It took Danny another couple of days before he finally got up the nerve to ring the doorbell.

For maybe twenty seconds, there was only silence inside the house.

Finally, a window on the second floor flew open and a voice yelled, “Unless you’re with the lottery and I won the four hundred million jackpot, go away!”

Danny heard the window slam shut. He took a deep breath and rang the bell again.

Again the window was thrown open.

“So I did win the four hundred million? Okay, just slip the check under the door, then go away!”

Before the window could close, Danny sprinted down the porch steps and out into the sunshine so the old man could see him.

“Mr. Spinelli, I need to talk to you!” he shouted. “It’s important!”

The old man looked down, shielding his eyes from the sun. He appeared to be wearing a painter’s smock again. But, mercifully, this one wasn’t streaked with red paint, giving him the blood-splattered look of an ax murderer.

This one was covered with vivid splotches of aquamarine. With paint smeared on parts of his neck and face, he looked like a member of the Blue Man Group.

“Oh, it’s you,” Danny’s neighbor said. “Don’t tell me: despite your normally pinpoint control, you broke another window, right? You sailed another pitch over the fence, didn’t you? And you’re just getting around to telling me….”

“No, nothing like that,” Danny said. “I need some advice.”

Mr. Spinelli glared at him.

“Who do I look like, Ask Amy?” he said. “Or whoever that wretched columnist is in the newspaper, the one who thinks she knows it all? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

The window started to close again.

“Please!” Danny said, louder now. “You’re the only one who can help me! It’s about that pitch you taught me. It’s…not working!”

Mr. Spinelli stared down at him for what seemed like an eternity.

“Front door’s open,” he said at last. “Come up to the studio. Second floor, big room to your right.”

For an instant, he seemed to hesitate.

“But I’m telling you now, I don’t have all day!” he yelled before the window slammed shut.

Danny let himself in and took the stairs two at a time. When he entered the studio, his jaw dropped. The walls were covered with paintings—row after row of artwork—and every single one had a baseball theme.

There were paintings of gloves so detailed you could see every shadowy crack in the brown leather, and balls so lifelike that the red stitching seemed to jump off the gleaming white horsehide, almost inviting you to grip it.

There were paintings of bats, mostly old-school Louisville Sluggers, so painstakingly rendered that you could see the intricate swirls in the polished ash, maple, and hickory, as well as the shine on the handle, just above the knob, where a batter would grip it and wear it down over time.

There were paintings of famous old ballparks, like Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and newer ones like Baltimore’s Camden Yards and New York’s Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.

If there was any doubt as to who had painted them, each was signed AS with a bold flourish in the lower right-hand corner.

Seeing Danny’s shocked gaze, the old man grunted.

“What did you expect me to paint?” he asked. “A dumb bowl of fruit? A basket of vegetables from a fall harvest?”

“I…I don’t know,” Danny said. “It’s just…you said baseball was a silly game. And a waste of time.” He swept his hand toward the artwork. “So I didn’t think you’d be doing…this.”

Mr. Spinelli walked over to a sink and washed his hands and face.

“Baseball is silly,” he growled, reaching for a towel. “And it’s a monumental waste of time.” Then his voice grew softer. “But it sure has a way of staying with you. Long after you’ve finished playing it.”

He stared out the window for a moment, lost in thought.

“But you’re not here to talk about my art,” he said finally. “What’s this about a fresh new crisis in your young life? And don’t give me a big song and dance about it. Give me the CliffsNotes version.”

Quickly, Danny recounted how well he’d done with the Terminator at first, then how it failed him against the Indians, how it was still doing nothing during his throwing sessions in his backyard, how it had done even less when he threw it in the park to Hunter, with the supernerd Elmo taking measurements as if he were a NASA scientist.

Now, Danny went on, the big game against the Yankees was almost here. And he was panicking over not being able to contribute with the play-offs on the line.

When he was through, the old man nodded sympathetically.

“Boy, that’s the dirty little secret about the pitch: it doesn’t work all the time,” he said.

Danny looked startled. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he said. “Sorry to burst your bubble. That’s why you have to mix it in with your other pitches. You can’t just rely on that one. But if you really stick with it, put in the time and effort to master it, it’ll work a lot of the time.

“And having something work a lot of the time in baseball isn’t bad. Especially when you consider that the best hitters in the game make an out seven of every ten times at bat.”

“But it’s not working for me at all!” Danny said, hoping he didn’t sound too whiny. “And the biggest game of the year is coming up!”

“Son, anyone ever tell you’re kind of needy?” Mr. Spinelli said. “Okay, the first thing you do is make sure your fundamentals are sound. Go over the checklist: Are you holding the ball the right way? Are your fingers in the correct position? Are you snapping your wrist the way you’re supposed to on the release?

“The other thing,” he continued, “is that you don’t want to grip the ball too tightly. A pitcher tends to do this when he’s tense, when he’s facing a pressure situation. I bet when the Indians started hitting you, you were squeezing that ball so tight you could have popped the stitching.”

Danny knew the old guy was right.

At one point in the game against the Tigers, right before the kid homered off him, Danny had looked down and noticed he was squeezing the ball so hard his knuckles had turned white.

“But gripping it tightly is the worst thing you can do with that pitch,” Mr. Spinelli said. “See, you have to throw it free and easy to make it drop. The guy who taught me the pitch said it should drop to the plate like a wet diaper.”

Danny tried to visualize a wet diaper sailing through the air.

Then he tried to visualize the horrified expression on the face of, say, Reuben Mendez as he stood in the batter’s box, watching this dripping mass of poly-fiber hurtling toward him before dropping with a thud.

The image made him smile.

Playing with wet diapers, he thought, could really liven up the game. Maybe we could pass that on to the rules committee in the off-season.

He looked at Mr. Spinelli and said, “You know so much about pitching. And you’re still passionate about it—I can hear it in your voice. So why did you quit your college team back in the day?”

The old man took off his glasses. Wearily, he massaged the bridge of his nose.

“You heard about that, huh?” he said. “Part of the reason had to do with exactly what you’re going through. I had a great season, but I could never make the pitch work one hundred percent of the time. And I was a perfectionist—not a good thing to be when you play this game.

“I knew the hitters would figure me out eventually. My fastball stank. And my curve and changeup were strictly mediocre. The league was bound to get wise to this scared young pitcher relying too much on a junk pitch that wasn’t always effective.

“Guess I couldn’t face that. So I just walked away. It’s something that bothers me to this day.”

He looked down and scraped a splotch of paint off his fingernail.

“You said that was part of the reason you quit,” Danny said. “What was the other part?”

The old man’s eyes narrowed.

“What makes you think I want to share that with you?” he barked. “Jeez! Can’t a guy keep anything to himself anymore? Is there no sense of privacy in today’s society?!” He nodded toward the door. “Okay, your time’s up. I’ll walk you out.”

Reluctantly, Danny followed him down the stairs. When they reached the porch, Danny paused.

“This is probably not a great time to ask this…” he began.

“Then don’t,” Mr. Spinelli said.

But there was no turning back now for Danny.

“No, I have to,” he said. “Would you come to our game against the Yankees? It would really mean a lot to me.”

“No,” Mr. Spinelli said.

“Please? Just to see if I’m doing anything wrong with the pitch? It’s like a totally must-win game for us! And you were at some of the earlier ones….”

The old man shook his head. “If things go wrong, go over the checklist. Go over each and every item—again and again. You have to figure this out on your own, boy.”

Danny’s shoulders slumped. “Okay. Guess you can’t blame me for trying.”

When he reached the sidewalk, he turned and waved.

Mr. Spinelli was still standing there, watching him from the porch. He waved back and Danny thought he saw something else on the old man’s face right before he went back inside.

Something he had never seen before.

It almost looked like a smile.

Almost being the operative word.