Southpaw Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Cow-Country Pitcher

  Chapter 2 - Volume Control

  Chapter 3 - Bringing Up Flem

  Chapter 4 - Arroz con Pollo

  Chapter 5 - Opening Day

  Chapter 6 - The Real Deal

  Chapter 7 - Feeling the Heat

  Chapter 8 - The Wrong Guy

  Chapter 9 - A Secret Ingredient

  Chapter 10 - Forever and Three Days

  Chapter 11 - A Winning Tradition

  Teaser chapter

  All rightJimmy thought, let’s see what I’m made of.

  Jimmy pumped his fist toward his chest and took the throw from Jared. He squinted at the runner on third with a defiant glare. Blue gave the same look back. He took a half-step toward home plate, crouched low and ready to run.

  Union City’s cleanup hitter stepped in. He was a strong kid and had twice sent Willie back to the fence in center for long fly-outs. He clearly had the power to hit one out of the park.

  Strike one.

  Ball one.

  Ball two.

  Strike two.

  Jimmy squeezed the ball and wiped his face with his mitt. Everyone in the park was standing now. His mouth was dry.

  This was the pitch. This would do it. As he brought the ball forward he felt it slip slightly from his fingers, just enough to make his stomach sink.

  It was low, it was outside, and it was spinning away from Jared....

  ALSO BY RICH WALLACE

  Restless: A Ghost’s Story

  Losing Is Not an Option

  Playing Without the Ball

  Shots on Goal

  Wrestling Sturbridge

  Winning Season Series

  Double Fake

  Emergency Quarterback

  Fast Company

  The Roar of the Crowd

  Southpaw

  Technical Foul

  PUFFIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Young Readers Group. 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006 Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Copyright © Rich Wallace, 2006 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  eISBN : 978-1-101-17510-1

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Sandra

  1

  Cow-Country Pitcher

  Jimmy stepped off the mound and jogged toward the dugout, being careful not to step on the first-base line. That’d be bad luck. He was excited now. He’d done well on this first afternoon of tryouts.

  The day was overcast and cool, and a few small patches of snow were still melting in the shady spots near the left-field fence. But the baseball diamond was clear and mostly dry. A trickle of sweat ran from Jimmy’s unruly hair onto his cheek. He quickly wiped it away.

  The muscular kid that Jimmy had just struck out was frowning as he put his bat in the rack. “What was your name again?” the kid asked.

  Jimmy tossed his mitt onto the rickety wooden bench and smiled. Not many kids had bothered talking to him since his arrival in town. “Jimmy Fleming,” he said eagerly. “My friends back home call me Flem.”

  The kid made a sour face and said, “Flem?” He thought for a second, squinting and giving the lanky newcomer a good looking-over. “I don’t know where ‘back home’ is, but to me phlegm is something you hack up and spit out.” And he did just that to demonstrate.

  “Home is Pennsylvania. And yeah, I’ve heard all the jokes,” Jimmy said, looking away. “They never bothered me.”

  The other kid shrugged. “I’m Spencer Lewis,” he said, not smiling. “But you already knew that.”

  “I did?”

  “You ought to.”

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “That so?”

  “Starting shortstop. Leadoff hitter.”

  “Wow,” Jimmy said with a lot of sarcasm. This kid seemed pretty full of himself. Jimmy decided to needle him a bit. “So I struck out a big star, huh?”

  Spencer winced but gave a half-smile. “I ain’t hearing that noise,” he said. “Everybody knows the pitchers are ahead of the hitters in March. It might take me a minute to get used to a southpaw like you, with that weird left-handed delivery, but tomorrow will be different.”

  The coach had said there’d be a full week of tryouts before he cut the roster to eighteen players. Jimmy had counted twenty-nine out for the squad.

  “The team’s pretty well set, you know,” Spencer said. “Especially my boys on the pitching staff.”

  “I think I got a shot,” Jimmy replied. He could see that Spencer was going to keep busting his chops, letting him know he was an outsider.

  “You got okay stuff. We might be able to use you some in relief.”

  Jimmy gave Spencer a mean look. “I guess the coaches’ll decide that, won’t they?”

  Spencer shrugged. “Yeah. But they want guys who are gonna fit in, Flem. People who know the score.”

  “I been pitching for four years,” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah, in the sticks.”

  “Sticks? Where’d you find a word like that? 1920?”

  “What do you call it?”

  “Home.”

  “Call it whatever you want,” Spencer said. “All I’m saying is there’s a big difference between Hudson City and cow country.”

  That stung a little. There actually had been a dairy farm about two hundred yards from the Flemings’ house in Pennsylvania. Jimmy’s mother owned a horse that she boarded there.

  Jimmy just smiled, went into a batting stance, and gave a gentle swing. “Strike three,” he said.

  “Like I was saying, I ain’t used to lefties right now.”

  “And like I said, I think I got a shot. Besides, you ever heard of Christy Mathewson?” he asked, referring to the Hall of Fame pitcher who had grown up in northeastern Pennsylvania.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Where do you think he’s from?”

  Spencer laughed. “That was, like, forever and two days ago, Flem.”

  Head Coach Wimmer walked over and cleared his throat. He was old and paunchy and had been leading the Hudson City Middle School seventh-grade team for more than thirty years. “All right, boys,” he said, eyeing the bunch. “Pretty good for a first day. You’re not quite ready for Yankee Stadium, but we’ll whip you into shape.

  “Go on home, lay off the ice cream, and be back here after school tomorrow.” Coach took off his cap and rubbed his big, bald head. His pink ears stuck out like rounded fins. “And tuck in those shirts; probably be some Major League scouts hanging around looking for prospects. Don’t want them to think I run a sloppy ship.”

  Jimmy laughe
d with the rest of them, then left the dugout and headed for home, just a short block down 15th Street to the Boulevard.

  It still seemed strange to be walking these streets, so noisy and busy with traffic. It had only been a month since he and his dad moved here, taking a second-story apartment above the Lindo Música Internacional store. So many things had changed so quickly.

  His parents’ divorce hadn’t been such a surprise; he’d figured it was coming. But he never thought his dad would be leaving Sturbridge, Pennsylvania, to take a job in Jersey City. So Jimmy was left with the biggest decision of his life: Stay with his mother or leave with his dad, right in the middle of seventh grade.

  And here he was, suddenly a city dweller, stuck in that urban stretch of North Jersey between the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, an arm’s reach across the Hudson River from the New York City skyline. In a town where half the signs were in Spanish and white kids like him were a minority.

  He needed to make the school baseball team. When he gripped that ball this afternoon, pushed back his cap and peered in at the catcher, he’d finally felt at home for a few minutes. When he let loose with that wide overhand delivery and sent the ball zipping toward the plate for the first time this season, he’d felt a burden lifting.

  But maybe Spencer was right. Jimmy had been on enough sports teams to know that the coaches often did have their rosters picked way in advance, with few real opportunities for a newcomer to fit in. He’d have to do a lot better than the established players to secure a place on the team.

  2

  Volume Control

  Jimmy always got home before his father—who commuted by bus to Jersey City—so he’d do his homework and watch TV or read sports magazines and comic books. Dad would get home at about six o’clock and make dinner; he was a good cook and could whip up some chicken and vegetables in a hurry. Then they’d hang out in the sparsely furnished apartment till bedtime.

  Once a week or so they’d go to the coin laundry down the street to wash their clothes. And on Thursdays they’d walk a couple of blocks and get Chinese or Mexican food in cardboard containers to go.

  The apartment was narrow and long, only about eighteen feet wide. There were two front windows looking out over the Boulevard, with the fire escape zigzagging down the front of the building. Jimmy liked to sit in the living room and watch the traffic on the street while his dad watched TV.

  “Hey, Jim, watch this,” Dad said, pointing the remote control toward the screen. “This Mets pitcher has the same delivery you’ve got, but he’s smoother, see. You watching?”

  Jimmy had been watching passengers unloading from a New Jersey Transit bus. He turned toward the TV and nodded. “He’s taller, too.”

  “Well, yeah, he’s an adult. But he’s built like you, all arms and legs. And he’s a lefty, too. But see how he gets himself planted after the pitch, ready in case the ball gets smacked right back to him? You come down off balance. You gotta work on that.”

  “I know.”

  Lean and limber like Jimmy, Dad was built like a first baseman or a hurdler, and he tried to be both at one time or another back in high school.

  But he hadn’t had much success at either. It was no secret that he’d wanted to be a star pitcher. Or that now he wanted Jimmy to be.

  Between pitches of the Mets game, Dad flipped over to the Yankees. It was still spring training for the pros, but there were games on every night. Mr. Fleming usually watched two games at once. “You can see almost every pitch if you time it right,” he’d say.

  The only frustration was the volume. He’d discovered that 18 was the right volume for the Mets games, but that was too loud when he switched channels to the Yankees. He’d click it down to 16, but that seemed a little too soft. The perfect volume for the Yankees’ channel was 17, but he’d never leave it at an odd number like that. So he lived with it at 18, despite the discomfort of the slightly-too-high volume.

  One other thing about the noise level in the apartment: Even with the TV on, you could hear the music coming from the store downstairs. They were used to it, and the store closed at nine. So it never interfered with their sleep.

  When both games were between innings and car commercials were playing, Jimmy asked his dad to switch to the weather station. “I’m hoping it’ll be a little warmer tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be able to get in a better flow at the tryouts.”

  The local forecast was just beginning as Dad switched. “Perfect timing,” he said with a grin, and though it was just music playing over a printed forecast, Dad upped the volume to 21.

  “How come twenty-one is okay?” Jimmy asked. “That’s an odd number.”

  “It’s divisible by seven,” Dad said. “Twenty-one is three touchdowns and three extra points. So it’s not a problem.”

  “And twenty-five is fine, too?”

  “It’s symmetrical: five times five. But that’s almost always too loud anyway.” Dad took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll explain it again. The acceptable volume range, depending on the station, is fourteen to twenty-five. All even numbers are okay, plus twenty-five.”

  “And twenty-one.”

  “Yes. As I just explained.”

  “So we can’t watch TV at fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, or twenty-three?”

  “Right. We can watch those channels, but not at those volumes.”

  “I got it.”

  Dad switched back to the Yankees. “Now watch how Menendez follows through. He’s a righty, but his mechanics are sound. See? Immediately into a defensive stance after the delivery. You gotta work on that, be ready for a line drive or a grounder.”

  Jimmy nodded but looked back to the street. Two kids a little older than he was were standing outside Tienda de Amigo, a men’s clothing store. One was dribbling a basketball and the other was drinking a bottle of soda. A younger kid whizzed past on a skateboard. Above the store, in an apartment that mirrored his own, a woman was preparing dinner.

  Dad took a handful of pretzels from the bag that was next to him on the couch and began to chew very slowly and carefully. It was another of his little quirks—always mindful of making too much noise.

  “Dad, just chew ’em normal!” Jimmy said. “It ain’t gonna bother me.”

  “You want to hear the game, don’t you?”

  “Which game? I can’t concentrate on two of ’em at once like you can.”

  “Like I said, if you time it right—”

  “You can see every pitch. I know.” Jimmy got up and walked toward his bedroom.

  “Where you going?” Dad asked.

  “I’ll be back in a while.”

  He left the tiny living room and walked through the kitchen, where the faucet was dripping steadily. His small bedroom was beyond the bathroom, with its flickering overhead light. Across the hall was his dad’s room, the length of Jimmy’s room and the bathroom combined but still only seven feet wide.

  That was the whole place. The door between the bedrooms opened to a narrow stairwell, down to the alley behind the building and up to the third-floor apartment of Mrs. Murphy, an old woman who lived alone with the two cats she wasn’t supposed to have. The landlord, Mr. Espino, knew about the cats but let it slide because Mrs. Murphy was such a good tenant otherwise.

  Jimmy was feeling antsy. There was so much going on out there on the street, but he was trapped in here, in an apartment that wasn’t much bigger than the garage at their house back in Pennsylvania. Except for school and now baseball tryouts, he wasn’t allowed to go out on his own. “Not until we know the town a little better,” Dad had said. “When you get a little older.”

  I’ll be fifty before I figure this town out, he thought. But there was something about the place he liked—the energy especially, the faster pace. Kids around here were streetwise. He wouldn’t mind learning some of the ropes himself.

  As Spencer had said, Jimmy Fleming needed to know the score.

  3

  Bringing Up Flem

  It was the wor
st kind of day for baseball—temperature in the mid-thirties, a misty rain making everything slippery and cold. Jimmy rubbed his hands together quickly, trying to generate some warmth as he waited in the on-deck circle for Willie Shaw to finish his at-bat.

  The week had flown by, and he’d shown what he could do, fielding most of what was hit to him, handling most of the batters he faced when called on to pitch, and getting in some decent cuts at the ball when he took his turns at bat.

  By his estimation, he was better than at least half the players trying out, and as good as most of the others. Even so, he had no idea if he was going to make the team. He wanted to leave an impression with these last swings of the week.

  Willie hit a soft fly ball that barely left the infield. Second baseman Lamont Wilkins trotted slowly backwards and got under it, making the catch.

  Jimmy stepped up to the plate and took a practice swing. Out on the mound was Ramiro Velez, who took the throw from Lamont and kicked at the dirt with his toe.

  Velez peered in and smirked at Jimmy. They had some classes together and had spoken briefly a couple of times this week. Nothing more than a “How’s it going?” or “Crappy weather again.”

  Jimmy could hit from either side of the plate, but Ramiro was a right-hander, so he decided to bat lefty.

  At shortstop, Spencer suddenly made an exaggerated hacking in his throat, pretending to bring up spit. “Heavy phlegm alert,” he said loudly.

  The catcher, Jared Owen, made the same noise. Immediately all of the infielders followed suit. More or less in unison, they chanted, “Let’s go, Flem!” then made a loud spitting sound and laughed.

  Jimmy turned toward Coach Wimmer, who was standing in the dugout. He was shaking his head but grinning. He caught Jimmy’s eye and said, “Looks like you’re developing a fan club.”

  Ramiro was laughing too hard to pitch.

  “Let’s see some action!” Coach yelled.