The Brooklyn Nine: Seventh Inning–Ninth Inning

There was a knack to it, an art, and Jimmy Flint was the undisputed card-flipping king of PS 161.

Bet you come from a long line of cheaters, don’t you, Skinflint? Bet your dad was a cheater.

She drew a crude picture of the Earth on the blackboard, then drew a circle around it, punctuated by a small white dot.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep, beep, beep, beep—
It was monotonous. Endless. Inhuman.

While he was supposed to be working on long division Jimmy calculated the many ways Eric could devise to bring him down.

When he was supposed to be learning about adjectives in English class, Jimmy outlined how Eric could modify his face.

In music he noted that Eric could beat him like a wood block; in science he experimented with the hypothesis that Eric would dissect him.

Jimmy torqued his shoulder around to reach the latch and opened his locker.

The movie ended, and the loose end of the film slap-slap-slapped against the empty reel.

He wasn’t feeling well, not after the film, but it was really just a ploy to buy himself a little more time.

Suddenly his bravado ran out. “I—I’m gonna go out the back way.”

Then the big doubles hitter came to the plate, and Michael knew he wouldn’t fall for a barrage of inside pitches again.

The big guy slumped his shoulders and looked back at the umpire, questioning the call without saying a word. His coach said something about it, though, giving the umpire an earful from the dugout.

The ball pinged off his bat and flew straight back into the chain-link fence backstop behind the plate—thwack!—rattling the No Pepper sign.

The bat met the ball with the resounding ping of aluminum, but he drove the ball down, into the ground.

It tore a divot in the earth four feet in front of home and bounced to short, where George made quick work of it and threw the batter out at first.

The crowd cheered the run but Michael ignored them, poring over the ledger for the other team.

Instead he shook him off—vigorously this time, hoping he got the point.

The umpire called strike three and Michael walked back to the dugout, where Coach Clemmons was clapping and exhorting the next batter to get a hit, ignoring Michael completely.

Foul territory was now full of people, the crowd so large there was an audible murmur from them.

The team had already left without him, none of them wanting to be the one to jinx it by jostling him or talking to him.

Snider stood where his father could see him, covering his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his T-shirt while he wrangled the difficult latch on the top of his casement window.

Snider held his father’s hand as they inched their way barefoot down the rough shingles, the fire hissing and roaring behind them.

Half off the roof, half on, Snider grabbed for the gutter, but the flimsy metal thing ripped away from the wall and Snider went spinning, falling, into darkness.

“That’s if we want one of those contemporary in-fill monstrosities. We’re having them rebuild the old house instead.”

Your parents are both working full-time jobs while they haggle with insurance agents, comb Flatbush for an apartment big enough to live in and cheap enough to actually pay for, meet with architects and builders, and reconstruct your lives.

“What are you good at?”
“Baseball.”
“Too bad. Your leg’s broken. What else?”
Snider shifted uncomfortably. “Video games,” he said, just to be perverse.

“Hardly any scratches on it. Just a little normal wear around the edges. The sticker is the original Aladdin sticker. No rust on the thermos inside, cup and stopper in pristine condition.”

You find the provenance of something, its origin, you start to find its story. You find its story, you find its real value.

“Okay. How about this: You find the real value of anything in that box and I’ll give you a ten percent commission on the sale.”

But the strangest thing about the bat was the remnants of postage stamps Uncle Dave had pointed out.

“You need a philatelist.”
“A whatsit?”
“Stamp collector.”

Philo—if that was really the dude’s name—was a small, wiry man with thick glasses, a tall, thin neck, and a balding head.

“Intriguing,” said Philo. He beckoned Snider to bring the bat over to another table with a lamp and a magnifying glass on swinging arms.

“This one will be the thirteen-cent Harrison.” He chuckled. “A makeup stamp. Postmaster New was a Benjamin Harrison man. Resented Woodrow Wilson getting a seventeen-cent stamp the year before.”

“And here, this one...torn, but obviously a two-cent Sesquicentennial Exposition stamp. You can even see the gum breakers here on the back where it’s peeled up a bit—”

He turned the bat to see the stamp fragments better and saw again the illegible handwritten address. Under a bright light and a magnifying glass it wasn’t so illegible.

“You’d be surprised at how diligent the U.S. Postal Service is about delivering to even the vaguest of addresses,” Philo told him, “and people were far less careful about those things in the past, from what I’ve seen on vintage envelopes.”

This Brooklyn cap is vintage—worth maybe a few hundred dollars—but I don’t know who wore it or when.

He made change for Snider from the till.