Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace

Author:Joseph Wallace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria
Published: 2010-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

24

Alone. That was the word.

Alone among eight thousand people.

Eight thousand. That was how many fans came to see the Brooklyn Typhoons play the Allentown Silkworms that Thursday afternoon. Row upon row filled with men in suits and bowler hats, women in dark skirts and pristine white blouses, their short hair nearly hidden under their cloche hats, children running up and down the aisles. The sun winked in and out of the clouds, and the breeze caught bits of paper and sent them whirling out across the field.

It was a multitude. And that didn’t even count the hundred or so camped on the roof of the four-story brick apartment building just past the rightfield wall, or the dozens of others standing in the building’s open windows, watching.

Or the couple dozen newspapermen and photographers from the local tabloids, along with The Sporting News, Baseball Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and others.

All here to watch her.

Was there also someone here in the stadium with a different goal?

On the field just before the game began, throwing a few easy tosses with the second-string catcher, Stu Hunter, Ruby couldn’t actually believe that anyone had come to the game to kill her, merely to prevent her from “sullying” professional baseball. Most likely, whoever wrote the letter had believed that the threat itself would be enough to send her fleeing.

Wrong.

• • •

Ruby sat on the bench in the home dugout. Not one of her teammates would even acknowledge her existence, except for Andy Sutherland, the Typhoons’ veteran starting catcher. When she caught his eye, Andy, who had unruly dark hair, shrugged and gave her a sympathetic look, but even he didn’t sit close to her. There were five feet of splintery old bench between her and the next closest Typhoon.

Jake Conlon was different, a little. Twice in the early innings he plunked down beside her and asked if she was okay, if she was ready. Both times she said, Yeah, sure, and both times he nodded and said, Good, and then was back up again, sitting with the rest of his team, leaning against the railing, racing out to argue a call with the umpire, never still.

But also never telling his team to welcome her, or suggesting that she go sit with them.

Ruby watched the game. The Typhoons’ pitcher, Mike something, was a thirty-five-year-old who relied on a variety of slow balls and changes of pace mixed with an occasional fadeaway and an even more occasional fastball. Ruby admired how he kept the batters off balance, out of rhythm, and thought that if he made it through the sixth inning, she’d have an easy time of it with the batters when she came in. Her fastball would look like a meteor to them after all Mike’s slow stuff.

The Silkworms’ pitcher was a cocky young speedballer who was more impressed with himself than he had any right to be. He’d stalk around the mound if anyone as much as hit a foul off him, and gripe loud enough for Ruby to hear if a pitch he liked was called a ball.

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