The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

percentage?”
    “You mean with Casey?” Stillman said. “Just scientific, that’s all. Purely experimental. I think that Casey is a superman of a sort and I’d like that proven. Once I built a home economist. Marvelous cook. I gained forty-six pounds before I had to dismantle her. Now with Casey’s skills, his strength and his accuracy, I realized he’d be a baseball pitcher. But in order to prove my point I had to have him pitch in competition. Also as an acid test, I had to have him pitch with absolutely the worst ball team I could find.”
    “That’s very nice of you, Dr. Stillman,” Mouth said. “I appreciate it.”
    “Don’t mention it. Now shall we go out on the field?”
    Mouth opened the door for him. “After you,” he said.
    Dr. Stillman went out and Mouth was about to follow him when he stopped dead, one eyebrow raised. “Wait a minute, dammit,” he shouted. “The worst?” He started out after the old man. “You should have seen the Phillies in 1903!” he yelled after him.
    An umpire screamed, “Play ball!” and the third baseman took a throw from the catcher then, rubbing up the ball, he carried it over to Casey on the mound, noticing in a subconscious section of his mind this kid with the long arms and the vast shoulders had about as much spirit as a lady of questionable virtue on a Sunday morning after a long Saturday night. A few moments later, the third baseman cared very little about the lack of animation on Casey’s features. This feeling was shared by some fourteen thousand fans, who watched the left-hander look dully in for a sign, then throw a side-arm fast ball that left them gasping and sent the entire dugout of the St. Louis Cardinals to their feet in amazement.
    There are fast balls and fast balls, but nothing remotely resembling the white streak that shot out of Casey’s left hand, almost invisibly toward the plate, had ever been witnessed. A similar thought ran through the mind of the St. Louis batter as he blinked at the sound of the ball hitting the catcher’s mitt and took a moment to realize that the pitch had been made and he had never laid eyes on it.
    This particular St. Louis batter was the first of twenty-five men to face Casey that evening. Eighteen of them struck out and only two of them managed to get to first base, one on a fluke single that was misjudged over first base. By the sixth inning most of the people in the stadium were on their feet, aware that they were seeing something special in the tall left-hander on the mound. And by the ninth inning when Brooklyn had won its first game in three weeks by a score of two to nothing, the stadium was in a frenzy.
    There was also a frenzy of a sort in the Brooklyn dugout. The corners of Mouth McGarry’s mouth tilted slightly upward in a grimace which the old team trainer explained later to a couple of mystified ballplayers was a “smile.” Mouth hadn’t been seen to smile in the past six years.
    Bertram Beasley celebrated the event by passing out three brand new cigars and one slightly used one (to McGarry). But the notable thing about the Brooklyn dugout and later the locker room was that the ball team suddenly looked different. In the space of about two a half hours, it had changed from some slogging lead-footed, aging second-raters to a snappy, heads-up, confident looking crew of ballplayers who had a preoccupation with winning. The locker room resounded with laughter and horse play, excited shouting drifted out from the showers. All this in a room that for the past three years had been as loud and comical as a funeral parlor.
    While wet towels sailed across the room and cleated shoes banged against locker doors, one man remained silent. This was the pitcher named Casey. He surveyed the commotion around him with a mild interest, but was principally concerned with unlacing his shoes. The only emotion he displayed was when Doc Barstow, the team trainer, started to massage his arm. He jumped up abruptly and