April 2026
Malcom Spears settled into his La-Z-Boy recliner along with Baby Doll, a fifteen-year-old tortoise shell cat curled up in his lap. It was nearly time for tonight’s game on cable between his Seattle Mariners and the hated, cheating Houston Astros. He always dispensed with the pre-game blather and often watched with the sound off. Malcom knew the game inside and out and was only now getting used to pitchers not hitting in the National League. Change is inevitable, he mused, but he longed for the days when Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax toed the mound until the last out was recorded. At 72, Malcom’s best days were behind him, but he was in relatively good health and could still wield a fungo bat if the need arose. While reaching for the remote, he heard the screen door screech open (must oil the hinges, he thought) and then a sharp rapping of ‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.’
Malcolm had a policy of not answering his front door until peering through the peephole, and since he had just sat down with Baby Doll, who was on her fifth catnap of the day, he decided to stay put. After all, no one he knew knocked with ‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.’ He listened for the telltale whine of the screen door closing and instead was serenaded again with a louder version of ‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.’
The volume of the knocking on Malcom’s solid-core oak front door was such that it woke the senior torty from her slumber, and she shot out of the chair, making for the hidey-hole between the couch and the living room wall. That cuts it, he fumed… let’s see who’s on the other side of the door with that infernal knocking. Malcom eased himself out of the recliner and grabbed the old fungo bat, which leaned against a corner of the alcove.
‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits’ commenced for the third time as Malcom reached the door and set his better eye against the peephole. He observed a rather large male specimen, half his age, with knuckles rapping out the final Two Bits. Malcom gripped the bat, slid the door chain into place, and opened it a crack.
“All right, all right, I heard you the first time. Whatever you’re selling, I don’t need or want.”
“Mr. Spears, sir? I’m not selling anything. I’m here to collect.”
“Collect? Collect what? You sure don’t look like no paperboy. They still do that?”
“No, sir, they don’t. It’s all online now – the paper too. But that’s beside the point. I’m here to collect the fungo bat I see you holding behind your back.”
“What? Why would you want the bat, and how did you know about it?”
“If you let me in, I’ll explain. I mean you no harm and am incapable of rendering such.”
“I doubt that, looking at your size. Tell me what you know.”
“I know you were a batboy for the 1966 Pacific Coast League champion Seattle Angels. I know you went on to play baseball for four years at Washington State University, winning conference titles every year. I know you were on the 1977 Phoenix Giants and 1978 Tacoma Yankees rosters, both PCL champs for those years, though the Yankees were co-champions. And I know Jimmie Reese gave you that fungo bat at the end of the 1966 season – the last professional baseball championship for a Seattle team.”
Malcom stood staring at the younger man, who seemed respectful and polite despite his imposing physical stature. He thought that most of what he said could be looked up and verified, except for the Jimmie Reese part. Nobody knew about that.
“Who are you, and how do you come to know about how I acquired this bat?”
“I’m a messenger – a courier if you will. You can call me Currier, like Currier and Ives.”
“Okay, messenger boy. I will slide this chain and open the door against my better judgment. Easy does it; this bat can hit other kinds of balls besides baseballs.”
“Not to worry, Mr. Spears. I’ll come in, say my piece, and after you willingly surrender the bat, I’ll make like dust in the wind.”
Malcom removed the chain and opened the door. Currier stepped over the threshold, and Malcom warily offered him a seat on the couch. As the large man sat down, Baby Doll appeared from her hiding spot and rubbed against his denimed legs, purring audibly.
“Well, don’t that beat all? She’s never done that with anyone… usually hides out until they leave!”
“Cats can be very perceptive. They can tell a friend as well as a threat.”
“If she thinks you’re okay, that’s good enough for me. Now tell me why I should part ways with this bat Jimmie Reese gifted me nearly sixty years ago.”
Currier leaned forward and began to relate that Jimmie Reese, who was born Hyman Solomon in 1901, played in the Majors for three years back in the early 1930s, and roomed with Babe Ruth’s suitcases during road games while the Bambino was out carousing. He coached for years in the Pacific Coast League and was a wizard at hitting practice fly balls and grounders with a fungo bat, making his own long, lightweight, thin-handled bats on a lathe in his home workshop. Currier explained that during the 1966 PCL season, when Reese was coaching for the Seattle Angels, Julio Gotay, a second baseman for part of the year, took an interest in Jimmie’s fungo bat – the very one Malcom was gripping – and claimed it was a powerful talisman, infused with good juju. At this point, Malcom stopped his unintended guest.
“Hold on, I never heard any of that hoodoo talk around the clubhouse. You’re telling me this old piece of lumber is a good luck charm?”
“You didn’t become a batboy until school was out in late June that summer, and Julio Gotay was already on his way to Oklahoma City, having been traded from the Angels to the Astros. The talk had all but died down by then, and most of the guys thought it was a lot of hooey. But they were wrong.”
“Wrong, how? This practice bat was responsible for the Angels winning the championship?”
“Bingo.”
“That’s a little far-fetched in my thinking. That was a great team, and Jimmie was a considerable part of its success, thanks to his coaching and positive outlook. He had to be one of the nicest guys in the game.”
“Sometimes it takes a little magic and good luck to rise to the very top.”
“Hmm, I wonder if that’s why Jimmie told me to take good care of his old fungo bat, and it would take good care of me … I thought that was just one of his friendly ways of saying goodbye. I kept it in my gear bag throughout college and the two years with Phoenix and Tacoma. Never thought it had anything to do with winning ballgames.”
“It’s not the bat so much as the person who made it. The love of the game and the sacrifices it took to excel at the highest level were poured into that wood. Baseball is a game of superstitions, and this bat is needed to break a grievous curse that has gone on for far too long.”
The game on cable with the sound off had started, but Malcom’s attention was wholly on his guest, who had piqued his curiosity in a way that centered the focus on what Currier had to say next. With Baby Doll curled up next to him on the couch, sleeping soundly, Currier proceeded to explain that the Seattle Mariners were under a powerful curse that started in 1979, coincidentally, the same year Malcom retired from professional baseball to coach at the high school level.
The curse began, Currier told Malcom, when the murderous psychopath, Ted Bundy, wore a Seattle Mariners tee shirt under a sports coat during his July 1979 murder trial in Miami. The egregious abomination set off a supernatural roadblock that has haunted the Mariners franchise for over 45 years. Sure, there were tantalizing moments of success like the improbable run of 1995, only to have it fall short in the league championship series with Cleveland; the historic 2001 season, where 116 wins crashed and burned at the hands of the Bronx Bombers, whose storied franchise is synonymous with the two words – World Series, and the recent agonizing heartbreak of last season, being only one win from the American League pennant, only to have it unseemingly snatched away by ex-Astro George Springer and the Toronto Blue Jays. The only Major League franchise yet to have played in a World Series, let alone win one? The Seattle Mariners. Currier stopped there, and Malcom gripped the fungo bat a little tighter.
“So, this fungo bat will somehow lift the curse? I find it hard to believe, even though now that I think about it, the bat was always with me through college and the two seasons in the minors. Huh… are you some new-age scout for the Mariners? Are they grasping at straws to reverse this so-called curse?”
“I can assure you that I have no association with the team other than possessing the knowledge of the Bundy Curse and the remedy you now hold in your hands. Think of me as a liaison.”
“You’ll take the magic bat and talk someone in the Mariner organization into stashing it somewhere at the Park and it’s World Series, here we come?”
“First, I can’t take the bat unless you’re willing to relinquish it voluntarily, under no duress, into my hands. Second, the bat will be placed at the Baseball Museum of the Pacific Northwest, inside the Mariners’ home Ballpark, as part of a memorabilia collection commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1966 Seattle Angels championship season. And lastly, Jimmie Reese’s fungo bat, which you have stewarded and cared for all these years, will finally lift the Bundy Curse, paving the way for an appearance by the Seattle Mariners in the Fall Classic. I can’t tell you when that will be, but it will happen sooner than later.”
Malcom looked down at the weathered, dark-stained, lovingly fashioned piece of ash wood that a kindly old coach thought enough of a thirteen-year-old batboy to entrust its care and freely give to him, and with a tear running down his weathered face, handed the old fungo bat to Currier. The messenger received the talisman, gave Baby Doll a scratch behind her ears, and stood up from the couch to leave Malcom to watch the rest of the ballgame. Malcom saw the younger man to the door.
“Can I ask one question before you take your leave?”
“If I can answer, I will.”
“Why knock using Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits?”
“It’s a friendly knock… puts people at ease.”
“No, it’s not. It’s annoying and makes people not want to answer the door. Stick with three short raps, and not so loud as to wake the dead.”
“Thank you, Mr. Spears, I’ll try that. Enjoy the rest of the ballgame, and by the way, I hate the Astros too.”
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