Mickey & Me (6 page)

NEITHER TEAM SCORED OVER THE NEXT THREE INNINGS
, and it was still a tie game when the Chicks came to bat in the bottom of the ninth. I had been playing patty-cake with some little kids in the stands, but returned to the dugout in time to watch the game.

Chicks first baseman Dolores Klosowski was the leadoff batter. She was a lefty, and the Peach defense shifted to the right accordingly.

With the count at 2-2, Dolores slapped a grounder to the left side of the infield. The third baseman bobbled the ball for a moment. Dolores, seeing she had a chance to make it to first safely, lunged for the bag as the first baseman reached for the throw.

Her left foot slipped as she touched first, and Dolores tried to brace herself with her other leg. But she was moving too fast. I could see her leg was bent at a weird angle as she tumbled in a heap just past
first base. There was a sick-sounding crack.

“Safe!” called the ump.

“Owwwww!” Dolores cried, writhing on the ground, holding her leg.

We all rushed out of the Chicks dugout behind Max Carey, who had picked up the first aid kit the instant Dolores hit the dirt.

“Give her room!” he screamed. “Call a doctor! Her leg may be broken.”

Dolores was on her side, tears and makeup streaming down her face. The umpire looked on with sympathy.

“If it's dislocated, I know how to snap it back in place,” Connie volunteered.

“Touch that leg and you're dead!” Dolores shouted through the pain.

“Get a stretcher,” Max Carey ordered, “and an ambulance. That bone is broken.”

The Chicks carried Dolores back to the locker room. The ump gave Carey a five-minute injury time-out. In the distance, an ambulance siren was already wailing. A couple of the girls held Dolores's hands and tried to comfort her.

“Who's gonna play first base in the tenth inning?” Mickey asked Max Carey.

“If we can score a run,” he replied, “we won't need a first baseman. There won't be a tenth inning.”

“Yeah, but we need a pinch runner for Dolores right now.”

Max Carey looked around the locker room. He
had used all his players. His gaze fell on me.

“Hey, Josephine,” he said. “Can you run fast?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You know how to slide?”

“Sure. Why?”

“I want you to go in there and run for Dolores.”

“What are you, crazy?” I said, backing into the corner. “I'm a guy.”

“So what?” Mickey said. “You don't have to hit. You don't have to play the field. Just run the bases. Don't worry, we'll drive you in.”

“Th-this is ridiculous!” I stammered. “Everyone will know right away I'm not a girl.”

“No they won't,” Mickey insisted. “I've got an extra uniform. We're about the same size. With a cap on—”

“I'm not putting on a dress!” I protested.

“It's not a dress,” Connie informed me. “It's a skirt.”

I wasn't sure what was the difference between a dress and a skirt. But I knew they were both worn by women, and there was no way I was going to put on women's clothes.

“Male bagpipers wear skirts all the time,” Doris Tetzlaff pointed out.

“I don't play bagpipes!” I shouted.

“Don't be such a baby,” Tiby said. “Look, you already dressed up like a chicken. What's the big deal?”

“We don't have anyone else,” Max Carey said. “If we don't produce a pinch runner in three minutes,
we have to forfeit the game, girls.”

All of them looked at me, with big eyes and pleading puppy dog faces.

“I won't do it!” I insisted. “And that's final!”

“Come on, be a man about it,” Mickey pleaded. “Put on the skirt.”

That's when they grabbed me. The entire team—with the exception of Dolores Klosowski, who was being loaded into an ambulance—attacked me. I was helpless. They were all over me, pulling off the chicken suit and ripping off my shirt and pants.

“Help!” I screamed. “Give me back my clothes!”

“We should really shave his legs!” Ziggy hollered. “He's pretty hairy.”

“No time for that!” Mickey replied.

Once they had me down to my underwear, four of the Chicks held my arms and legs while the rest of them put the dress or skirt or whatever it was on me. I struggled to get free, but they were too strong. Tiby and Teeny put a pair of cleats on my feet, and Ziggy stuffed a couple of balled-up pairs of sweat socks in the front of the uniform.

“There,” Mickey declared as she put a Chicks cap on my head. “Nobody will know you're a guy.”

“You look spiffy, sugar!” Merle said.

“This is embarrassing,” I whined.

“I don't know,” Tiby said, looking me up and down. “I think he needs a little makeup.”

“No makeup!” I shouted. “Even guys who play bagpipes don't wear makeup!”

“Lipstick at the very least,” Tiby decided.

“No!”

They grabbed me again before I could make a run for it. Five or six of them pinned me to the floor while Tiby ran to get her makeup case.

“It's a five-dollar fine if you get caught without lipstick on,” Mickey said. “You don't want to get fined, do you?”

This was all my stupid cousin's fault. If she hadn't slipped the Mickey Maguire card in place of my Mickey Mantle card, this never would have happened. I could be partying with Mickey Mantle right now instead of being tortured and humiliated by these lunatic girls.

“Will you stop wriggling around?” Tiby said as she painted my lips. “I'm gonna smear it all over your face!”

“Stop dillydallying!” shouted Max Carey, who was on his way to the dugout to confer with the umpire. “Step on it, girls!”

When they were done with my makeover, they let me off the floor.

“You look like a real all-American girl now,” Mickey said as she led me to the dugout, like a prisoner on his way to jail.

“Pinch running for Klosowski,” boomed the public address announcer, “Josephine Stoshack.”

Max Carey looked me up and down, then shook his head.

“Pathetic,” he grumbled. “Simply pathetic.”

It took the whole team to push me out of the dugout and onto the field.

I'VE HAD A FEW HUMILIATING EXPERIENCES IN MY LIFE
. Like the time my pants fell down while we were climbing the ropes in gym class. And then there was the time I claimed I could balance on one edge of a canoe on Hopkins Pond. But this, by far, topped them all.

I jogged out to first base, pulling my cap down low in hopes that it wouldn't be so obvious that I was a guy. Mickey was coaching first base. Max Carey had come out of the dugout to coach third.

“Okay, listen carefully,” Mickey instructed. “There are no outs. If the ball is hit in the air, you've got to return to first. On the ground, you've got to go.”

“I know all that—”

“Not so low!” Mickey warned me. “They'll hear you!”

“I know all that,” I repeated, raising my voice to
sound like a girl. “I've been in Little League for five years.”

“Wait!” Mickey whispered as she peered into the dugout. “Max is giving you the steal sign.”

“What?” I complained. “Max isn't even in the dugout. I don't want to steal. I thought you said you guys would drive me in.”

“No time to argue. Max is the manager. He's relaying the signs from third. He's trying to stay out of a double play situation. You're stealing on the first pitch. If you make it safely, watch the dugout. If Tiby flips her pigtails, that means you steal third. Got it?”

“Uh, yeah,” I replied. “Tiby is the one with glasses and blond hair, right?”

“Yeah. And if you see her sign, you let Max know by touching the hem of your skirt.”

“What's a hem?”

“The bottom part.”

“Okay.”

This was complicated. Until this season, the “steal” sign of my Little League team was when one of the coaches shouted “Steal!”

Betty Whiting, the Chicks right fielder, was up. I took a few short steps off first base, keeping an eye on the pitcher. She was watching me out of the corner of her eye. I wanted to get a good jump, but I had to be careful not to get too far off first or I'd get picked off.

“Strike her out!” the catcher hollered. “No
batter. No batter.”

The pitcher went into her windup and I took off. Betty swung and missed, which served to prevent the catcher from charging forward to make the throw to second.

I dug my cleats into the hard infield dirt, pumping my legs as fast as I could move them. The Peaches shortstop was coming over to take the throw. The stupid skirt was getting in the way of my legs as I ran. Five feet from the bag, I hit the dirt, hooking my toe around the right side of the base just like Coach Tropiano had taught me. I held a hand to my head to prevent my cap from flying off. The shortstop caught the ball on a hop and slapped the tag on my leg.

“Safe!” called the umpire, who had run out from behind the plate.

The players in the Chicks dugout were on their feet, screaming for me. I got up and dusted the dirt off my skirt.

“Way to go, Josephine!” Mickey hollered.

“Thatagirl!”

Standing on second base, I took a moment to catch my breath and make sure the shortstop threw the ball back to the pitcher. I didn't want her to pull the old “hidden ball” trick on me.

“You must be new,” the shortstop said to me.

“Yeah,” I said in a fake high voice. “This is my first game.”

“Say, a bunch of us are going dancing tonight,”
she said. “Wanna come?”

“I can't,” I replied. “I'm…uh…getting my hair done.” Girls are always getting their hair done, I figured.

“Really? Are you getting a perm? You'd look good with a perm.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “a perm.”

I didn't know what a perm was, but I seemed to remember my mom got one once. She came home and her hair was all curly. She looked like Little Orphan Annie.

“Josephine!” Max Carey shouted from the third-base coaching box. “Stop squawking and get your head in the game!”

I looked to the dugout. Tiby was frantically flipping her pigtails. That meant Max wanted me to steal third! I touched the hem of my skirt to let him know I had seen the sign.

“Good luck with your perm.” The shortstop giggled. I had the feeling that she had only been trying to distract me by talking about my hair.

By stealing second base, I had made it so that the Peaches could not get a double play or even a force-out on a ground ball. There was no pressure to steal third on the next pitch, so I just watched Betty take it for a called strike two. She swung and missed at the next one. One out.

Ziggy was up next. I didn't know if she was a good hitter, but she was waving her bat around menacingly. She watched two pitches out of the
strike zone. I figured if I stayed close to second base, the Peaches pitcher might not think I was a threat to steal third and she wouldn't pay such close attention to me.

It's harder to steal third base than it is to steal second, because the distance from the catcher is much shorter. I knew I would need to get a really big jump on the pitcher.

The shortstop wasn't holding me on, so I got a good walking lead off the base. As soon as the pitcher windmilled her arm, I dug for third.

The element of surprise gave me a slight advantage. The third baseman rushed to the bag to get into position for the throw. Max Carey, coaching third, put his hands down, the classic “slide” sign.

I remembered reading in one of my baseball books at home that Ty Cobb used to look at the infielder's eyes while he slid into the base. The eyes told him where the ball was going. Then he would either slide his toe into the opposite side of the base or stick his toe in the path of the ball and try to kick it away.

I tried to do that too. I ran all out, and while the third baseman waited for the throw, I slid in and stuck my foot into her glove. The ball hit my cleat and bounced away. She let out a curse.

“Safe!” hollered the ump.

The Chicks were screaming and cheering in the dugout. Max Carey came over to me as I dusted off my skirt. I was gasping for breath.

“Okay, good,” he said. “Now listen. You've got to use your noodle now. There's one out. You're not forced to run. Don't do anything stupid like try to steal home. Give Ziggy the chance to drive you in. If she gets a hit, you're home and we win. If she hits a fly ball to the outfield, you tag up and we win. A passed ball or wild pitch, you slide in and we win. But if she hits a grounder or infield pop, you stay put. Got it?”

“Got it.”

The count on Ziggy was 2-1. A good hitter's count. Ziggy waved her bat around. She looked like she really wanted to get the game-winning hit.

Maybe too much. She popped the ball up. I dashed back to third. The first baseman grabbed the pop for the second out. Disgusted with herself, Ziggy trudged back to the dugout. Connie Wisniewski stepped up to the plate.

“C'mere,” Max Carey said to me. Then he whispered in my ear, “Steal home.”

“What?!” I replied. “Steal home? A minute ago, you told me not to do anything stupid like steal home!”

“That was a minute ago,” Max explained. “There was only one out then, and Ziggy is a good hitter. But now there are two outs. Connie is our last hope to drive you in. If she makes an out here, we have to go to extra innings. Connie has a bum knee, and she's not swinging the bat well. So you've got to drive yourself in.”

“But—”

“Steal home,” Carey hissed in my ear.

You hardly ever see anybody steal home in a baseball game. There's a good reason for that. It's almost impossible. A thrown ball moves faster than even the fastest runner. To steal home, you have to get a great jump, a tough pitch for the catcher to handle, and a certain amount of luck.

But if Max wanted me to go for it, I would. I took a deep breath and waited while Connie pumped her bat slowly.

“Get a hit, Connie!” somebody shouted from the stands.

“You can do it!”

I edged off third. The third baseman was a few steps in front of me, in case Connie tried to squeeze me home with a bunt. The pitcher glared at me. I wasn't going to wait for her to wind up. As soon as she turned her head back to the plate, I took off.

“She's going!” the catcher screamed.

I made a run for the plate like somebody had planted a bomb in third base. The pitcher rushed her delivery. Connie backed away from the plate to give me room to slide.

Watching the catcher's eyes, I could tell the ball was going to get home before I would. She moved forward to block the plate.

Just when I was about to slide, I saw the ball was already in her mitt. I was dead. My only hope was to go in standing up and knock the ball loose.

I put my head down and arms over my face to give me at least a little protection. It was going to be a nasty collision, I knew that for sure.

I crashed into the catcher without slowing down. Together we tumbled to the ground, all arms and legs. I fell heavily on home plate, having no idea if I was safe, out, or maybe even thrown out of the game for unneccesary roughness. I was exhausted from running the bases. There was a sharp pain in my back.

I looked up for the umpire's call, but he hadn't given it yet. He was looking to see if the catcher was holding the ball.

Something was jabbing into my back, so I rolled over to get off it.

It was the ball.

“Safe!” the umpire shouted.

The fans went nuts. The Chicks were out of the dugout before I could get up, shrieking with delight. They mobbed me, hugging me, kissing me, pounding me on the back. Max Carey told me I had “moxie.” I didn't know what moxie was, but I figured it had to be something good, and I was glad I had it.

Final score: Chicks 7, Peaches 6.

And I, Josephine Stoshack, was the hero.