The Boy from Left Field (2 page)

Holy Cow!

The drizzle was letting up a little. Hawk straightened up his shoulders and crossed the main thoroughfare, unbuttoning the top of his short poncho. Passersby, occupied with their own thoughts, hardly gave the boy a glance. Cars zoomed up and down the side streets, trucks with their lights flashing and warning beepers sounding backed into driveways to unload. Hawk dodged around a couple of women with prams, old men walking their dogs, and high-school girls busy on their cellphones. He looked away as he passed a police car parked outside a coffee shop — he was always afraid some cop would ask him why he wasn’t in school, but there were other kids of various shapes and sizes on the street, and nobody paid him any attention.

Mr. Rizzuto’s store was in the middle of a busy street on the edge of Chinatown, a colourful street lined with restaurants, grocery stores, fruit and flower stands, a magazine shop, and a tae kwon do place. Hawk knew that Mr. Rizzuto was quite well off. He had a fine house across the city, in Little Italy, a car even bigger, and in a lot better shape, than the wreck of an Oldsmobile that Storm Cloud and Hawk slept in. He also had a house in Riverdale, convenient to his shoe shop, an assistant he paid to do most of the shoe repair, and he possessed, with some of his cronies, season tickets to the home games of the Toronto Blue Jays.

This investment in baseball gave Mr. Rizzuto a great deal of joy, but it was also the source of his deepest unhappiness. Much as he liked the Blue Jays, his favourite team, the team of his childhood dreams, was the New York Yankees. Despite this, it had been years since he had visited the old Yankee Stadium, and he was very unlikely to visit the new one. That was surprising, because he was distantly related to the great Phil Rizzuto, Yankee all-star shortstop of the 1940s and 1950s. As a child, Mr. Rizzuto had often been taken to the stadium to see “Scooter” Rizzuto play on those famous championship Yankee teams that included Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, and other Hall of Fame legends. But later in life he couldn’t bring himself ever to return to that renowned ball park.

This was because — as he had often explained to Hawk — he was at odds with his only daughter, now a grown woman, who lived in New York. She was very successful in the fashion business and had a fine apartment on the Upper West Side, but she refused to have anything to do with her father. It seems he had offended her by disapproving, in no uncertain terms, of her fiancé, the man she loved. The couple had broken up years before as a result of her father’s interference, and she had never married, for which she blamed Mr. Rizzuto. Over the years she had avoided him — she wouldn’t even answer his emails, never mind take his phone calls or see him in person.

“I can’t go to that city anymore,” he told Hawk. “It makes me too sad. I can’t enjoy baseball there — or anything. Just think! Me, a relative of the great Rizzuto, and I can’t even visit that place. Sure, I can go sit in the park they named after him in New Jersey, but I just haven’t got the heart to go anywhere near my Angelica. It’s the sadness of my life.”

Hawk felt a lot of sympathy for Mr. Rizzuto, but he didn’t really understand the problem. It was like a lot of things with grownups — they seemed to tie themselves into knots when they didn’t have to. He knew how bad he’d feel if his mother moved away and wouldn’t talk to him — ever. But then he was a kid, and he needed his mum. If he was a grown-up like Mr. Rizzuto, and didn’t have to live in a broken-down taxi, and had two houses, a store, a nice car, and tickets to all the Blue Jays games, he didn’t think he’d feel so bad.

Hawk glanced up at the dingy old sign that said
RIZZUTO SHOES REPAIR
, pressed his face against the window pane, and tried to see who was inside. He caught a glimpse of Chick, the old man’s sturdy assistant, working away at a bench behind the counter at what looked like a leather-stitching job. Chick usually wore a T-shirt with the Rizzuto number 10 on it to please his boss, but Hawk couldn’t see much through the smeared glass. He pulled back, rubbing his wet cheeks with the top of his slimy poncho.

At that moment a bike bell rang behind him. He jumped as a girl’s voice shouted his name.

“Hawk! How are you doing, bird-boy? Going to get your shoes fixed at last?”

A blue bicycle zoomed up and braked so suddenly that Hawk thought the bright red panniers would fly off the back and the rider might follow them in an arc through the shoe-store window.

She managed the stop very well, however, and seconds later she turned to him, a slender Asian girl with dark eyes, a bright smile, and a manner that seemed eager, almost restless, even though she was standing quite still.

Hawk saw that she was busying herself with a white fluffy thing that squirmed and whimpered in the bike’s front basket.

“It’s okay, Chew-Boy,” she said, patting the very small dog that seemed a bit taken aback by the jolting stop. “We’ll be home in a few minutes. Just giving him a ride,” she told Hawk. “He misses me sometimes.”

“I’m Panny Chang,” she explained. “I saw you in the Rawson playground. Your shoes were worn out, and you fell and lost a sole. I notice you’ve got new ones, though.”

Hawk remembered barging into a bunch of kids from the gifted class when he was playing dodge ball during lunch break a few weeks before. He’d crashed down against some tree roots in a far corner of the yard and lost a shoe, but instead of getting angry and shouting at him, the nerds just made a few witty jokes, tossed him his damaged shoe, and went back to some complicated game they were playing with cardboard origami figures.

“Have you been at school recently?” Panny asked. (Hawk had heard that she got her nickname because of the colourful panniers she sported on her bike.) “Somebody in your class said you were living in a taxicab. I didn’t believe that, though.”

“Believe it,” Hawk said. “It’s not too bad, really. Except on rainy days like this. I’m not in school now. Mrs. MacWhinney hates me and my mother wants to push her off a bridge. I want to get back to school, though. My mum’s trying to get me into gifted.”

“Good ambition! With all the other nuts, right? Anyway, we have two great teachers for our class. Ms. Calloway and Ms. Clark — you’ll love them. They’re strict but really cool. They know a lot and give us great projects. I’m doing one on China and Europe in the Middle Ages. We’re doing a media study and a musical on
The Canterbury Tales
. But why are you hanging around this shoe store? Do you live around here?”

“No, I just live a few blocks away, behind the Shalimar Restaurant. The guy who owns this shoe store is a friend of mine. He likes baseball and coaches me. I’m going to be a baseball player — maybe. I might be a scientist, too — in case I don’t make it in baseball.”

Panny stood with her bike, petting Chew-Boy with one hand and steadying her handlebars with the other. Her yellow running shoes restlessly tapped the pavement as if she were about to take off.

“I like science, too,” Panny told him. “Luckily, I’m good at math, but I think I might be a vet, or maybe a ballet dancer. There are quite a few options. I live down this street, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah? Have you ever heard of a gang called the Rippers? They stole my best baseball stuff and gave me a black eye. I hope you don’t run into them.”

Panny’s dark eyes grew wider. “That’s terrible! Was it at night? Did they attack your taxicab? My parents don’t let me go around at night. They don’t attack people in the daytime, do they?”

“I don’t think so. But you’d better be careful. That’s a nice-looking bike and Chew-Boy wouldn’t be much protection.”

“Don’t insult Chew-Boy — he’s very smart. He can bite if he has to. But did you try to find the gang and get your stuff back?”

Hawk shook his head. “That would be crazy! I don’t want to end up dead!”

Panny nodded. “I see your point. But maybe not direct action. Maybe just do some tracking and then turn them over to the police. Let me think about it. I have lots of friends in this neighbourhood. I can find out things. Maybe I’ll see you in class in a few days — if you make it there. And just in case, I’ll give you my cellphone number. You can call me if you have some big problem — but not
too
big a problem!”

Hawk was dumbfounded. He stood by as she wrote down the number. Was she serious in thinking she could do something? He could only nod, gape at her, and mumble, “Yeah, I’ll see you … if I make that class…. And thanks for the number!” Panny smiled, waved, and wobbled away on her bike. She picked up speed quickly and zoomed off down the street.

Hawk, scratching his head and wondering about this unexpected encounter, turned and pushed open the door of the shoe shop.

Chick Ciccarelli, Mr. Rizzuto’s assistant, glanced up from his workbench. He grunted and greeted Hawk with an ironical but friendly smile. “Well, well, look who’s here!” He turned toward the back of the shop, the number 10 now clearly visible on his T-shirt. “Hey, Mr. Billy, it’s the rookie, all by himself and looking wet.” Hawk stood there awkwardly, suddenly feeling shy.

Ciccarelli stretched his muscular arms and yawned. “What’s the matter, kid, they haul away your taxicab?”

Hawk started to answer, but before he could finish a sentence, a short, skinny old man darted out from the rear of the shop. He pulled off his straw boater, scratched his bushy grey hair and his long red nose, and beamed at the visitor.

“Hawk! Holy cow! Imagine that you show up now, and in the rain, too. I’m glad you’re here, kid. I’m very glad. You and I have something big to talk over. C’mon in the back and I’ll warm up a pizza — you look like you haven’t had a decent lunch.”

Chick Ciccarelli stood up and muttered, “Yeah, come to think of it, it’s time for my break.”

Hawk followed Mr. Rizzuto in to the back of the shop.

The Bambino’s Shadow

Mr. Rizzuto cut the pizza, lifted a generous slice onto a plate, and handed it to Hawk. It was delicious — thin crust, great tomato sauce, three cheeses, black olives, shrimp bigger than a wrestler’s thumb, and small chunks of pineapple. Mr. Rizzuto drank red wine and passed a large glass of lemonade over to Hawk.

“Listen, kid, this is crazy. You showing up here and me making the biggest discovery of my life. What are you doing in these parts in the rain anyway? We can’t play stickball. Don’t tell me they junked your taxi?”

Hawk swallowed a large mouthful of pizza and explained. “No, not that. It’s that my mum’s on the warpath. She’s off to see my dad. She wants to get him to go to the School Board with her so they can get me into another class. My teacher’s an old witch.”

“Oh, oh, you talk like that about your teacher? Wow! Times have changed. So your mum wants you to transfer to another class, I get it. Probably a good idea…. By the way, did you ever hear anything more on that stuff the Rippers stole from you? I’ve been meaning to look into that. Only trouble is, I don’t like to go to the police. Not that I ever have any trouble with them. It’s just that some of my family wouldn’t appreciate it if I run to the police with every little problem. We like to take care of our own business.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Rizzuto. I just met a girl from my school on the street out there. A Chinese girl. She knows this neighbourhood and she’s going to help me find the gang and turn them over to the police. I don’t think it will happen, though.”

“You never know, kid, you never know. I hope that girl isn’t heading for trouble. I’m going to do some checking myself. I have some connections, and not only in the neighbourhood. But what’s this about your mum and dad — don’t tell me they’re getting together again.”

Hawk shook his head sadly. “No, I don’t think so. It’s just this once, to help me.”

“Okay. But if you don’t mind me asking, whatever happened between them? I know you gave me a rundown once before, but now that you and I are going to be partners…. If I remember correctly, you’re still on good terms with your dad, right?”

Hawk picked up on the surprising sentence at once. “You and I are going to be partners?” he said, and stared wide-eyed at Mr. Rizzuto.

“I hope so, but first tell me about your mum and dad. Is she finally going to accept some help from him?”

“Only so I can change classes. My dad’s still fed up with my mum. As you know, he’s a full-blooded Ojibway-Cree and he works for the Native Centre, and my mum pretends that she’s a Native, too. She’s always trying to outdo him, and telling him how he should act. She thinks he doesn’t like her because her parents came from Scotland and she’s not a Native at all. So she tries to be more of a Native than he is and that drives my dad crazy.”

Mr. Rizzuto nodded sagely. “Sure, I understand. She wants to be more Catholic than the Pope.”

Hawk shrugged his shoulders and looked baffled. He took a slug of the lemonade.

“My mum takes care of me. She tries pretty hard, but things don’t always come out right. It’s not really her fault — at least sometimes it’s not. We don’t have much money and she can’t afford an apartment. The taxi’s okay. But the people from Welfare don’t like it.”

“I sure hope not. Maybe they’ll find you some-thing, huh? Maybe I’ll find you something better.”

Hawk swallowed hard and posed the question. “Did you say something about us being partners, Mr. Rizzuto?”

“I sure hope so. But I have to explain. You know, because I got some money saved up, some property and things, people think I can do what I want. Yeah sure, I’m comfortable. I can buy this little thing or that, up to a point, but some things you can’t buy, you have to go out and find them, or earn them somehow. Some of the best things are like that. You know what I mean?”

Hawk frowned. “You mean like me being a baseball player, or you getting your daughter to like you?”

Mr. Rizzuto winced, then nodded gravely at the boy. “Yeah, you’re a smart kid all right. You know what I mean…. But I’ll tell you something else. Then you’ll see where I’m coming from. Think about this. You know how sometimes you know something, but really you don’t know it, because you never really took it out of your mind and looked at it, dusted it off, and took it on in a real way. It was just a thought, bumping around in your brain with lots of other ideas, then one day, bingo! It’s real and you’re ready to deal with it.”

Hawk gave him a puzzled look — what was the old man going on about? He frowned a deeper frown, gulped a bit more lemonade, and tried to zoom in. “You mean, like my mum — she talked about getting me into gifted, but she really didn’t do anything about it. It was just a thought. Now she’s off trying to make it happen.”

Mr. Rizzuto sprang out of his chair so quickly it made Hawk choke. “You got it! That’s it! That’s exactly what happened in my case — between me and Babe Ruth!”

For a few seconds Hawk was quite speechless. Of course he knew who Babe Ruth was — probably the greatest baseball player of them all, or at least the most famous, not to mention the greatest Yankee star. All the same, the boy was puzzled. He put his glass down, leaned over and started to ask a question. Mr. Rizzuto, however, whose boater had fallen off (he wore it everywhere, inside and out, even in winter), and whose impressive nose had turned a brighter red, quickly circled the table, stopped, and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

“Here, kid, take a gander at this!”

Hawk — as his principal had pointed out — wasn’t much of a writer, but he could read like a demon. Slowly, he unfolded the paper and read the story printed there, one that had obviously been downloaded from a computer site.

Babe Ruth’s First Home Run

Out in Lake Ontario lie the Toronto islands, which also have an interesting history…. At Hanlan’s Point (named after Ned Hanlan, an international rowing star) there was once an amusement park and a small stadium, home of the minor league Toronto Maple Leaf baseball team. There, in 1914, a 19-year-old pitcher named Babe Ruth, playing for the visiting Providence Rhode Island Grays, hit his first professional home run. It’s believed the ball is still in the lake.

Hawk lowered the paper slowly and stared at Mr. Rizzuto. “Gosh, I didn’t know Babe Ruth played in Toronto. I didn’t even know he was a pitcher. Too bad the ball was lost in the lake. I guess it would be pretty valuable now, wouldn’t it?”

Mr. Rizzuto took a step and a jump, startling the boy as he grabbed him and began thumping on the shoulders. “Kid! You’re a genius! Your mother is quite right! Of course the ball would be worth a fortune, maybe a million dollars even! Not only that, but whoever found it would be famous. It would be like finding Blackbeard’s treasure or that cup they call the Holy Grail — whatever that is! It would be a life adventure, kid, a real life adventure!”

Hawk stepped back and shook his head doubtfully. “Sure, I get you, Mr. Rizzuto, but the ball’s lost. This article says it went into the lake, and by now it would just be a few soggy pieces of string, or whatever those old baseballs were made of.”

“String and cork and horsehide, kid, string and cork and horsehide. A few years before 1914 the Spalding Company that made the baseballs substituted cork for rubber in the centre of the ball, so guys began hitting more home runs. If that ball still exists it would look something like today’s baseballs, only the seams would be flat, not raised. And you know what? I think it may still exist.”

Hawk shook his head. “Oh, come on, Mr. Rizzuto. It says right here in the article that the ball probably went into the lake. If it didn’t get ruined, if it still existed, somebody would have found it by now.”

Mr. Rizzuto paced back and forth across the room, his hands waving as if he were directing traffic or conducting an orchestra. “Not necessarily! There’s no proof at all that the ball’s in the lake. Did you ever watch those games in San Francisco where Barry Bonds would hit home runs out of the park and into the bay? You remember what happened then?”

Hawk scratched his head. He hadn’t had a chance to watch TV very regularly, but he had a vague recollection of a store window with several TVs flashing out sports scenes to lure the customers. He remembered a swing and a ball clearing the stands and a water scene with boats, kayaks, canoes — all kinds of small craft — darting like insects to reach a tiny object smacked by the potent Bonds bat into San Francisco Bay.

“You mean somebody could have picked the ball up — fetched it out of the water?”

“Sure, why not? It’s a fun thing to do. And remember, Toronto Harbour was full of small craft, even in those days. And there was an amusement park on the island, right next to the stadium. Just think of it, kid. There would be lots of folks playing around there, lots of people on the shore, and kids swimming in the lake, boys scooting around on bikes and playing catch. They would hear the roar of the crowd — there was probably a pretty good crowd watching the game — and the folks outside would see this ball come sailing out of the stadium. Don’t you think some smart kid, or somebody in a boat, would have grabbed that ball as a souvenir? They wouldn’t have just let it sink in the lake, any more than the folks outside of Candlestick Park in San Francisco would.”

Hawk stared at Mr. Rizzuto. “Wow! I think you’ve got a point!” He thought for a minute, then added, “But once Babe Ruth became famous, wouldn’t they have brought that ball out and put it on the market? If somebody had it, it would have been identified and checked out long ago.”

Mr. Rizzuto shook his head. “No way! Think about it. Nobody knew who Babe Ruth was then. He was just a kid pitcher who hit a home run. This was just a baseball they found outside a small-time ballpark, or fished out of the lake just for fun. Nobody would have bothered to find out who hit the ball. It would have ended up in somebody’s toy box or rec room — if they had rec rooms in those days. It would have ended up in a box in somebody’s attic. And that’s where it probably is, right now. And I’m telling you, we’re going to find that box! And it’s going to make us a lot of money and get us a lot of attention on TV and in the newspapers! That is, if you believe me, my young friend, Hawk, if you want to help me look for it. As I said, I think we should be partners. We should look for this famous baseball together.”

“Wow!”

Hawk was amazed at his friend’s offer, and at Mr. Rizzuto’s obvious enthusiasm. At the same time, a small voice whispered in the boy’s inner ear:
This is crazy. This is never going to happen. That ball has been lost forever, and we certainly aren’t going to find it after all these years.

Mr. Rizzuto looked at him and seemed to read his thoughts, to pick up right away on his doubts. “I know you’re excited, but I see a little tiny gleam of doubt in those eyes of yours, kid, and I don’t blame you. It all seems pretty much like a pipe dream, I know, the pipe dream of an old Yankee fan and a relative of that great Yankee player, Scooter Rizzuto. But let me fill you in on my plans. I’m not dreaming, I’m not handing you a line of bull, I really do have an idea that we can find that ball. Let’s sit down at the table here and I’ll explain.”

Mr. Rizzuto lifted the empty plates off the table and carried them over to the sink in the corner of the room. He poured more lemonade for Hawk, sat down, and began to talk.

“Okay, kid. Here’s my plan. See if you think I’m nuts or just some old guy raving. Let’s assume that the Babe Ruth ball was picked up by someone. Let’s assume it was kept as a souvenir. Now, we can’t prove that either of these things happened, but the there’s no reason why they
couldn’t
have happened. Now, I’ve checked out all the guys I could find who really know something about this city, about Toronto’s history. And I’ve looked for a guy who isn’t just an old-fashioned bookworm expert, but somebody who has the technology to make things happen fast.

“And guess what? I found a guy. His name is Dr. Wingate, and he’s a retired history professor who has got everything about this city’s history on his computer. All the famous buildings and sites, he’s got a set of files on them —
big files
. He’s been feeding information into those files for years. You want to know something about the old St. Lawrence Market, or the Broadview House Hotel, or Casa Loma, well, this guy’s got all the dope.

“So, guess what? I’ve hired him to research the old ballpark for me. I’ve hired him to give me a complete picture of the place in 1914. He’s checking that, and, in fact, he’s looking at the whole of Hanlan’s Point. Before long, we’ll know everything there is to know about the place — what went on there, what kind of folks went to the old amusement park and the baseball stadium, who hung around there and had maybe a business or a concession on the beach. In other words,
who might have picked up that baseball!
”

Hawk swallowed his lemonade, nearly choking on it — he was very excited. “That sounds great, Mr. Rizzuto. But you haven’t heard anything yet, right?”

“Nothing yet, but it’s early. The main thing is, this smart guy, Dr. Wingate, didn’t think I was nuts. He thought it might be a long shot, but that he just might turn up something. You see, he’d read the same article in the
Sun
that I read. It was about a month ago, and they mentioned the whole Babe Ruth lost baseball thing. Of course I’d heard that story before, but I never thought of chasing after that ball. It’s like I said, sometimes you know something but it doesn’t hit you in the face. You know it, but you don’t think of doing anything about what you know. Well, when I read that article, it was like I was struck by lightning. I just knew I had to find that baseball!”

“So when will you hear from Dr. Wingate?”

Mr. Rizzuto scratched his head. “I don’t know. Pretty soon, I hope. There’s one thing, though, one thing that worries me. When I went to this guy, he listened to me, looked at me kind of funny, then, as I was leaving, he clued me in to something that didn’t exactly make me dance for joy.”

“What was that?”

“He said somebody else had asked him for exactly the same information. That it wouldn’t take him long to put my package together, because he was already working on it.”