Stealing Third

            by Greg Specht

 

It’s a warm sunny morning, the birds are up and singing.

“It’s time to get up.” Mother calls, “Time to greet the day with a big smile.”

 

 

Danny slides out of bed and goes to the kitchen. Mother is making pancakes for breakfast, Danny’s favorite. He pulls a chair up to the dinner table as Mother lays a fresh plate of steaming hot pancakes in front of him. Danny loves these summer days, they are so much better then school days. “Eat up”, says Mother,  “I don’t want you to be hungry during your game today.”

 

 

Danny quickly finishes off the pancakes. “Thanks for breakfast mom, it was great.” Danny goes up stairs to get dressed. Danny pulls on his favorite “map of the solar system” shirt and his lucky (although rather ripped) pants to ensure that today will be a good day. Danny walks down the stairs back into the kitchen, picks up the phone and calls up George, his best friend.

 

The phone rings… George’s mom answers the phone “Hello?”  He didn’t know what George’s mom’s name was, just like all his friends’ moms. She was simply George’s mom, she had no other name.

 

“Hi, is George there… can he come out to play?” Danny asks.

 

“Sure, I’ll tell him that you are waiting.” George’s mom responds.

Danny grabs his lucky baseball hat, bat and glove. He runs down to George’s house. When you get to George’s house you see him standing out front with his baseball bat and glove. You guys walk towards the park together.

 

Today is going to be a good day, because today is the day of the city wide baseball tournament. Danny and George must make it to the tournament before three this afternoon. Danny and George left early so they could watch the games before theirs.  Danny and George start to walk into town, George wants a soda. So they go to the store. In the store they meet Charles, Charles a mean kid who plays for the rich kids team “The Dollar Tree”. “The Dragons have nothing on the Trees.” he says in his normal high-pitched voice.

 

 “What you don’t know about Dragons is that we smoke Trees.” George responds with a smile.

 

Charles turns and walks out of the door nose stuck so high in the air that it hit the top of the door as he leaves. ‘Ow!” Charles’s eyes begin to fill with tears as he removes his nose from the doorway. 

 

 

Danny and George fall down laughing. After George buys his soda, they walk down Main Street.  As they walk they talk about what positions they want to play in their games this weekend. When they got to the park there wasn’t a single person around.

 

“What’s going on?” Danny asked George.

           

“I dunno, let’s go and see what happened.” Danny and George run to the fence that runs around the park.

           

It read, “Park closed due to hooliganism.”

           

“I hate hooligans… what are they?” Danny asks.

           

“I think that hooligans are when a man and a woman like each other a lot and…” George is cut off.

           

“So you want to know what hooliganism is, huh kid?” comes a voice from over their shoulders, “hooliganism is what’s wrong with this country. It’s when a buncha no-good kids get together and ruin another kid’s day.”

           

“But mister what’s wrong with the field?”

 

 “Some kids smoked some trees and drank a bit too much fire water and decided that they should drive their cars on the field. Look, the field is totally torn up. They also took all the bases on the field. There aren’t any other bases in town. So now we can’t even move the games to some other field.” Danny and George both turn and look where the old man points. There are large pieces of the field that have deep trenches dug in them, and the base paths are completely empty. “The worst part of it is that they left their cans all over the place.”                               

 

           

“I guess we can’t play baseball any more.” Danny says as he turns and walks back towards home. George turns and follows him. “What are we going to do now?” asks Danny.

           

“Let’s try and find out who these guys are and see if we can get our bases back.” George exclaims.

           

“How are we going to find them?” Danny asks.

           

“Let’s see if we can follow the muddy tire tracks that lead off the field.” George says, pointing at the broken fence and the muddy tire prints that lead away from the field.

           

“That’s a good idea.” Danny says. They follow the tire tracks down the street and then to the right. Then the muddy trail slowly disappears. “I guess the mud fell off their tires…”

           

“How are we going to find the bases now?” George says throwing his hands up. Looking back George sees Danny across the street.

           

“WE CAN FOLLOW THE CANS!” Danny calls from across the street. In his hand he holds an empty can just like the ones left on the field. Sure enough, there are several more cans further down the street. Soon, both Danny and George have their arms filled with empty cans. At last the trail ends. In front of them rises up a huge truck that has wheels bigger then both Danny and George.

           

“Ok we are going to need all of our skill in the ninja arts.” George says.

           

“What skill?” Danny asks. He is very interested to know where George learned these skills.

           

“I learned them from my older brother. Just follow me.” George whispers and then strolls over to the edge of the truck's tires. Just then a group of big kids walks out of the house with the bases in hand and start to make their way to the truck. “Watch this.” George said as he jumps out from behind the truck tire. “STOP RIGHT THERE YOU HOOLIGANS.” George screamed. “THIS IS THE POLICE WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED.” The big kids fall to the ground screaming in high-pitched voices. “Grab the bases quickly!!!” Danny springs into action grabbing second base from off the ground then turning to find the last base. Danny sees that George has three and he is in the middle of wrestling some of bigger kids for the last base. Just then, the man from the field pulled up in his car.

 

 

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF THOSE KIDS.” he yells. Danny and George both look at him now.  He had a flaming beard with a tan cowboy hat and cowboy boots. One by one the big boys ran at him and one by one he leveled them with roundhouse kick after roundhouse kick. After all the big kids were laid out on the ground he said, “There are no disabled people. Only people who have met Chuck Norris. Come on kids lets go play some baseball.” Danny and George jumped into the cab of Chuck Norris’s truck and drove off to the other City Park. On the way Chuck called all the coaches of the teams in the tournament to tell them that we had the bases.