Free God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher

wasn’t the longest ball I ever saw hit here. The longest ball was one I hit, by sheer blind luck, when I was just out of the service and playing town ball. We were facing a fireball pitcher, one of those crazy Carter boys out of the Landing, and I literally closed my eyes and ‘swang from the heels,’ as old John McGraw used to say. Somehow, I connected. I lambasted that old grass-stained baseball clear over the bandstand in center field.
    â€œWell, the Montreal Flyer—a misnomer if there ever were one—just happened to be passing through town at the time. I thought the ball I hit was going to clear the train, maybe bounce off the steps of the hotel porch. Instead, a fella in a seersucker suit and a blue-and-white boater hat, smoking a cigar on the rear platform of the caboose, reached up and caught that baseball one-handed, neat as you please. He made as if to throw it back onto the green but instead he dropped the ball in his jacket pocket. Then he lifted his hat in our direction and made a little bow, and he was still bowing and tipping that foolish boater hat as the caboose passed out of sight. A howl went up from both teams. That was our only ball, you see. Stealing our baseball was about the meanest thing we’d ever seen a man do.”
    â€œYou didn’t see this one lose my trophy fish for me,” Athena said, nodding at Charlie.
    Charlie laughed, but Prof, still looking out the window as if at the man in the seersucker suit making off with the team’s only baseball, said, “We scrounged up another ball from somewhere or other and finished the game. I’m pretty sure we lost, but at least we were left with something to talk about. And with a grievance, too, which of course was almost as satisfying as a win over a much-despised rival. One day a month or so later a package arrived at the post office. It was about the size of a shoebox, and addressed to the “Baseball Players, General Delivery, Kingdom Common, Vermont.” That’s all. No return address. Old Cap Wally Bowen, our playing manager, opened it up and inside were two baseballs. No note or other explanation. Just the balls. One was grass-stained and scuffed, like the one I’d whacked over the bandstand. The other was brand-new, white as fresh paint, with bright-red stitching and that wonderful horsehide scent that of all the things in the world only a baseball has. What’s more, that new baseball had been signed. It was signed by Ty Cobb and every other member of the 1906 Detroit Tigers. And under Cobb’s signature, in the same flourishing handwriting, it said, ‘Back to you, fellas.’”
    â€œWow!” Athena said.
    â€œGreat story,” Charlie said. But Prof wasn’t finished.
    â€œMy point,” he said, “is that in the realm of human affairs, people aren’t always exactly who they seem to be. Look, it was said that Cobb would spike his own grandma, if necessary, to steal second base. I’m sure he would have. But there was more to him than that. And that’s the point.”
    â€œWhat happened to the baseballs?” Jim said.
    Prof gave him an approving look. “That’s just the kind of question I’d expect a storywriter to ask. What happened is I put them on top of that glass-fronted bookcase in my office at the Academy and a year or so later the damn things vanished without a trace. At first I was mad, but after I cooled down, I figured some kid was getting the good out of them in a cow pasture or vacant lot, and that’s what a baseball was meant for. This meal’s on me, kiddos.”
    Prof stood up and tipped his cap to Athena. “Ma’am,” he said. Then he shook Charlie’s hand.
    To Jim he said, “Let’s hit the high dusty, son. No rest for the wicked.”
    *   *   *
    Before returning to Miss Hark’s place, Jim and Prof walked down the lane through the field behind the manse to watch