from Mays would hit him in the head.
    I was lost in thought when suddenly the Cleveland batter hit a long drive to leftfield. It cleared the fence for a home run.
    â€œBoooooooooooo!” yelled the Yankees crowd.
    â€œWho was that?” I asked Ronnie.
    â€œSteve O’Neill,” he replied. “The catcher.”
    Never heard of him. O’Neill circled the bases to a chorus of boos and was congratulated when he went into the Indian dugout. The fan who caught the ball threw it back onto the field. Ronnie marked the home run in his scorecard. The Indians were ahead, 1-0.
    From where I was sitting, I could see that thebaseball they had been using for the first two innings wasn’t white anymore. There was dirt and spit all over it. I bet it was hard for a batter to see. But still, the umpire kept it in the game.
    â€œWhy do you think ballplayers spit so much?” Ronnie asked me.
    â€œBeats me,” I said. “I don’t spit when I play.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    He was right, come to think of it. You don’t see football players spitting through their face guards very much. Basketball players wouldn’t think of spitting on the wood floor during a game. But when you watch a baseball game, it seems like the guys are spitting constantly.
    â€œThey should keep statistics on spitting,” I suggested. “At the end of the year, they could give an award to the guy who spit the most times. That would be cool.”
    â€œCool?” Ronnie said. “Whaddaya mean?”
    â€œUh…swell,” I said.
    I was looking at Babe Ruth in rightfield. He spit, and I told Ronnie to put a mark on his scorecard next to Ruth’s name.
    â€œThat’s one for Ruth,” Ronnie said.
    As the next batter stepped up to the plate, Carl Mays spit on the mound. Ronnie recorded it on his scorecard.
    â€œWally Pipp just spit at first base,” I pointed out.
    â€œPeckinpaugh too,” Ronnie said, quickly marking it down.
    â€œDoes the umpire count?” I asked. “He just spit.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    At the end of the second inning, Cleveland was ahead in the game, 1-0, but the Yankees had the spitting lead, 19-12.
    Nobody scored in the third inning. Ray Chapman came up again with a runner at first, but he bunted into a double play. In the fourth, the Indians scored two more runs with a walk, an error, and a single by O’Neill. That made it 3-0. Ray Chapman was on deck when Cleveland made the third out. The Yankees went down weakly in the bottom half of the inning. The home fans were getting restless for their team to do something.
    The drizzling rain had stopped. I was having fun keeping the spitting statistics with Ronnie, but now it was crunch time. Ray Chapman would be leading off