The L. A. Dodger Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by David A. Kelly

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Mark Meyers

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web!

  SteppingStonesBooks.com

  www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kelly, David A. (David Andrew)

  The L.A. Dodger / by David A. Kelly; illustrated by Mark Meyers. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Ballpark mysteries; 3)

  “A Stepping Stone Book.”

  Summary: Cousins Kate and Mike visit Kate’s father, a baseball scout for the Dodgers, in Los Angeles just as a series of suspicious events lead him to think that someone is trying to steal his scouting reports.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89968-3

  [1. Baseball—Fiction. 2. Stealing—Fiction. 3. Cousins—Fiction. 4. Dodger Stadium

  (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. 5. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective

  stories.] I. Meyers, Mark, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.K2936Lad 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010038728

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to my editor, Jennifer Arena, who knows the secrets of good mysteries and takes the mystery out of good writing.

  —D.A.K.

  To Grandma K, thanks for always having your door open!

  —M.M.

  “I say this from the bottom of my heart, that if you don’t root for the Dodgers, you might not get into Heaven.”

  —Tommy Lasorda, Los Angeles Dodgers Manager

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 Spotting Movie Stars

  Chapter 2 Fortune Cookie Warning

  Chapter 3 The Beach

  Chapter 4 Pictures of a Stranger

  Chapter 5 The Dodger

  Chapter 6 A Sticky Trap

  Chapter 7 A Winning Catch

  Chapter 8 The Real Stars of Los Angeles

  Dugout Notes Dodger Stadium

  Spotting

  Movie Stars

  Mike Walsh leaned over to look down the aisle of the airplane. Good. No one was coming. He unbuckled his seat belt and stepped into the aisle.

  “Watch this,” Mike said to his cousin Kate Hopkins. She was in the seat next to his. It was spring break, and Mike and Kate were flying by themselves from New York to Los Angeles to visit Kate’s father. He worked as a baseball scout for the L.A. Dodgers.

  Mike jumped up as high as he could. His fingers reached for the ceiling.

  THUD. When his feet hit the floor, his knees buckled. He steadied himself and then dropped back into his seat.

  “Oh brother,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. Mike wasn’t afraid to try silly things. She thumbed through a shopping catalog that she had found at her seat. It was filled with baseball jerseys for dogs, self-inflating seat cushions, bug vacuums, and other funny things.

  “I don’t get it. The pilot said we were going five hundred and thirty miles per hour,” Mike said as he buckled his seat belt. “I thought I’d fly to the back of the plane if I jumped up. That would be soooo cool!”

  Kate shook her head. Her dark brown ponytail wagged back and forth. “And soooo not possible,” she said. “You’re going five hundred and thirty miles per hour, too, even when you jump. It’s no different than jumping on the ground.”

  “You kids okay?” asked Rich, one of the flight attendants. Kate’s mom had asked him to keep an eye on them during the flight. “Did you need help getting something, Mike?”

  Mike blushed. “No, thanks,” he said. “I was just stretching.”

  “Good idea! It’s a long flight,” Rich said. “Let me know if you want anything.”

  Kate put away the catalog. Then she fished around in the seat pocket in front of her. She pulled out a blue L.A. Dodgers notebook and a book with a photo of the big white Hollywood sign on the cover.

  “What’s that?” Mike asked.

  “It’s a guidebook to Los Angeles,” Kate said. “My mom gave it to me for the trip.” Kate’s mother worked as a reporter for the American Sportz website. Her mother and father had divorced when Kate was two. She lived with her mother in Cooperstown, New York, just down the street from Mike and two blocks away from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mike’s mom and Kate’s mom were sisters, so Kate and Mike were cousins. They were also best friends.

  Kate leafed through the book. She wrote down the sights she wanted to see in the Dodgers notebook.

  Bored, Mike flipped down the tray table from the seat in front of him. He grabbed a book about the Los Angeles Dodgers from his backpack and started reading.

  “Hey, did you know that the Dodgers did this, too?” Mike asked.

  Kate stopped writing. “Did what?” she asked. “Tried to jump up and touch the ceiling?”

  “No, not that. The Dodgers flew to L.A. from New York, just like us. They used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers from New York City,” Mike said. “They moved to L.A. in the 1950s. It says in this book that a lot of the fans in Brooklyn were really upset. They wanted the Dodgers to stay in Brooklyn.”

  “Hopefully they’re over it by now,” Kate said. “New York still has the Mets and the Yankees. That’s pretty good.”

  “Yeah, but people in Brooklyn really loved the Dodgers,” Mike said. “Their name is even connected to Brooklyn.” He held out the book for Kate to see one of the pictures. “Back when the team first started playing, there were lots of trolley cars in Brooklyn. People had to dodge them to cross the street. So they called the team the Dodgers!”

  “Well, my dad says the main thing you have to watch out for in L.A. is traffic,” Kate said. “So maybe they should change their name to the L.A. Traffic!”

  Mike groaned at Kate’s joke and went back to his book. The rest of the flight was smooth, and the plane landed in L.A. around five o’clock. When Rich led them to the baggage claim area, Kate spotted her father right away. Mr. Hopkins was wearing a bright blue Dodgers warm-up jacket, a white shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Kate ran over and gave him a huge hug.

  “Hola!” Kate said. Hola meant hello in Spanish. Kate liked to practice Spanish with her dad. Mr. Hopkins had spent several months traveling in Mexico and spoke it with ballplayers. Sometimes he sent Kate emails in Spanish for her to translate.

  She stepped back and looked at her dad’s shiny black leather boots. They had a fancy white design carved into them. “Nice boots!”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I bought them when I was in Arizona for spring training. They seemed fun.” Mr. Hopkins leaned over and gave Mike a hug. “I’m glad you could make it out here, Mike. Haven’t seen you since last summer. It will be nice to take the week off from work. It’s been …”

  Kate’s dad paused for a moment as if he had forgotten a word. His jaw clenched up. He tugged aside his jacket and pulled a small black notebook out of his shirt pocket. He looked at it and slid it back without even opening it. He shook his head slightly and smiled. “Things have been a little crazy lately,” he went on. “But that’s not your problem. We’re going to have a fun week.”

  Kate held up her blue L.A. Dodgers notebook. “Well, I wrote down all the things I want to see while we’re here. That should keep us busy.”

  A loud buzzer went off. It was the signal that the luggage had arrived. Soon, suitcases of all colors were dropping one after the other onto the baggage claim carousel. Mike and Kate dashed over to wait for their bags.

  “Is your dad okay?” Mike whispered to Kate. “He seems a little tense.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. It’s probably just his job or something,” Kate said. “I’ll bet having us here will be good. Maybe he can help us look for movie stars. The guidebook says you really can see movie stars around L.A.”

  Kate and Mike scanned the airport for celebrities. Mike pointed to a woman wearing a red dress with a white bow. “Think she’s a movie star?” he asked.

  “She looks a little like Colleen Baxter from that TV show,” Kate said, “but she’s older. What about him?” She pointed to a squat little man in a white shirt and sunglasses. He wore a blue baseball hat with an old-fashioned B on it.

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “With that hat, he looks more like a Boston Red Sox fan than a movie star. What about that woman near your father?” He pointed to a tall lady wearing a stylish hat and carrying a blue bag.

  Kate squinted and shook her head. “That could be the woman from that vampire movie,” she said. “But I don’t think it is. I guess it’s not our lucky day.”

  Behind them, more suitcases crashed onto the baggage claim belt.

  “Ooh, there’s mine!” Mike shouted. A dark suitcase with baseballs along the edges fell on top of a red suitcase. “And there’s yours! At least our bags made it. I think that’s prett
y lucky.”

  Mike and Kate scrambled to grab their suitcases as they moved past. Mike plucked his off the belt first. When Kate bent down to grab her suitcase, her backpack swung off her shoulder. She had to drop everything to snag her suitcase before it passed by.

  “See, it is our lucky day,” Mike said. “You almost missed it.”

  Kate gathered the rest of her things, and they headed back to her father. He led them out to the car and stowed the bags in the trunk. Mike and Kate hopped into the backseat. “Anything you want to see on the way to my apartment?” Mr. Hopkins asked as he buckled his seat belt. “It’s about thirty minutes to Santa Monica.”

  “Let me look at my list,” Kate said.

  She rummaged through her backpack for a moment and then looked up at her father. “Wait!” she said. “My notebook is missing!”

  Fortune Cookie

  Warning

  “I know I didn’t put it in the trunk with the suitcases,” her father said. “Are you sure it’s not in your backpack?”

  Kate took another look. While she did, her father opened up his jacket again. He checked the small notebook in his shirt pocket. He seemed lost in thought for a moment.

  “No, it’s not here,” Kate said. “I definitely had it just before we got our suitcases, because I showed it to Mike.”

  Mike snapped his fingers. “That’s it!” he said. “Suitcases! I’ll bet you left it by the baggage claim. Remember when your backpack slipped off? You put your backpack and notebook down. Maybe you didn’t pick it up again.”

  Kate unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and hopped out. “We’ll be right back, Dad,” she said.

  Mike and Kate ran inside the airport to the luggage area. It had emptied out. Only a few unclaimed bags were left. Kate stopped at the spot where she had pulled her suitcase off the carousel. There was no sign of the missing notebook.

  Kate searched the area. She even peeked under the edge of the carousel. Mike checked the seats and nearby hallways.

  “I asked the janitor about it,” Mike said when he returned to Kate. “He just cleaned here. If the notebook were here, he would have found it. That means someone must have taken it!”

  Kate frowned. “Drat. I knew I should have put it away! Well, at least there wasn’t anything special in there. Just the list of things I wanted to see in L.A. Okay, let’s go back to the car.”

  The ride to Mr. Hopkins’s apartment was pretty quick. He lived in a tall building on Ocean Avenue. It was across the street from Pacific Palisades Park and the ocean. After unpacking, Mike, Kate, and Kate’s dad walked a few blocks to a Chinese restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard. The restaurant wasn’t crowded. They sat at a round booth in the corner.

  “So, Mike, I know you’re a baseball expert,” Mr. Hopkins said after they had ordered. “Can you tell me what’s unusual about Dodger Stadium?”

  “Um … let’s see.” Mike leaned back in his seat and thought hard. “Oh, I know!” he said, snapping his fingers. “Dodger Dogs!”

  Mr. Hopkins chuckled. “Good guess. I know that most fans think the Dodgers’ hot dogs are special, but I was thinking of something else. Something about the park itself.”

  Mike thought some more. Finally, he shrugged. “I give up. What?” he asked.

  “The dugouts!” Mr. Hopkins said. He took a pen from his shirt pocket and drew the outline of a ballpark on a white paper napkin. “Usually the home team’s dugout is along the first-base line. But in Dodger Stadium, the visiting team sits on the first-base side. The home team is on the third-base side. Any idea why?”

  “So the Dodgers can get to the hot dog stand faster?” Mike asked.

  “No, not even close.” Mr. Hopkins laughed. “Think about something big and bright and hot.”

  “The sun!” Kate blurted out.

  “Exactly,” Mr. Hopkins said. “The team put the home dugout there so that the sun wouldn’t shine directly into the players’ eyes during afternoon games. Instead, the visiting team sits in the sun, while the Dodgers stay cool in the shade.”

  “That’s mean,” Kate said. “You’re supposed to treat your guests nicely.”

  “Not in baseball,” Mr. Hopkins said with a smile. “The visiting team often gets a smaller locker room or older showers. Some clubs even cut the grass to different heights to throw the other team off. It’s fair to do anything within the rules to give your team an advantage.”

  Mr. Hopkins slid the pen back into his shirt pocket. As he did, the smile left his face. He seemed deep in thought again as he checked for the small black notebook. Then he glanced nervously around the restaurant.

  “Dad? You okay?” Kate asked. “You’ve been acting weird since you picked us up.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Work has been a little tough lately. But I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “Is something wrong?” Kate asked.

  Her dad sighed. “Over the past month, strange things have been happening to me and other Dodger employees. Someone stole a few of my old scouting reports. My car was broken into two weeks ago. And sometimes I feel as if I’m being followed,” he said. “At first I thought I was just imagining it. But last week, I heard that a few items, like notebooks, had been taken from coaches and managers.”

  Kate touched her father’s arm. “Sorry, Dad,” she said. Then she pointed to his shirt pocket. “Are you worried about that notebook? You keep checking it.”

  “Those are my scouting notes. They’re very important. If someone takes them, they’ll know which players we’re tracking,” Mr. Hopkins said. “I’m going to give them to my boss after the game this week.”

  “Why don’t you type the notes into your computer and email them to your boss?” Mike asked. “Wouldn’t that be safer?”

  “Our email system has been broken into,” Mr. Hopkins said. “My boss doesn’t want us sending anything important that way. Also, my laptop computer was stolen last week. Luckily, I had already deleted my scouting reports. I copied them into this notebook instead. I haven’t let it out of my sight since.”

  “This is pretty creepy,” Kate said. She scrunched over, closer to her father. “Are we in danger?”

  “I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t have let you come,” Mr. Hopkins said. He put his arm around Kate and gave her a hug. “I’m not sure who’s causing all this trouble or what they want, but we should be fine.”

  Their talk was cut short when the waiter came back with their meals. Kate devoured her beef with broccoli, while Mike tried to use chopsticks on his spicy peanut chicken. But all he did was drop globs of food on the table and his lap. He finally gave up and ate with a fork. During dinner, Mr. Hopkins told Kate and Mike more Dodger history.

  At the end of the meal, Mike pushed his plate away. “That was really good,” he said. “Now I feel like a nap.” He put his head down on the table and pretended to snore.

  “I didn’t know how hungry I was,” Kate said, yawning. “Or sleepy. I guess it’s later than I thought, since we’re three hours behind New York time.”

  “We should head home, then,” Kate’s dad said. He asked for the check. The waiter delivered it with three fortune cookies. Right away, Mike and Kate tore off the clear wrappers.

  Mike snapped his cookie in half. He pulled out the ribbon of thin white paper. “Plan for excitement ahead,” he read. “Wowee! This should be a good week.”

  Kate smiled, broke open her cookie, and pulled out her fortune. “Wait, mine’s better,” she said. “Something lost will be found. That has to mean we’ll find my notebook! Dad, what does yours say?”

  Kate’s father unwrapped his fortune cookie and bit off one end. With a show, he unfolded the paper inside.

  But instead of reading it out loud, he just stared at it. Mike nudged Kate. “Ummm, what does it say, Dad?” Kate asked.

  “Never mind,” he said, crumpling it up. “It’s time to go now.” He reached for his jacket.

  “Oh, come on, Dad,” Kate teased. “Tell us!”

  Mr. Hopkins paused, and then his face broke out into a large smile. “These things are silly,” he said. He picked up the crumpled fortune and handed it to Kate.

  “Watch out for strangers!” she read, her eyes wide.

  “It’s a mystery!” Mike said. “That’s two things we have to keep an eye out for. Kate’s notebook and strangers. Cool!”