The Boy from Left Field (14 page)

Friends and Relations

The next day a television report on the great discovery was broadcast all over Canada.
RIVERDALE KIDS FIND FAMED RUTH BASEBALL
trumpeted one of the newspapers. Skeptics immediately appeared, questioning the authenticity of the ball. “A ball fished out of the lake and missing for decades? — sounds fishy to me,” wrote one testy columnist.

Mr. Rizzuto, however, was no fool. Weeks later the baseball was still being analyzed by experts, lab tests would soon be released, and everything pointed to the likelihood of this being the ball hit by the Great Bambino. “If it’s not the real deal, we’ll still make a fortune,” he assured Hawk. “I’ve already been offered a cool million, no questions asked, by a Japanese collector. I rejected it, of course. I’m holding out for a
couple
of million.”

Hawk read the papers and was thrilled by the pictures and by the prospect of making a fortune, but he was sorry that the baseball had disappeared again. He wanted to look at it, hold it in his hands, and tell himself over and over that he’d helped find this very special treasure. It seemed as if they had found it, only to have it spirited away again into another kind of never-never land. His father tried to reassure him. Together, they looked at the many pictures Hal Hodges had taken of the baseball, and at one in particular in which Hawk was holding the ball up in front of him, a triumphant smile on his face.

“That’s the idea!” Jim told him. “Be happy because you had a chance to get in touch with something unique, to hold it in your hands. Just look at that baseball,” he said to Hawk, pointing at a blow-up of the same photograph. “It’s a piece of horsehide and cork and stitching shaped in a little circle. And what’s so special about that little circle? I’ll tell you what! It connects you to the past, to another world, to a famous player who played a great part in baseball history. When you see that ball, you’re looking at a time that’s gone forever, a time that was good in some ways, but very bad in others.

“Just think. Your friend Elroy could never have played baseball with the pros in those days — blacks weren’t allowed. You and I would have been sent off to some horrible residence school to be ‘re-educated’ and abused by white men. Panny and her relatives wouldn’t even have been allowed into the country, or if they made it here, would have been stuck with some menial job. An Irishman like Skimmer O’Boyle would have been sneered at and never allowed into the houses of some well-off Toronto folk.

“Today, when you and I look at a little circle like that baseball, we ought to think of the Earth, the globe itself. This old Earth has shrunk some since those old days — it seems almost as easy to get a view of the whole big globe as of that small baseball. And you know something, Hawk? The whole human race — people all over the planet — are claiming a good life for themselves these days. Everybody wants to be respected, and, sure enough, everyone who tries to live right
deserves
to be respected — and helped. If you get some money for this little round globe of a baseball, this souvenir, you should think about that big globe and how every age has its challenges. Don’t just think about getting money. Think about how, when you grow up, you can help make the world a much better place to live in, so we don’t go back to the
bad
times of Babe Ruth’s ‘good old days.’”

Storm Cloud, who had rushed back from Ottawa after Hawk’s adventure, very upset over his dangerous expedition, had soon gone back to the capital. Now that the baseball was deemed valuable, she appeared in Riverdale again to congratulate Hawk. “I always knew my son would be famous,” she told him. “But I didn’t know it would happen when you were only ten years old. You have to be careful, though, when you sell that baseball. When they find out you’re a Native, they’ll be sure to try to cheat you.”

“Don’t worry, Mum, everybody’s been great. And Mr. Rizzuto is very smart. You know the baseball is going to be on display at the new Yankee Stadium. All of us kids are getting a free trip to the stadium, too. And Mr. Rizzuto is going down to visit his daughter. They’re going to be friends again after all these years.”

“That’s only sensible, Hawk. Parents should always be friends with their children. Otherwise, what’s the world coming to?”

“I’m just glad that you don’t have to sell trinkets in the street anymore, Mum. I’m glad that I can stay in Toronto and visit you sometimes in Ottawa. I love my school and my class. I finally gave my talk on the Ojibway-Cree. I showed them drawings that I did myself, I played CDs of authentic music, and I told some great stories that I got from Dad. I did tons of research. I got an
A
in presentation, creativity, imagination, and originality,
and
the class questions didn’t scare me like I thought they would. That’s an
A
, Mum, not a
P
like Mrs. MacWhinney gave me.”

“That’s great!” Storm Cloud gave her son a hug. “You take after your mother.… And I never sold ‘trinkets,’ by the way. They were tiny art pieces. Of course, I haven’t got time to do that anymore. I’m too busy organizing events and protests. They really need me up in Ottawa. I’ve got a great apartment, too, and I can’t wait for you to come and visit. Maybe we can go on a march together.”

A few days later the kids were in Professor Sam’s apartment, telling him about their adventures. Panny’s cousin listened eagerly and even took notes — after all, he was a crime expert, and was already collecting information on their case.

“This is great stuff,” he assured them. “I’m almost glad you didn’t take my advice and stay away from that Ripper gang. It was dangerous, but you did have a real adventure. Does anybody know what’s happened to the gang members?”

“My cousin Stanley — he’s a policeman, the one who rescued us — he told me a few things,” Albert said. “It seems that the Ripper boys, including Ringo, are going to give information on Mr. Big and his operations in exchange for reduced sentences. I’m not supposed to talk about that, though.”

“That’s okay,” Sam reassured him. “We all know how to keep a secret, don’t we?”

“Hawk does, for sure,” Panny said. “He had to live with some pretty dangerous secrets, like the Ferrets trying to put the squeeze on him, and our adventure at the warehouse, and at least one special secret, too, like the search for the Babe Ruth ball. How did you do it, Hawk-boy?”

Hawk thought for a moment, and then told the kids, “Well, it wasn’t easy, but then I had to learn to trust my friends, my teachers, and my dad. I paid attention to what my dad said about having an inner power. It’s great when your friends and family and your teachers back you up. That’s when the world stops being a scary place.”

He looked around the room and grinned. “But let’s eat the rest of this food. Martin and Elroy and I have to play baseball today. We’re starting in the Little League pretty soon and we want to be as strong as possible. Right, guys?”

Martin agreed and Elroy nodded. Chew-Boy barked and stood on his hind legs.

The kids laughed. “Did you teach him to do that?” Elroy asked Panny.

She smiled. “Of course not! Let’s get one thing straight. Chew-Boy has a mind of his own. Of course, now and then he obliges me — like when I ask him to catch people by the ankles.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again for a while,” Hawk said.

Chew-Boy barked again, as if to say “me too!” The kids laughed, and went back to eating their dumplings and egg rolls.

I would like to thank Michael Carroll, editorial director and associate publisher at Dundurn, and, like me, a great baseball fan, for his encouragement and support of this project. Also, Dr. Burf Kay, a Riverdale resident, for his expertise on his home neighbourhood and his suggestions for changes. Any lingering mistakes about the Riverdale scene are not his fault. Like many fiction writers who set their stories in real places, I have taken pains to be accurate, but I have also felt free to do some inventing and juggling to suit my story. All the characters in The Boy from Left Field are imagined and none are based on a real person — any resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental.

The description of the “gifted” classroom that is Hawk’s salvation is, however, based on my own experience at Ottawa’s Mutchmor School, even though none of the students are portrayed in my book. The two team-teachers of the grade four class I often visited were marvellous exponents of the “multiple intelligences” approach. They encouraged imagination and creativity, and taught their students to develop their talents without apology, but to respect those who had different skills. Competition was acceptable, but the achievements of all were to be celebrated. Intellectual precision and enthusiasm were encouraged, yet the body — and physical exercise — were not neglected. Issues of classroom behaviour and morality were important. It was also considered essential for the students to understand the world outside, the whole globe, to learn about the environment, for example, or to know how to read the media, and also to value diversity. Both teachers in this classroom had previously worked with special education students from more disadvantaged groups, and they found parallels between the needs of the most gifted and the more challenged. For a while, at least, their unique program escaped the red tape and meddling of the school bureaucracy, much to the delight of the fulfilled and grateful children and their impressively committed and often demanding parents. Adults who knew what went on in Room 27 saw it as an inspiring place and would have loved to experience it themselves when they were children —this writer counts himself among them.

Finally, I would like to thank my Dundurn editor, Allison Hirst, who read this text with care and helped shape it into its present form. As with all of my books for young people, I have tried to please my audience, and love it when they respond to my stories, but, as usual, this one is really for the wide-eyed child in me.

Copyright © Tom Henighan, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Allison Hirst

Design: Courtney Horner

Epub: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Henighan, Tom

The boy from left field [electronic resource] / Tom Henighan.

Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

Issued also in print format.

ISBN 978-1-4597-0061-1

I. Title.

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

www.dundurn.com

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