Abner & Me Read Free

you could travel through time now , Stoshack,” he said. “Like to five minutes ago! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
    I could hear his stupid laugh all the way from the parking lot.

3
The Guy Who Invented Baseball (Maybe)
    COACH VALENTINI GATHERED THE TEAM AROUND HIM IN the dugout. When we were younger, one of the moms or dads would provide snacks after the game. But the coach decided that we were too big for that. He handed each of us a pack of baseball cards to take home with us.
    Flip Valentini doesn’t have to coach our team. He does it for the fun of it. Flip doesn’t have to work at all. But he runs Flip’s Fan Club, the local baseball-card shop where a lot of us hang out. I doubt that he makes much money doing it. Coaching us and running the store is Flip’s idea of being retired. He loves baseball and always tells us he was a pretty decent pitcher in his day. Of course, that was a long time ago. He must be seventy years old now. Maybe older.
    Some of the guys were complaining that BobbyFuller had cheated, and that’s why we didn’t win the game. But the coach just put a finger to his lips to quiet them down. I knew he didn’t like complainers, so I didn’t even tell him what Fuller had done.
    â€œFuhgetaboutit,” Flip told us as he ran his bony hand through his white hair. “Y’know, when I was growin’ up in Brooklyn, my team was the Dodgers. ‘Dem Bums,’ we called ’em. They were a great team, like youse guys. But they lost every stinkin’ year to the Yankees in the Series. Every October it was always the same story. Wait till next year, wait till next year. But the Bums never gave up. They was always battlin’.”
    â€œAnd I bet they eventually won the World Series, right, Coach?” asked our second baseman, Gabe Radley. We had all heard enough of Flip’s old baseball stories to know where he was going.
    â€œYou’re darn tootin’ they did!” Flip said. “They finally beat them Yanks in ’55 and brought Brooklyn the only Series we ever won. And then, two years later, the Dodgers said they were gonna up and leave Brooklyn. They moved to California and became the Los Angeles Dodgers. Big league baseball was gone from Brooklyn, forever. Fuhgetaboutit.”
    Flip was shaking his head sadly, like the whole thing had happened yesterday.
    â€œWhat’s that got to do with us, Coach?” our right fielder, Burton Ernie, asked. “Are we moving to California?”
    Burton is not the brightest bulb in the box. He puts two and two together and comes up with five. Burton’s real last name is Johnson, but everybody calls him Burton Ernie because he probably still watches Sesame Street . Honestly, I can’t imagine how he made it past sixth grade.
    â€œNo, you lunkhead! The point is, youse kids should never give up neither. We’ll get ’em next time, boys. And we play these creeps again next Thursday, so be ready to battle. Next time we’ll whup them for sure. Right, Stosh?”
    â€œRight, Coach!” I said.
    Flip Valentini cracks me up. He’s pretty cool for an old guy. It’s hard to imagine him being young, but Flip told us that when he was a kid, he and his friends played a game of flipping baseball cards against a wall. Whoever flipped a card closest to the wall got to keep all the cards. That’s how he got the nickname “Flip.” We used to be called the Yellow Jackets, but then Flip decided to sponsor us. He liked owning the team so much, he decided to coach us too.
    Flip also said he and his friends used to take baseball cards and stick them into the spokes of their bike wheels with clothespins so they would make a sound like a motorcycle.
    Can you believe that? Throwing your baseball cards at a wall? Mangling them in your bike spokes? Man, I keep my cards in clear plastic pages that fit into loose-leaf binders. If anybody tried to stick my cards into the spokes of a