第七章

When Jeffery Magee was next spotted, it was at the Little League field in the park. A Little League game had just ended. The Red Sox had won, but the big story was John McNab, who struck out sixteen batters to set a new Two Mills L.L. record. 
McNab was a giant. He stood five feet eight and was said to weigh over a hundred and seventy pounds. He had to bring his birth certificate in to the League director to prove he was only twelve. And still most people didn't believe it. 
The point is, the rest of the league was no match for McNab. It wouldn't have been so bad if he'd been a right-fielder, but he was a pitcher. And there was only one pitch he ever threw: a fastball. 
Most of the batters never saw it; they just heard it whizzing past their noses. You could see their knees shaking from the stands. One poor kid stood there long enough to hear strike one go past, then threw up all over home plate. 
It was still pretty light out, because when there are a lot of strikeouts, a game goes fast. And McNab was still on the mound, even though the official game was over. He figured he'd made baseball history, and he wanted to stretch it out as long as he could. 
There were still about ten players around, Red Soxers and Green Soxers, and McNab was making them march up to the plate and take their swings. There was no catcher. The ball lust zoomed to the backstop. When a kid struck out, he went back to the end of the line. 
McNab was loving it. After each whiff, he laughed and bellowed the strikeout total. "Twenty-six!... Twenty- seven!... Twenty-eight!..." He was like a shark. He had the blood lust. The victims were hunched and trembling, walking the gangplank. 
"Thirty-four!.. Thirty-five! 
And then somebody new stepped up to the plate. Just a punky, runty little kid, no Red Sox or Green Sox uniform. Kind of scraggly. With a book, which he laid down on home plate. He scratched out a footing in the batter's box, cocked the bat on his shoulder, and stared at McNab. 
McNab croaked from the mound, "Get outta there, runt. This is a Little League record. You ain't in Little League." 
The kid walked away. Was he chickening out! No. He was lifting a red cap from the next batter in line. He put it on. He was back in the box. 
McNab almost fell off the mound, he was laughing so hard. "Okay, runt. Number thirty-six coming up." 
McNab fired. The kid swung. The batters in line automatically turned their eyes to the backstop, where the ball should be — but it wasn't there. It was in the air, riding on a beeline right our to McNab's head, the same line it came in on, only faster. 
McNab froze, then flinched, lust in time. The ball missed his head but nipped the bill of his cap and sent it spinning like a flying saucer out to shortstop. The ball landed in the second-base dust and rolled all the way to the fence in center field. 
Dead silence. Nobody moved. 
McNab was gaping at the kid, who was still standing there all calm and cool, waiting for the next pitch. Finally a sort of grin slithered across McNab's lips. He roared: "Get my hat? Get the ball?" 
Ten kids scrambled onto the field, bringing him the hat and ball. McNab had it figured now. He was so busy laughing at the runt, he lobbed him a lollipop and the runt got lucky and poled it. 
This time McNab wasn't laughing. He fingered the ball, tips digging into the red stitching. He wound, he fired, he thought: 
Man! That sucker's goin' so fast even I can hardly see it! And then he was looking up, turning, following the flight of the ball, which finally came down to earth in deep left center field and bounced once to the fence. 
More silence, except from someone who yelped "Yip — " then caught himself. 
"Ball?" bellowed McNab. 
He was handed the ball. He slammed his hat to the ground. His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull. He windmilled, reared, lunged, fired . 
This time the ball cleared the fence on the fly. 
No more holding back. The other kids cheered. Somebody ran for the ball. They were anxious now for more. Three more pitches. Three more home runs. Pandemonium on the sidelines. It was raining red and green hats. McNab couldn't stand it. The next time he threw, it was right at the kid's head. The kid ducked. McNab called, "Strike one!" 

Next pitch headed for the kid's belt. The kid bent his stomach around the ball. "Steee-rike two!" 
Strike three took dead aim at the kid's knees, and here was the kid, swooping back and at the same time swatting at the ball like a golfer teeing off. It was the craziest baseball swing you ever saw, but there was the ball smoking out to center field. 
"Hold it, runt," snarled McNab. "I can't pitch right when I gotta wizz." 
The kids on the sidelines made way as McNab stomped off the field, past the dugout and into the woods between the field and the creek. They waited a pretty long time, but they figured, well, McNab's wizz probably would last longer than a regular kid's. Might even make the creek rise. 
At last McNab was back on the mound, fingering the ball in his glove, a demon's gleam in his eye. He wound up, fired, the ball headed for the plate, and - what's this! — a legball' — it's got legs — long legs pin wheeling toward the plate. It wasn't a ball at all, it was a frog, and McNab was on the mound cackling away, and the kid at the plate was bug-eyed. He'd never — 
nobody'd ever — tried to hit a fastfrog before. 
So what did the kid do! He bunted it. He bunted the frog, laid down a perfect bunt in front of the plate, third-base side, and he took off for first. He was half- way to second before McNab jolted himself into action. The kid was trying for an inside-the-park home-run bunt the rarest feat in baseball, some- thing that had hardly ever been done with a ball, and never with a frog — and to be the pitcher who let such a thing happen — well, McNab could already feel his strikeout record fading to a mere grain in the sandlot of history. 
So he lumbered off the mound after the frog, which was now hopping down the third-base line. As a matter of fact, it was so close to the line that McNab had a brilliant idea — just herd the frog across the line and it would be a foul ball (or frog). 
Which is what he tried to do with his foot. But the frog, instead of taking a left turn at the shoe, jumped over it and hopped on toward third base. He was heading for the green fields of left, and the runt kid, sounding like two runners with his flap-soles slapping the bottoms of his feet, was chucking dust for third. 
Only one hope now — McNab had to grab the frog and tag the runner out. But now the frog shot through his legs, over to the mound, and now toward shortstop and now toward second, and McNab was lurching and lunging, throwing his hat at the frog, throwing his glove, and everybody was screaming, and the kid was rounding third and digging for home, and — 
unbefroggable! — the "ball" was heading back home too! The ball, the batter, the pitcher all racing for home plate, and it was the batter, the new kid out of no- where, who crossed the plate first, at the same time scooping up his book, twirling his borrowed red cap back to the cheering others, and logging on past the empty stands and up the hill to the boulevard; McNab gasping, croaking after him: "Don't stop till yet outta town, runt! Don't let me ever catch ya!" 
And that's how Jeffrey Magee knocked the world's first frogball for a four-bagger.