The Fenway Foul-Up Read Free Page A

Thanks for the tip.”

The Secret Code
    The grounds crew hustled to get the field ready for the game. They wore matching red polo shirts and tan shorts. One man bent down and sprayed white paint on home plate. Another did the same for the small strip of rubber on the pitching mound.
    “So Bobby thinks the man in the Yankees cap stole the bat,” Kate said. “Do you think they have enough evidence to arrest him?”
    “Not unless they find Big D’s bat,” said Mike.

    Kate leaned against the railing. A man dressed in khaki pants and a dark jacket was walking along the warning track next to the Green Monster. Out of nowhere, he opened a green door in the wall and stepped through it.
    “Did you see that?” Kate asked Mike.“There’s a hidden door in the outfield wall! How cool is that?”
    “That door’s used by the people who work the scoreboard,” Mike said. “Most parks have electronic scoreboards, but Fenway’s is old-fashioned. They change the score by hand.”
    Fenway’s scoreboard was about half theheight of the Green Monster. It was painted green to match. White lines that ran from top to bottom divided it into sections.
    The lines reminded Mike of something he had read a little while ago. “What if the bat is hidden somewhere really obvious,” he said, “just like Fenway’s hidden message?”
    “What hidden message?” Kate asked. She loved puzzles.
    “It’s on the scoreboard,” Mike told her. “It’s easy to see once you know about it.”
    Kate’s forehead wrinkled as she squinted to study the scoreboard. She saw places for each team’s score and red and green lights to record balls and strikes and outs. But no hidden message.
    “I give up,” said Kate.
“¿Dónde está?”
    “Come on, Kate,” Mike complained. “Not more Spanish!”
    Kate was teaching herself Spanish. She liked to challenge Mike with new words and phrases.
    “Okay, okay,” Kate said. “Where is it?”
    “If you give up that easy, we’ll never find the bat,” Mike said with a smile. “It’s in the white lines going up and down on the right side of the board. They’re not solid stripes. They’re dots and dashes. Know what that means?”
    “Duh!” Kate said with a flip of her ponytail. “It’s Morse code. I should have seen that! Morse code uses dots and dashes to spell out letters—like SOS is dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot.”
    “Bingo!” said Mike.
    “Let’s see, I guess I’d read it left to right, top to bottom. Dash, dot-dash, dash-dot-dash-dash. That should be TAY.”
    “Wow, that’s right,” said Mike. “You know a lot of weird stuff, but Morse code? How’d you learn that?”
    Kate looked down and blushed. “After my parents got divorced, my father used to write me coded messages,” she explained. “When he’d send me or Mom a letter or e-mail, he’d put part of it in Morse code for me to figure out. And I’d write him back in Morse code. It was fun. After a while, I got good at it.”
    “Pretty cool. I never knew that,” Mike said. “It’ll come in handy if you ever want to be a telegraph operator!”
    “Ha-ha, very funny,” said Kate. “What’s Morse code doing on the scoreboard in Fenway Park?”
    “It spells out TAY and JRY. Those are the initials of Tom Austin Yawkey and his wife, Jean Remington Yawkey,” said Mike. “Theyused to own the team. They hid their initials on the scoreboard for fun.”
    “I never would have noticed it if I wasn’t looking for it,” said Kate.
    “Those dots and dashes got me thinking. What if the bat is hidden in plain sight, like the initials or the door?” Mike asked. “What if the thief used the bat as … as a broom handle or something? Or maybe the thief put it in a backpack or an umbrella.”
    “It wouldn’t fit into a backpack. It would have to be in something longer,” Kate said. “But you’re right, the thief could have stashed it somewhere around here.”
    They looked around. None of the fans nearby had coats or