Seventh-Inning Stretch

By now, it was getting dark outside. But the stadium’s bright lights lit up the field as if it were noon. It was a perfect, cool spring night for a baseball game, but not for the Seattle Mariners. After three innings, the Yankees were ahead by two runs. And after six innings, they were beating the Mariners by five.

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.”