(Author's Note: This story is about the Tenth Doctor, when he is traveling around by himself. R&R!)
It was a good day for a ballgame. Granted, some would argue that any day with a ballgame is a good day for a ballgame.
The sun beat down on the stadium, reflecting off the silver fences and railings to blind any unwary spectators. The air smelled like sweat, mowed grass, and mustard. People mulled around, chatting, buying snacks in advance, or finding seats.
A little boy of around nine years old ran through the crowd, brown curls bobbing and bouncing on his smallish head. He was so eager that he didn't see the man in the trench coat until he had ran right smack into him.
"Whoa, whoa there!" said the man in a British accent as the boy got off of him. Even in this heat, he was wearing a brown trench coat, his hair was wild and spiky and his friendly eyes peered over his dark square glasses.
"Sorry, mister," the boy panted. A heavyset, balding man jogged up behind him. "Teddy!" he reprimanded, "you need to watch where you're going! I'm so sorry, sir."
"All right, no harm done," said Trench Coat Man. He looked down at the boy. "What's your name, little man?"
"Teddy," said the boy. He pointed to the heavyset man. "That's my dad." Teddy's father smiled. "I'm Chris Hartnell. Nice to meet you."
The two men shook hands as Trench Coat Man said "Brilliant, real pleasure. I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
The Doctor grinned roguishly. "Ah ha, now that would be telling, wouldn't it?"
Mr. Hartnell laughed along, even though he didn't really get the joke. He ruffled his son's hair. "It's this little wise guy's first baseball game. He's pretty excited." Teddy nodded enthusiastically, his smile practically a mile wide.
The Doctor chuckled. "It's been a while since I've been to one, myself. The last one I went to was, er, Firmapple World Series? Yeah, that's right, the Firmapple, when Jimi Upton hit the winning home run and then rounded all fourteen bases…"
He stopped, seeing Teddy and Mr. Hartnell's confused faces. "Er… sorry. After your time." He stepped back. "Weeell, I've got to go find my lucky seat. Enjoy the game, Chris, Teddy. Keep an eye out, Teddy, and maybe you'll catch a ball." He winked.
Teddy laughed. "That would be COOL!" His father chuckled too. "We'd probably better go find a seat, too. Nice to meet you, Doctor."
The Doctor waved as they parted ways. "Completely and utterly likewise." He turned and walked down the steps towards the field.
The umpire held a baseball in his hands. It he had made sure it was regulation and game-ready. He felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned to see a piece of papers shoved in his face. Looking past it, he saw the spiky-haired man in a trench coat who was holding it. "Can I help you?" the umpire grunted.
The man said, in a flawless American accent, "Name's Jack Harkness. My credentials."
The umpire read the piece of paper and frowned. "'Federal Baseball inspector?' I've never heard of you."
The man put the piece of paper away. "Yeah, well, there's been a very bad spate of non-regulation baseballs being used recently. I'm just here to double-check. Won't be a moment."
Reluctantly, the umpire handed the ball over. The man took it, looked it over a bit, then pulled out an odd little wand-like thing that gleamed silver. He aimed it at the baseball and pushed a button, causing the wand to make a buzzing sound and shine blue light on the baseball.
"Hey!" cried the umpire. "What are you doing to that ball!?"
Not even looking up, the man replied "Inspecting." Then he added, as if as an afterthought, "…dude."
"How? What is that thing? I've seen it done like that." The umpire got up in the man's face. "I. Demand. An. Explanation. And don't give me any more of that inspector-inspecting stuff. I'm not buying any of that bullcrap."
The man awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "Well… y'see, it's…" he looked past the umpire. "Oh, look, it's Abraham Lincoln!"
The umpire was unimpressed.
The man squinted and tilted his head. "It… it is Abraham Lincoln?"
Something in his voice made the umpire turn around, and sure enough, a very familiar-looking man in a top hat and a long black beard was walking across the field. The umpire turned away from the "inspector" and ran after the apparent Lincoln, yelling "Hey! What do you think you're doing? Get out of here! There's a game about to start!"
And the Doctor, knowing that this particular part of his job was done, slipped away to find a seat in the stands.
"PLAY BALL!"
"STEE-RIKE!"
"SAFE!"
Shouts and calls flew up from the baseball field and mixed in with the yells and cries from the stands. The excitement had been thick in the air before the game; now it was positively corporeal. The players threw, swung and ran. The crowd cheered and jeered, whichever the situation required.
The Doctor sat in the midst. He munched on a hot dog and slurped from a soda cup as he eyed the players below. Yes, it had indeed been a while since he'd been to a good old-fashioned American baseball game.
Finishing his hot dog, he checked his watch. It displayed several rather orbicular symbols that no one sitting in the stands around him would've understood. It was very possible that the Doctor was the only person alive who understood them.
"Right," he muttered to himself. He took out his sonic screwdriver and watched the pitcher in the field below. He watched the ball as it was hurled towards the batter, and aimed the screwdriver.
There was the smack of bat against ball! The crowd cheered as the ball soared upwards. The doctor pointed his screwdriver and triumphantly cried "Gotcha!"
The baseball fans viewed the ball's ascent into the sky… then watched, open-mouthed, is it stopped. Just stopped. Remained there, in midair, staying completely still, as if time had stopped.
Then, it started to move again, only to the side instead of up. Then it curved downward. The audience was dumbfounded as they watched the baseball impossibly do a figure eight and loop-de-loop in the air above the stadium.
Enraptured as everyone was with the ball, no one noticed the Doctor moving his sonic screwdriver in figure eights and loop-de-loops along with the ball, or rather the ball was moving along with it. No one noticed his massive grin of childish glee and mischief.
The Doctor started to guide the ball upward away from the stadium. "Don't worry, Teddy, you'll get your chance," he whispered, "just taking care of something for a bit."
The ball rose more and more, faster and faster, until it was out of sight.
Meanwhile, high in the Earth's upper atmosphere, the Klidean Warsmith gurgled in pleasure as he reached out a tentacle to push the big green button before him.
One push of that button, and his ship's lasers would raise the Earth's overall temperature by googol degrees, making the Earth itself into an incomprehensibly hot ball of flame that would be the Warsmith's ultimate weapon in his conquest of the universe. His tentacle was inches away from the button…
Suddenly, a little white ball zipped towards the ship. Though normally such a tiny projectile would be a laughable attempt at attack, the ball was just the right size to enter the deton-port and destroy the ignition crystals, rendering the lasers completely dead. Just for good measure, the ball also destroyed the stabilizing flux-switches and sent the malfunctioning ship blasting all the way to the Silver Eye Nebulae.
The ball, having exited the ship's interior just in time, calmly descended back down the way it came.
The fans in the stands were excitedly talking among themselves, trying to puzzle out how the ball had done such things, and what it meant. The Doctor was sitting back and looking around at the surrounding crowd with a somewhat self-satisfied look on his face.
Someone looked up and pointed. "Hey! It's coming back! There it is!"
The crowd looked up in wonder as they saw the ball coming back down to earth, slower than it had gone up and much slower than it should have fell. Its fall was so slow, in fact, as it descended towards the stadium, that someone from the stands could reach up and catch it.
And, when the ball reached the top of the stands, that's exactly what Teddy Hartnell did.
Slowly, people trickled out of the stadium, still talking amongst themselves about the remarkable events they had witnessed. The Doctor, unseen, unnoticed by anyone, had left the midst of them and was walking out towards an empty lot nearby.
"Hey, mister!"
The Doctor turned to see Teddy running up to him, a big goofy grin on his little face. "Mister! You were right! I caught the ball, just like you said! You were right!"
While Teddy jumped up and down in excitement, his father came up and patted him on the shoulder. "All right, let's get you home, pal. That's enough excitement for one day." He turned to the Doctor. "That was pretty weird, huh? My theory: it was all a publicity gag. Drum up interest for baseball season, y'know? Darned if I know how they did it, though."
The Doctor shrugged. "I'm sure it'll remain a mystery for many years to come. Very sure."
"Probably." And with that, father and son started to walk away together. Chris called over his shoulder "Nice to meet you, Doctor!"
"You as well!" The Doctor waved good-bye. He sighed in a happy sort of way. It was nice to see a father enjoying his child… while they still had each other.
The Doctor was sad for a moment, unwanted memories coming a-knocking, but he brushed it aside. Today was not a day to be sad. He'd just com from a baseball game, helped a little boy achieve his wish, and foiled a despicably dastardly alien fiend while he was at it.
No, today was not a day to feel sad. And the Doctor dashed over to where the TARDIS was lying in the empty lot and enthusiastically threw open the door, ready to go off and hunt down another day to not feel sad upon.
Allons-y!
...But wait.
…Wasn't there something the Doctor still had to do?
He stopped and thought, resting his elbow absentmindedly on the TARDIS console. Then he remembered. He laughed. Of course!
Abraham Lincoln sat, calmly and quietly, reading a book by candlelight.
There was a knock on his door. Lincoln looked up. "Come in."
His door creaked open and in peered a man in a strange long coat with strange, spiky hair. "Hello, Abe!" he cried jovially. "Care to come see a baseball game?"