The Pinstripe Ghost (7 page)

“Mike! You’d better shut that window,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Look at the mess you’re making!”

“That’s exactly what the ghost felt like!” Bud said.

Mike and Kate laughed. Mike closed the window and took one last look at the stadium. On the field, men and woman in blue shirts were raking the infield dirt and removing the white bases. He swiveled back to face the room.

“Sammy seemed nice,” Kate said. “He even gave away that ball he caught. It’s too bad he was sneaking in without paying.”

“He is a good kid,” the chief said. “He’s been working here with his dad, and people like him a lot. But he made a bad decision about using the key to sneak in.”

“Why didn’t he just buy tickets?” Mrs. Hopkins asked.

“He loves the Yankees, but didn’t want to spend money on tickets. He’s trying to save for college,” the chief said. “He was working with his father during school vacations and the summer to earn extra money.”

“Are you going to arrest him and his friends?” Mike asked.

“No. But they are going to have to pay us back for all the games they sneaked into,” the chief said. “Sammy has already agreed to work on Saturdays until the tickets are paid off. He’ll help out around the stadium.”

The security chief rustled around in his front pocket and pulled out two shiny white strips of paper with gold writing on them. They looked like some type of special ticket.

“I wanted to thank you for solving our ghostly mystery,” he said. He handed a white-and-gold ticket to Mike and Kate. “Without
your help, the stadium would still be haunted! Next time you’re here, let me know. You can use these special passes to see the game from the owner’s box.”

Mike and Kate turned the tickets over in their hands. The front of the tickets had a special hologram image of Yankee Stadium and the words
OWNER’S PASS
written in bright gold letters. The back of each ticket was stamped
VALID FOR ANY GAME
.

“Wow! That would be great,” Mike said. “Does that mean we can tell the manager who to put in the game?”

The security chief laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I’m afraid not even our owner can do that. But you could say hello to the manager instead.”

Mike smiled. “I’ve never watched a game from a luxury box before,” he said.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Mr. Williams said. “I was looking for you earlier because I had something for you.”

He reached into a bag and pulled out two copies of
Ghosts in the Ballpark
. He handed one each to Kate and Mike. “But maybe you don’t need any advice on ballpark ghosts anymore,” he said. “You two seem to be doing pretty well on your own.”

“Thanks,” Kate said. “But I do have a question. One of the ushers told us she’s seen a strange man dressed in pinstripes around the stadium before games. Whenever she goes over to get a better look, he’s gone.”

“I think I saw him before yesterday’s game,” Mike said. “He was in Monument Park. He tipped his hat toward the field and then disappeared up the stairs.”

“I haven’t heard about that one,” Mr.
Williams said. “Maybe we have another ghost on the loose!”

“At first we thought it was the same ghost that Bud was talking about,” Mike said. “But it can’t be Sammy, because he’s outside the stadium before the games. Who do you think it is?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure,” Mr. Williams said. He tugged on his mustache. “Maybe it’s the
real
ghost of Babe Ruth!”

Dugout Notes
Yankee Stadium

“The House That Ruth Built.”
The Yankees bought Babe Ruth’s contract from the Boston Red Sox in 1919. Back then, the Yankees didn’t have their own home park. Instead, they played at the Polo Grounds. But the Yankees’ rivals, the New York Giants, owned the Polo Grounds.
Starting in 1920, huge crowds came to see Babe Ruth hit home runs for the Yankees. The Yankees became more popular than the Giants. That made the Giants’ owner mad. In 1921, he told the Yankees to leave. Two years later, Yankee Stadium opened.

Babe Ruth, Hot Dogs, and Horsing Around
. Babe Ruth liked to set baseball records. He set a career home run record (714) that wasn’t broken until Hank Aaron hit number 715 in 1974. But Ruth also liked to break the rules. Many times he acted like a kid. He was often more interested in having fun than in doing what he was supposed to do. Sometimes Ruth wore the same underwear for days
because he didn’t feel like changing it. He claimed he could burp louder than a tractor, and he liked to prove it to anyone who would listen. Ruth also ate and drank too much. His midnight meals were larger than most people’s dinners. He would eat six hot dogs and drink six sodas for a snack!

A First
. Yankee Stadium was the first baseball park to be called a stadium. It was much larger than other ballparks. Yankee Stadium often had crowds of 70,000 people or more. It opened on April 18, 1923. On opening day, the Yankees
played the Boston Red Sox. They beat them 4–1. The stadium was also the first triple-decker. That meant it had three seating levels.

Secret Room
. The original Yankee Stadium had a secret. For years, there was a fifteen-foot-wide room hidden below second base. The room wasn’t used for baseball or storing treasure. It was used for boxing. Yankee Stadium used to host boxing matches sometimes. The hidden room held the electrical and telephone equipment needed for the matches. The Yankees removed the room in 1976. It doesn’t exist in the new Yankee Stadium.

Lots of World Series
. Yankee Stadium has hosted more World Series than any other stadium—over thirty-five so far.

New and Improved
. When it was built in 1923, Yankee Stadium was the best stadium around. But by the early twenty-first century, it was getting old. The team decided it needed a new home. So it spent over $1.3 billion to build a brand-new version of Yankee Stadium directly across the street. The first official game in the new stadium was on April 16, 2009.
The following year, the old stadium was torn down and the land was turned into a park.

Pinstripes
. The New York Yankees uniforms are famous for the thin black stripes running up and down the pants and shirts. The Yankees first wore pinstripes in 1912.