The Pinstripe Ghost Page 4

  “Skip the drink,” Kate said to Mike. “There’s no time to waste.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “But you owe me one.”

  They slipped past the customers and into the service hallway. Near the end, Mike and Kate crouched behind the large black trash cart. No one could see them there. And it gave them a perfect view of the storeroom.

  But after fifteen minutes, Mike started rubbing his legs. “I’m getting sore,” he said. “Can we stand up for a minute?”

  “No, we need to stay hidden,” whispered Kate. “It’s a good thing you’re not a catcher. You wouldn’t last more than a few batters!”

  Kate peeked around the edge of the trash cart. Suddenly, she grabbed Mike’s arm. “It’s him! It’s him! Here comes Mr. Williams,” she hissed.

  Mr. Williams was walking toward them with big strides. His eyes darted from side to side.

  “He saw us!” Mike whispered. “What do we do now?”

  “Shh!” Kate said. “He didn’t see us.”

  Just before the storage room, Mr. Williams stopped and looked around. He opened the metal door and stepped inside.

  “I knew he had something to do with this!” Mike cried.

  “Shh!” Kate said again.

  A few minutes passed. Then the door swung open. Mr. Williams came out of the storage room carrying a large brown cardboard box. The side of the box read BOOKS. He continued down the hall.

  Mike sighed and slumped against the wall. “He’s just getting his books,” he said.

  “The books are his cover,” Kate answered. “I’ll bet he goes in there and opens that vent. Then he sets something up to make that noise after he leaves. Maybe he calls someone to open the vent outside and let in cold air. It’s the perfect excuse!”

  A few more minutes ticked by. The crowd near the hot dog stand thinned out.

  “Do you think the ghost is going to show up today?” asked Mike. “It’s getting close to game time.”

  “He’ll be here,” Kate said.

  They waited and watched. Kate checked the time.

  “This is boring,” Mike groaned. He fidgeted with his baseball.

  Just then, they heard the ghostly sound. It came from right near them!

  KRRRRTT. SWWWWSSSSH. KRRRRTT.

  “Babe Ruth’s ghost!” Mike whispered.

  “Shh,” Kate hushed him a third time. The sound ended. “Now, let’s see if Mr. Williams comes back. He’ll need to undo whatever made the ghostly sounds.”

  Nothing more happened. No sounds. No Mr. Williams. Maybe their theory wasn’t right.

  “He’s not coming, Kate,” Mike said.

  Mike was about to stand up when the door to the storeroom cracked open. After a few seconds, Sammy and his friends came out.

  Sammy was wearing the same Yankees pin-striped jersey from the day before. But the bottom front edge was stained a bright cherry red. Behind them, the door slammed shut. Sammy and his friends joined the crowd in the main hallway.

  Mike laughed. “I guess I’m not the only clumsy one around!” he said. “Sammy spilled something all over his jersey.”

  Kate jumped up. “Mike—that’s it! The PowerPunch!”

  “The PowerPunch?” Mike asked. “What’s PowerPunch got to do with anything?”

  “Not just any PowerPunch,” Kate said. “Your PowerPunch! Remember when you spilled it in the vent yesterday?”

  “Yeah, so what?” Mike asked.

  Kate stamped her foot. “Don’t you see?” she said. She got frustrated when her cousin didn’t keep up with her thinking. “You spilled the PowerPunch in the vent yesterday. I’ll bet some of it was still there today, since we didn’t clean it up. I’ll bet the red stain on Sammy’s shirt came from your spilled PowerPunch!”

  “You think he crawled through the vent? And his shirt dragged through the PowerPunch?” asked Mike. “Why would Sammy be climbing through the vent?”

  “Because he and his friends are sneaking into the stadium!” Kate said. “It all fits. It’s not Mr. Williams! The air-conditioning duct must start somewhere outside the stadium. Probably near a flower bed or park. That’s why we saw the dirt and wood chips on the floor of the storeroom. It came from their sneakers!”

  “That means the ghost sounds that we heard were actually Sammy and his friends crawling through the ducts,” Mike said.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Sammy and his friends are the ghosts!”

  Babe Ruth’s Ghost

  Kate sprang up and pulled the door to the storeroom open. She clicked on the light. The room was empty.

  “Hey, look at that,” Mike said. He pointed to the fresh bits of dirt leading from the back wall to the door.

  “What are you kids doing in here?” asked a deep voice.

  Mike and Kate whirled around. “Mr. Williams!” they said.

  “Didn’t I tell you two to leave the ghosts to me?” Mr. Williams asked.

  “But …,” Mike started. “We were—”

  “Never mind,” Mr. Williams said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You have?” Mike asked. “Why?”

  “Bud told me you were still hunting for ghosts,” Mr. Williams said. He frowned. His eyebrows drew together in a dark line.

  “Yes, we were,” Kate said. “But we just figured out who the ghost is!”

  Mr. Williams’s eyes opened wide. “You did?” he asked.

  Kate explained quickly what they had seen.

  Mr. Williams rubbed his mustache. “Of course!” he said. “That’s why the ghost stories here were confusing. This is important information you’ve found out. We should tell security.”

  Mike looked at his feet. “I don’t want to get Sammy in trouble,” he said. “But I guess you’re right.”

  Mr. Williams led them to the stadium’s security office. There, for the second time, Mike and Kate explained the mystery of the ghost.

  “You two are real ghost hunters,” the security chief said. “But we’ll take it from here. Why don’t you go enjoy the game? I’ll meet you in the pressroom afterward and give you an update.”

  Mike and Kate went to their seats. The Yankees were behind by two runs. With all the excitement, the cousins found it hard to concentrate on the game. But they cheered along with the other fans when the Yankees hit three home runs to come back and win.

  After the game ended, Mike and Kate went to the pressroom. The security chief was there with Kate’s mom, Bud, and Mr. Williams. Most of the reporters and photographers had already left. Mike and Kate sat down in two dark blue chairs near the front windows.

  “What happened?” asked Mike.

  “After you told us about the ghost, our ushers found Sammy and his friends,” the chief said. “We brought them to the security office and called their parents. They admitted to sneaking into Yankee Stadium through the air vent.”

  Mike swiveled around in his chair and nodded at Kate.

  “I knew it,” Kate said. “Once I saw Sammy with the punch on his shirt, I knew it had to be him.”

  “How were they getting into the vent?” Mr. Williams asked. “Aren’t the vents usually covered?”

  The chief held up a small, shiny gold object. Kate leaned forward to get a good look at it.

  “Sammy’s father has keys to all of our air-conditioning systems,” the chief said. “Sammy took this one. He used it to unlock a special access closet on the outside of the stadium. It’s right behind the bushes near the parking garage. The boys climbed into the vent there. We’re going to give it back to his father.”

  “That’s where the dirt and wood chips were coming from,” Mike said.

  Just as Mike and Kate had figured out, the ghostly events were caused by Sammy. The chief said that since it was spring, the air-conditioning wasn’t on yet, so Sammy wasn’t in any danger. But when he opened the outside vent cover, the cold spring air came rushing in all at once.

  “Like this?” Mike asked. He spun his chair around and reached for the handle of one of the big pressroom
windows. With a small nudge, he slid the window open. A rush of cool air blew into the room. It swept stray scraps of paper from the nearby desks.

  “Mike! You’d better shut that window,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Look at the mess you’re making!”

  “That’s exactly what the ghost felt like!” Bud said.

  Mike and Kate laughed. Mike closed the window and took one last look at the stadium. On the field, men and woman in blue shirts were raking the infield dirt and removing the white bases. He swiveled back to face the room.

  “Sammy seemed nice,” Kate said. “He even gave away that ball he caught. It’s too bad he was sneaking in without paying.”

  “He is a good kid,” the chief said. “He’s been working here with his dad, and people like him a lot. But he made a bad decision about using the key to sneak in.”

  “Why didn’t he just buy tickets?” Mrs. Hopkins asked.

  “He loves the Yankees, but didn’t want to spend money on tickets. He’s trying to save for college,” the chief said. “He was working with his father during school vacations and the summer to earn extra money.”

  “Are you going to arrest him and his friends?” Mike asked.

  “No. But they are going to have to pay us back for all the games they sneaked into,” the chief said. “Sammy has already agreed to work on Saturdays until the tickets are paid off. He’ll help out around the stadium.”

  The security chief rustled around in his front pocket and pulled out two shiny white strips of paper with gold writing on them. They looked like some type of special ticket.

  “I wanted to thank you for solving our ghostly mystery,” he said. He handed a white-and-gold ticket to Mike and Kate. “Without your help, the stadium would still be haunted! Next time you’re here, let me know. You can use these special passes to see the game from the owner’s box.”

  Mike and Kate turned the tickets over in their hands. The front of the tickets had a special hologram image of Yankee Stadium and the words OWNER’S PASS written in bright gold letters. The back of each ticket was stamped VALID FOR ANY GAME.

  “Wow! That would be great,” Mike said. “Does that mean we can tell the manager who to put in the game?”

  The security chief laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I’m afraid not even our owner can do that. But you could say hello to the manager instead.”

  Mike smiled. “I’ve never watched a game from a luxury box before,” he said.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Mr. Williams said. “I was looking for you earlier because I had something for you.”

  He reached into a bag and pulled out two copies of Ghosts in the Ballpark. He handed one each to Kate and Mike. “But maybe you don’t need any advice on ballpark ghosts anymore,” he said. “You two seem to be doing pretty well on your own.”

  “Thanks,” Kate said. “But I do have a question. One of the ushers told us she’s seen a strange man dressed in pinstripes around the stadium before games. Whenever she goes over to get a better look, he’s gone.”

  “I think I saw him before yesterday’s game,” Mike said. “He was in Monument Park. He tipped his hat toward the field and then disappeared up the stairs.”

  “I haven’t heard about that one,” Mr. Williams said. “Maybe we have another ghost on the loose!”

  “At first we thought it was the same ghost that Bud was talking about,” Mike said. “But it can’t be Sammy, because he’s outside the stadium before the games. Who do you think it is?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure,” Mr. Williams said. He tugged on his mustache. “Maybe it’s the real ghost of Babe Ruth!”

  Dugout Notes

  Yankee Stadium

  “The House That Ruth Built.” The Yankees bought Babe Ruth’s contract from the Boston Red Sox in 1919. Back then, the Yankees didn’t have their own home park. Instead, they played at the Polo Grounds. But the Yankees’ rivals, the New York Giants, owned the Polo Grounds. Starting in 1920, huge crowds came to see Babe Ruth hit home runs for the Yankees. The Yankees became more popular than the Giants. That made the Giants’ owner mad. In 1921, he told the Yankees to leave. Two years later, Yankee Stadium opened.

  Babe Ruth, Hot Dogs, and Horsing Around. Babe Ruth liked to set baseball records. He set a career home run record (714) that wasn’t broken until Hank Aaron hit number 715 in 1974. But Ruth also liked to break the rules. Many times he acted like a kid. He was often more interested in having fun than in doing what he was supposed to do. Sometimes Ruth wore the same underwear for days because he didn’t feel like changing it. He claimed he could burp louder than a tractor, and he liked to prove it to anyone who would listen. Ruth also ate and drank too much. His midnight meals were larger than most people’s dinners. He would eat six hot dogs and drink six sodas for a snack!

  A First. Yankee Stadium was the first baseball park to be called a stadium. It was much larger than other ballparks. Yankee Stadium often had crowds of 70,000 people or more. It opened on April 18, 1923. On opening day, the Yankees played the Boston Red Sox. They beat them 4–1. The stadium was also the first triple-decker. That meant it had three seating levels.

  Secret Room. The original Yankee Stadium had a secret. For years, there was a fifteen-foot-wide room hidden below second base. The room wasn’t used for baseball or storing treasure. It was used for boxing. Yankee Stadium used to host boxing matches sometimes. The hidden room held the electrical and telephone equipment needed for the matches. The Yankees removed the room in 1976. It doesn’t exist in the new Yankee Stadium.

  Lots of World Series. Yankee Stadium has hosted more World Series than any other stadium—over thirty-five so far.

  New and Improved. When it was built in 1923, Yankee Stadium was the best stadium around. But by the early twenty-first century, it was getting old. The team decided it needed a new home. So it spent over $1.3 billion to build a brand-new version of Yankee Stadium directly across the street. The first official game in the new stadium was on April 16, 2009. The following year, the old stadium was torn down and the land was turned into a park.

  Pinstripes. The New York Yankees uniforms are famous for the thin black stripes running up and down the pants and shirts. The Yankees first wore pinstripes in 1912.

  Mike and Kate have tickets to the Red Sox game and all-access passes to Fenway Park. But as they’re watching batting practice before the game, the lucky bat of Red Sox star slugger Big D is stolen. Without the bat, Big D can’t seem to hit a thing. Can Kate and Mike figure out who pinched the bat before Big D and the Sox chalk up a loss?