Chapter 13: Sixty, Count 'Em, Sixty
(September 30, 1927)
When Dipper was aware of where he was again, he found himself and Mabel shuffling in a line. "Where are we?" Mabel asked. Of course.
"I . . . don't know. A sports stadium?"
"Hey, I got a ticket!"
Dipper became aware that he, too, held a pasteboard ticket. He glanced at it. "NY Yankees / Washington Senators," he read. "September 30. But what year?" He turned the ticket over and blinked at what was printed there: Doz'u trh Nanft pouct scgv ir 8fi qabjns!
"Uh, Mabel, is anything on the back of your ticket?" he asked.
She turned it over. "Huh. It says bambino. What's that? Sounds like a dessert!"
He took out his pad and—pencil? Oh, sure, I get it, a ballpoint might attract attention—and hastily copied both the message on the back of his ticket and the word on the back of Mabel's.
They reached a turnstile and an attendant punched both of their tickets and told them to move to the left, enter through—and whatever else was drowned out by the chattering of the crowd. "We're up in the bleachers," Dipper said, studying both tickets. "This way, I think."
"Anyway, we're dressed better this time around," Mabel said. She was wearing a long-sleeved sweater, cranberry red and ivory, and a matching sash belt, plus a skirt with flounces shading from a matching cranberry at the waist through a dark red, a lighter red, a deep pink, and a paler pink, with a fringe at the hem. Her hair was bobbed, too—shorter than Dipper usually wore his.
He wore a blue flat cloth cap, a plum jacket, a white shirt and red tie, a sweater-vest in charcoal gray, and knee britches—yes, knee-length pants—that matched the vest. He wore socks that went up to the—what did you call that kind of trousers? Plus-fours! They blended right in, though he whispered to Mabel, "I think you're supposed to be a flapper."
"What's that?"
"Tell you later!"
They discovered they were in Yankee Stadium and found their seats about midway up the top level in the right-field bleachers, barely inside the foul line. Mabel sat in the aisle seat, Dipper next to her. The seats were filling up—mostly men, but some women and kids, too.
Dipper kept his head down, working at the cipher he had copied. It looked serious—when had Blendin ever ended one of his messages with an exclamation point before? A latecomer settled right behind Mabel. "Great day for the next to last game of the season ain't it?" he asked.
"Sure is!" Mabel said. "What season is it?"
"Baseball season!" Dipper whispered.
The guy behind Mabel—a wiry guy with a lined face, though Dipper thought he was only about forty—asked, "You guys sittin' here hopin' to catch the Babe's sixtieth? That's why I'm here!"
And something chimed in Dipper's mind: Babe Ruth. "The Bambino," fans had called him. The first guy to hit sixty home runs in a season—but when was that season? He couldn't remember.
"That would be great," Mabel said. She elbowed Dipper and mouthed, What's he talking about?
"Two homers yesterday!" the guy behind Mabel said. "Fifty-eight and fifty-nine! They say nobody will ever hit sixty, but I'll betcha the Babe can do it!"
"Oh, yeah, that'll be great!" Mabel said.
"Hey, my name's Joe Forner," the guy said. "You guys from around here? You don't sound like it."
"We're visiting from California," Mabel said before Dipper could answer. "I'm Marcy Flapper, and this is my brother Clem."
"Flapper?" the guy asked.
"She's kidding," Dipper said. "My sister is a kidder. Our name's really not Flapper. It's Flax. She's Marcy and I'm Mas—uh, Mace. Mace Flax."
"Like that's any better!" Mabel whispered.
"You kids come in alla way from California? Where in California?" Forney asked.
"San Francisco," Dipper said quickly, before Mabel could mention Piedmont and open the way to more questions.
"Must be nice there. Warm alla time, I bet. I'm a truck driver, live on First Avenue. I oughta be at work today, but I can't pass up a chance like this!"
"I like the way you do the baseball field out here in New York," Mabel confided. "All the stands decorated with red, white, and blue swags and with American flags."
"Game's about to start," Joe said. "Hang onto your hats!"
It mildly surprised Dipper that the game did not begin with the National Anthem. Instead, an umpire yelled, "Play ball!"
The Senators were first at bat. Mabel asked Dipper, "Should I root for the Senators?"
"Don't think that would be smart," Dipper whispered back. "This is New York. Support the Yankees."
"OK, but it seems disloyal. I am a Congressman, after all."
"Shh!"
Dipper kept running the cipher through various permutations. He had a pretty good idea it was a Vigenère—bambino would almost have to be the key word—but he kept getting distracted. The game seesawed back and forth, and by the end of the seventh inning it had leveled into a 2-2 tie.
It was hard for Dipper to concentrate—the fans were screaming and stomping, Mabel was asking him to signal a peanut vendor for a bag, the heavy guy in the seat to his left kept jostling him—but he grimly kept at it. Joe, behind Mabel, was audibly upset. Ruth had come up to the plate twice, but the sixtieth home run had eluded him. Lou Gehrig, another baseball great, was a teammate of Ruth's and seemed to be doing better than Ruth on that day's outing.
The top of the eighth saw the Senators come close to pushing the score ahead, but they failed to carry it off. Then pitcher Tom Zachary took the mound, the Yankees came to bat, and the next-to-last chance for Ruth to make that sixtieth home run was at hand.
But he came later in the batting order. Dipper hardly glanced at the field. He had the sense that he was close—frustratingly close—to solving the cipher. If only there weren't so many distractions.
A Yankee named Mark Koenig made it to third on a triple, but Zachary struck out one man, and then the crowd roared as Ruth came to the plate.
Dipper did look up then. The first pitch to Ruth was a sizzling strike, right across the plate.
Hmm. The eighth inning, and that number did show up in the cipher: 8fi. What if that meant "8th?" Then the word following would just about have to be "inning."
Zachary's second pitch to the Babe was a ball.
And then Dipper saw the word "Mabel" in the cipher, and as if he had put on a pair of magic glasses, he could read the whole thing, he was sure of it!
Zachary pitched to Ruth a third time—Ruth swung with all his power—the bat cracked against the ball so loudly that everyone in the stadium must have heard it—
"I'm gonna catch it with my mouth!" Mabel jumped up—
"No!" Dipper tackled her and pulled her down. The ball hissed overhead, and he heard a smack! Joe, in the seat behind Mabel's, yelled, "I got it! Ow!"
And the crowd went absolutely crazy. Mabel shoved at Dipper. "You ruined it!" she complained.
"Look at him!" Dipper said.
Babe Ruth ran the bases, not hurrying, loping almost regally, almost as though he owned the field.
And in a way, he did on that day.
He tipped his hat. His teammates swarmed him. The scoreboard changed: Washington 2, NY 4.
"Come on!" Dipper said, though he doubted Mabel could hear him over the deafening cheers.
They had to leave the bleachers and stand in a stairwell—the pandemonium was going on and on—until he could talk to her. "Mabel, I'm sorry, but look at Blendin's message."
He showed her the sheet of paper on which he had written the decrypted sentence: "Don't let Mabel catch hr by Ruth 8th inning!"
"Oh," she said. "So—I guess you did good, huh? And I was being silly."
"Were you really going to try to catch that ball in your mouth?" Dipper asked.
"I don't know. Probably not. I'd lose some teeth, I guess. I was just excited."
Joe Forney came down. "Hey, guys! I'm going to the dugout, see if the Babe will sign the ball. Wanna come?"
"Sure," Dipper said.
They tagged along. The Senators didn't mount a return in the top of the ninth, and—to Dipper's surprise, because he'd assumed there'd be some kind of security—they walked right into the dugout with Forney.
"Babe!" he said, holding the ball up. "I caught your homer!" He held up a red right hand. "Nearly busted my fingers, but I got it!"
"Give you five bucks for it!" Ruth said.
"No, sir! But would you sign it for me?"
"Guys!" Ruth yelled. "You wanna sign this ball or what?"
And the whole team signed, even Lou Gehrig. When Forney said, "Nobody will ever top you, Babe," Ruth laughed.
"If somebody does," he said, "it'll be this lug." Gehrig grinned wryly and shrugged.
When Ruth signed, he added the number sixty after his name. "Sixty," he rumbled, sounding pleased. "Count 'em, sixty."
He tossed the ball back to Forney.
It passed right through Mabel.
If anyone was surprised that the two kids who had come into the dugout with Forney just . . . faded away—
Well, it didn't show up in any of the news reports.