The Pinstripe Ghost Read online

  Halfway through the next inning came the seventh-inning stretch. The grounds crew hustled out to rake the baselines. The fans stood up to stretch. The organ music for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” started. As soon as people began to sing along, Mike and Kate left their seats. Mike figured it was a good time to check out the storage room.

  The food area was filling up with fans. In the background, the stadium’s organ played. Mike and Kate could hear the fans singing, “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd.…”

  “Hurry!” Mike said. The only thing in the service hallway was still the black trash cart.

  When they got to the doors at the end, Kate gave a quick glance back toward Bud’s. “No one is watching,” she said.

  Mike turned the knob and gave the door a push. It didn’t budge. He pushed harder, but the door didn’t move.

  Kate checked again. The coast was still clear. “Let me try it,” she said. She turned the knob in the other direction and pushed. It wouldn’t move.

  “How about pulling it?” Mike asked.

  Kate smiled and pulled on the door. It swung open easily. The room was dark. “Yup, pull instead of push,” she said. “I should have remembered that.”

  “All right!” Mike whispered. “You go first!”

  Kate tiptoed in.

  “Hit the light switch,” Mike said.

  Kate fumbled along the wall with her right hand. No light switch. All she could feel was a metal shelf. “It’s got to be here,” she said. She tried a little bit lower. Finally, her hand found a switch. She flipped it up.

  The room was empty except for an old chair and a pile of cardboard boxes against the back wall. A small light hung from the ceiling. A set of metal shelves stood to the left of the door in front of the light switch.

  “Nothing here but some boxes,” Mike said. He walked over to the pile and peeked inside the top box. “I think we’ve found a ghost!”

  Kate rushed over.

  Inside the box was Mr. Williams’s book on baseball ghosts.

  Kate smirked. “Ha-ha,” she said.

  They searched the room for other clues. Something on the floor caught Kate’s eye. She bent over. “Mike, take a look at this,” she said.

  Small specks of brown littered the chair and the floor. There was a thin trail of it leading from the chair to the door. Kate picked up a pinch and smelled it.

  “What is it?” asked Mike.

  “Dirt,” she said. “And something that looks like wood chips. But what’s dirt doing here?”

  “I don’t know …,” Mike said. “Hmmm … let’s think. Maybe because it’s a ballpark and the whole field is made of dirt and grass?”

  Kate crossed her arms. “I think it’s a clue,” she said.

  “Someone forgot to wipe their feet,” Mike said. “My mom’s always yelling at me about that. Maybe real baseball players have the same problem.”

  Kate shook her head. She pointed to the wall behind the chair. There was a line of small scratches and scuffs in the gray paint of the wall below a vent. “What about these scratches?” she asked. “What are they from?”

  Mike leaned in and studied the marks. “Maybe someone was trying to scratch their way out!”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Get real! Stop joking around!”

  “Okay, okay,” Mike said. “They don’t look like much to me. I’ll bet someone was just using this room to change his shoes or store equipment or something.” He shrugged. “Let’s go. There’s nothing else here.”

  Mike took a sip of his PowerPunch and slid the bottle back into his sweatshirt pocket. At the same time, he pulled out his baseball and started tossing it in the air.

  “Can’t you ever stop tossing that baseball?” asked Kate.

  “It helps me think,” Mike said. He looked over at Kate and made a face. But as he did, the ball went flying out of his hand.

  It sailed toward the back wall.

  “Uh-oh!” Mike cried. He covered his eyes with his hands.

  SLAM!

  The ball clanged against the air vent cover in the back wall. It dropped with a clunk onto the concrete floor.

  Mike was afraid to look. It wouldn’t be the first time he had broken something with a baseball.

  “You can open your eyes now,” Kate said. Mike did. Kate was frowning at him. “Hopefully, no one heard that,” she went on. “Sammy is right. You do need to work on your catching.”

  Mike picked up his ball. It seemed okay. “Well, at least it didn’t do any damage,” he said.

  “Um, maybe not to the ball, knucklehead, but what about that?” Kate asked.

  She pointed to the corner of the air vent, where the ball had hit it. The bottom edge of the large square metal grate stuck out from the wall.

  “Oops,” Mike said. He leaned in. Luckily, the ball hadn’t dented the grate. It had just knocked it loose. He started to push it back in, but Kate stopped him.

  “Wait! I have an idea,” she said.

  Kate moved Mike aside. She stood in front of the air vent and grabbed its lower corners. She wiggled the bottom edge away from the wall. With a snap, it swung open. “Ta-da!” she said. “Pretty good, eh?”

  “Wow, how’d you do that?” Mike asked.

  “When you were pushing on the grate, I noticed the hinge along the top,” Kate said. “So I figured it would swing up for cleaning.”

  Mike pushed the chair under the vent while Kate held it open. Then they both hopped up on the chair to have a look. As they did, the bottle of PowerPunch in Mike’s sweatshirt pocket banged against the wall.

  “Shh!” Kate warned. “Are you trying to get us caught?”

  Mike shook his head and slipped the bottle out of his pocket. He took another quick sip. Then he set the bottle down in the big metal vent.

  “It’s an air vent,” Kate said. “Like the ones in my house, only a lot bigger.”

  “How do you know?” asked Mike. He stood on his tippy-toes to get a better look.

  “My father showed me how our furnace works when we were cleaning our basement last fall,” Kate said. “I’ll bet this is an air return. Air returns bring air back to a furnace or air conditioner.”

  “This is a pretty big vent,” Mike said.

  “Hey, look at that,” Kate said. She pointed to small clumps of dirt and slivers of brown wood chips on the inside of the vent.

  “Wow—just like on the chair and the floor!” Mike said. He reached out and picked up one of the brown clumps. It smelled like his mother’s garden. It was definitely dirt.

  “Yeah. Something funny is going on,” Kate said. “Let’s get out of here. Watch out while I close this.”

  Mike stepped back, but he’d forgotten he was standing on the chair. For a second, he lost his balance. He tried to steady himself, but his right arm knocked into his half-full bottle of PowerPunch. The bottle wobbled. It tipped over. The red liquid spilled into the vent, leaving a large puddle.

  “Oh no!” Kate said. “Nice job, Mr. Clean!”

  Mike turned as red as the PowerPunch. He could be really clumsy sometimes.

  Kate sighed. “Stand here and hold the cover open. I’ll look for something to mop it up with,” she said.

  She hopped off the chair and scanned the room. There was nothing except the empty shelves and Mr. Williams’s books.

  Suddenly, the kids heard a loud crash outside the door.

  “Hurry up, Kate!” Mike whispered.

  Kate looked at the small pool of PowerPunch. “It won’t hurt anything to leave it,” she whispered back. “There’s not that much. It will dry up in a day or two. Quick, grab the bottle and help me close this.”

  Ten seconds later, Mike and Kate had the vent cover back on. They peeked out of the door into the service hallway.

  “There’s no one here. That noise must have just been someone throwing a bag of trash into the cart,” Kate said. “Let’s get out of here before anyone else comes.”

  The Troublemakers

&nbs
p; Kate and Mike hurried down the service hallway and back to the main corridor.

  “Hey, kids!”

  Someone had seen them leaving the storeroom!

  “Over here!”

  They turned around. It was Bud, waving them over to his hot dog stand.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” he said. “I just thought of something. What do you say when you meet a ghost?”

  Before either one of them could answer, Bud pounded the counter. “How do you boo?” he said. “Get it? How do you boo?”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Bud,” she said. “That’s good. Have you heard the ghost lately?”

  “No,” Bud said. “But I just remembered I have a message for you. From the ghost.”

  Kate raised her eyebrows. “You do?” she asked. “From the ghost?”

  “Well, no, not really. But it is from the ghost expert,” Bud replied. “Mr. Williams stopped by. He knew you two were looking around earlier. He wanted me to tell you that ghost hunting isn’t for kids. But if you stop by his autograph table, he’ll have something special for you.”

  Mike tugged on Kate’s sleeve. “Thanks for the message, Bud. Maybe we’ll see you later,” he said.

  “Okay,” Bud said. “Come back after the game if you want a hot dog!”

  “Mr. Williams must have seen us sneaking into the room,” Mike said when they were out of earshot of Bud. “What should we do?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Kate said, shaking her head. “He’s talking about when I bumped into him before the game. I’ll bet he’s just trying to scare us off the trail.”

  “You mean scare us off his trail,” Mike said. “He was in the storeroom just before we heard the ghost. Maybe he put something in that vent to make noise or blow cold air. Nobody would suspect him because he’s storing his books back there.”

  Kate nodded. “We should stake out that storeroom tomorrow and see if it happens again.”

  Kate and Mike were soon back in their seats near third base. It was the top of the ninth inning. There were no outs yet. Seattle had just scored two runs, but the Yankees were still ahead, five to two.

  With his first swing, one of Seattle’s best batters hit a high foul ball down the first-base line. On the next pitch, he hit another highflying foul ball. This one soared back toward Mike’s and Kate’s seats.

  Mike jumped up. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” he yelled. He stretched to catch the ball.

  The ball sailed right over him.

  “Bummer,” Mike said.

  In the next section over, a little boy in a Yankees uniform tried to catch the ball in his small glove. A redheaded teenager snagged the ball instead. He held the ball up. The fans around him clapped and whistled.

  Then the redhead turned and gave the little boy the baseball he had caught. The boy waved the baseball around just like the teenager had. The nearby fans all cheered for him.

  “Isn’t that Sammy, the guy who called you Mickey Mantle?” Kate asked. She pointed to the red-haired teenager.

  Mike nodded. “Yup, that’s Sammy,” he said. “But he’s a dummy. If I caught a ball, I’d keep it. It’s probably worth seventy-five dollars.”

  “Aw, I think it was nice of him,” Kate said. “That little kid is really happy and—”

  Suddenly, Mike waved his hand to quiet her. “Shh …,” he said. He leaned toward the aisle. He was trying to listen to an usher. She was talking to a fan on the other side of the aisle. Kate listened, too.

  “So, like I said, be careful!” the usher told a fan in a striped shirt. “Babe Ruth’s ghost is haunting the stadium!”

  The usher started to head down the stairs. But Mike waved to her. She stopped next to them.

  “We just heard you talking about a ghost,” Mike said. “Have you seen the one at Bud’s hot dog stand?”

  “I know that Bud has been telling people about it,” the usher said. “But I think it’s just a scary story he made up. That’s not the real ghost at all.”

  “Oh,” Kate said. “It sounded kinda real to us.”

  The usher leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?”

  Mike and Kate nodded.

  “Like I was just telling that other fan, the real ghost is the ghost of Babe Ruth. He’s walking around the stadium,” the usher said. “I’ve seen him in an old-fashioned pin-striped uniform before games. Sometimes he’s in the stands. Once he was in the dugout. But he vanishes every time I try to get a good look at him.”

  Mike sucked his breath in. Kate was about to ask another question, but the usher took a step away from them.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “I see a couple of troublemakers over in section two-twenty-six. They’re always trying to sit in someone else’s seats.”

  When the usher left, Kate grabbed Mike’s arm, her eyes wide. “Wow!” she said. “That sounds like the guy you saw in Monument Park! Maybe it’s the same ghost that’s haunting Bud’s hot dog stand!”

  The usher had reached section 226. To Mike’s surprise, she went right over to Sammy and his friends. She spoke to them. Then Sammy rummaged through his pockets. He held out his empty hands. The usher motioned for him and his friends to leave the seats.

  Sammy and his friends headed into the stands. The usher watched them go. Then she turned around to help other fans.

  “Did you see that?” Mike asked Kate. “Sammy—”

  Just then, the crowd roared to life. All around Mike and Kate, fans stood up and started clapping.

  Mike checked the scoreboard. It was still the top of the ninth inning. The Mariners had two outs now, but they had runners on all the bases. The count was three balls, two strikes. One more strike and the game would be over. But a home run would score four runs and put the Mariners one ahead. Then the Yankees would have just one more turn at bat.

  The Yankees pitcher put his head down. He stared at the catcher. He shook off one sign after another. The fans clapped louder. They wanted that last out! Finally, the pitcher got a call he liked. He stood up straight, cupped the ball in his glove, reeled back, and let the ball fly.

  The Mariners batter swung hard. The bat slammed into the ball.

  The clapping stopped. The stadium was quiet. The ball flew high into center field. The fans groaned. One after the other, the Mariners base runners scored. The ball plummeted into Monument Park. The batter crossed home plate.

  It was a grand slam! Four runs for Seattle! The Yankees fans slumped into their seats. Now they needed at least one run to tie the game. Otherwise, they would lose.

  Luckily for the Yankees, the next Seattle batter popped out. The Yankees had one more chance to tie the game or get ahead.

  But they weren’t able to. Three strikeouts later, the game was over. Seattle had won.

  Mike shook his head sadly as they got up to leave. “They were soooo close!” he said. “If only that Seattle batter hadn’t hit a grand slam.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “There’s always tomorrow’s game. And if we hurry, we can stop by the souvenir stand to buy a shirt before we meet my mother.”

  A few minutes later, they were standing in line at the souvenir shop near the food court. Kate had a dark blue New York Yankees shirt in her hand.

  WHOOSH! The air vent above them came on full blast. A rush of cool air blew through the shop.

  Mike jumped. “Wow, that’s cold,” he said. “Maybe you should buy a Yankees jacket instead of a shirt! Those vents come on fast.”

  Kate grabbed Mike’s arm. “That’s it! The air conditioner vent!” she said. “It’s just like the subway grates on the sidewalk. Remember how the subway train pushed all that air up through the sidewalk vents?”

  “Yes, so it looked funny when I jumped a little bit,” Mike said. “But it was a whole lot funnier when you dropped that package of eggs at my house because my father scared you.”

  “You’re missing the point, Mike,” Kate said. “The ghostly chill. Remember? What if the cold air in
the air-conditioning vent near Bud’s hot dog stand got pushed out all at once? It would be just the same as when the subway train went by!”

  “It would feel like a ghost!” Mike said. “But why would that happen? Do you think the subway next to the stadium is doing it somehow?”

  “No, but what if the other end of that vent was outside? It’s still spring, so it’s colder outside the stadium,” Kate said. “Maybe someone opened up the other end of the vent. That would let in a rush of cold air all at once, like a ghost!”

  “So that’s why Bud always feels the chill and then hears the noise,” Mike said. “But who is opening the air-conditioning vent?”

  “I’m not sure. But there’s one way to find out,” Kate said. “Let’s get here early before tomorrow’s game. I think I know how to solve the mystery!”

  The Red Stain

  In the morning, Kate and Mike could hardly wait to get to the ballpark. They sat impatiently through a late breakfast. They fidgeted while Mrs. Hopkins talked to her boss on the phone. Finally, they left the hotel. The game started at one o’clock.

  When they got to the ballpark it was noon. Kate was nervous. What if they missed their chance?

  “I’ll see you later,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Enjoy the game. If you need me, I’ll be in the pressroom.” She turned and walked to the elevator.

  “Mike, hurry!” Kate said. “Race you to the hot dog stand!”

  She tagged Mike and took off. They tore down the stairs and past crowds of fans going to their seats. Kate touched the counter of the hot dog stand seconds before her cousin.

  “Beat you,” Kate panted.

  “No fair,” Mike said. “You had a head start.” He bent over to catch his breath. “I’m thirsty. Wait up while I get a PowerPunch.”

  A long line of customers snaked back from the stand. Bud was working quickly to keep up with the orders for hot dogs, pretzels, and sodas.