ALSO BY #1 BESTSELLER MIKE LUPICA

  Travel Team

  Heat

  Miracle on 49th Street

  Summer Ball

  The Big Field

  Million-Dollar Throw

  The Batboy

  Hero

  The Underdogs

  True Legend

  QB 1

  Fantasy League

  Fast Break

  Last Man Out

  Lone Stars

  Shoot-Out

  No Slam Dunk

  Strike Zone

  THE ZACH & ZOE MYSTERIES:

  The Missing Baseball

  The Half-Court Hero

  The Football Fiasco

  The Soccer Secret

  The Hockey Rink Hunt

  The Lacrosse Mix-Up

  Philomel Books

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Published simultaneously by Puffin Books and Philomel Books,

  imprints of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020

  Text copyright © 2020 by Mike Lupica

  Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Chris Danger

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

  Ebook ISBN: 9781984836915

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  This book is for Dana Leydig, the real best friend to Zach and Zoe.

  CONTENTS

  Also by #1 Bestseller Mike Lupica

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  About the Author

  ONE

  Zach and Zoe were playing catch in their backyard when Zoe asked her twin brother, “What are the two greatest words in the English language?”

  “That’s easy,” Zach said. “Ice cream.”

  Zoe grinned at him. They both knew how much he loved ice cream.

  “We haven’t even had dinner yet,” Zoe said. “It’s too early to be thinking about dessert.”

  “Ice cream isn’t just dessert,” Zach argued. “If I were in charge, you’d be able to have it with every meal of the day. Including breakfast.”

  It was finally spring in Middletown. But the beautiful, warm day they were having made it feel like summer.

  “Okay, think about two more words that are just as great,” Zoe said.

  “Baseball!” Zach said, before going into a big windup and firing the ball in his sister’s direction.

  “That’s just one word, silly,” Zoe said, catching the ball in her mitt. “Try again.”

  “Uhhh . . . snow day?” Zach said. “Two words that describe one perfect day.”

  Zoe reached her hands out at her sides and looked up at the clear blue sky. The trees in their backyard were blowing in the breeze.

  “How can you even think about snow on a day like this?” Zoe said.

  “Okay, you got me,” Zach said, lifting his hands in surrender. “I can’t always read your mind, you know. Why don’t you just tell me the two words you’re thinking of?”

  Zoe wound up and threw a perfect pitch across the yard into the pocket of Zach’s glove. It was the kind of throw that made Zach think his sister had the best arm of any eight-year-old in Middletown.

  “Field trip,” Zoe Walker said.

  “Oh, yeah!” Zach Walker said. “Field trip is even better than ice cream, especially when it’s a baseball field trip.”

  The third graders from Middletown Elementary were taking just such a field trip the next day. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, had recently started having small traveling museums visit towns around the country. It had begun with a few exhibits of famous photographs from baseball history. Now it was bringing more items on tour. Zach and Zoe had visited the Hall of Fame with their parents during the summer. But the museum added new items all the time. The twins were excited to explore the exhibits with their classmates.

  “What sorts of things do you think they’ll have there?” Zach asked Zoe.

  Zoe thought back to when she and her brother visited the museum last summer. There were displays of baseballs and bats and gloves and spikes that had once belonged to the greatest baseball players who ever lived. Zoe’s favorites were the uniforms of the players who had been voted into the Hall of Fame.

  The Walker twins couldn’t believe that Middletown had been selected to host one of the traveling museums. It had all started with a letter from their dad, Danny Walker, to the people in charge of the Hall of Fame. The museum held a contest as a way to choose which towns they’d be stopping at on their tour. So Danny Walker, with the help of his kids, decided to enter. He had to write a letter to the Hall of Fame explaining why Middletown should be chosen. In the letter, he wrote about the great Hank Aaron, who had broken Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record back in the 1970s. At one time, Hank had played for a team called the Indianapolis Clowns, before he got to the major leagues.

  The Clowns used to travel all over the country to play games. Early in the 1950s they had come to Middletown, which had a minor league team known as the Middletown Thunder.

  Not only did Hank Aaron play a game against the Thunder at Middletown Park, he hit a home run that cleared the fences and traveled nearly all the way to the Middletown River. Because Hank Aaron went on to become a legend, that game between the Clowns and the Thunder was remembered as the most famous baseball game ever played in Middletown.

  Danny Walker wrote about that game in his letter. He explained how Middletown was a small town that loved baseball just as much as its capital of Cooperstown, New York. He wrote that Middletown was a place that was also rich in baseball history.

  A few months later, he received a letter back. Of over two hundred participants, Danny Walker was one of ten winners of their contest. Middletown would be a stop on the Hall of Fame museum tour. The exhibit would, of course, feature Hank Aaron. But there would also be information about other great players of his time, like Jackie Robinson. Zach and Zoe knew from their history lessons that Jackie Robinson was the first African American athlete ever to play in the major leagues. He’d paved the way for other baseball greats like Mr. Aaron.

  Tomorrow, the twins and their classmates would get to see it all. Their teacher, Ms. Moriarty, and the other third grade teachers at Middletown Elementary would also be attending. A few parents were coming on the trip as well. In fact, the twins’ mom, Tess Walker, had volunteered to chaperone their class. She was just as excited as Zach and Zoe to see the signed ball Hank Aaron once hit out of Middletown Park.

  “The big day is almost here,” Zach said to his sister. “Do you believe the museum is coming to us? It feels like they’ve picked up Cooperstown and set it right over Middletown.”

  “I know,” said Zoe, bouncing on her heels. “I’m going to be too excited to sleep tonight.”

  “Imagine how some of those Hall of Famers felt before their games,” Zach said.

  Zoe nodded. “They were part of some of the biggest games in history.”

  “Dad says they weren’t just a part of history,” Zach said. “They made history.”

  The twins decided to take a break and go inside to read up on some of the players they would be hearing about tomorrow at Middletown’s City Hall. The building would be the location for the Hall of Fame touring museum for the next week. That’s why Zoe had started calling it their City Hall of Fame.

  “We’re going to learn so much,” Zoe said. “And you know how mom always says ‘knowledge is power.’”

  “All I care about is getting a taste of Hank Aaron’s power!” Zach said, pretending to swing an invisible baseball bat.

  The old Middletown Park where the Thunder had played was long gone. It had been torn down years ago when the team left for another town. But Zach and Zoe’s parents had taken them to the spot where the ballpark once stood. Then they had walked down to the river together, to where Hank Aaron’s ball was said to have landed. The twins couldn’t believe that somebody could have the kind of strength to hit a baseball that far.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, the twins and their classmates piled into two buses for the short ride into town. When they arrived at City Hall, they were amazed at how the entire first floor had been transformed into a baseball museum.

  “It looks just like the real Hall of Fame in Cooperstown!” Zoe exclaimed.

  “Except this one’s only ten minutes from our house,” Zach said.

  Zoe’s eyes wandered around the room. “How did they make it look so real?” she said.

  Tess Walker put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “When they do something at the Hall of Fame,” she said, “they do it right.”

  The twins knew how much their mom loved baseball. She’d been a star softball pitcher at Middletown High School, and also played soccer.

  “They call this a pop-up museum,” Tess Walker said to the twins. “And today, baseball history is going to be popping up right before our eyes.”

  Zoe looked at Zach. Zach looked at Zoe. At that moment, they could read each other’s minds. Today was going to be awesome.

  The third graders were broken up into groups of five. Each group was assigned a tour guide and a chaperone. Naturally, Tess Walker chose to escort Zach and Zoe’s group, which also included their friends Kari, Malik, and Mateo. Ms. Moriarty would be bouncing around from group to group. She wanted to be available for all her students.

  Middletown’s City Hall had been open for only a few months. It was brand new and beautiful inside and out. The mayor and other City Hall employees had moved their offices upstairs to make room for the baseball exhibits.

  The first sign Zach and Zoe saw was the one for the Jackie Robinson exhibit. It was set up in its own room, right off the main floor. The twins couldn’t wait to go inside. They had learned a lot about Jackie Robinson in school this year.

  “Mr. Robinson wasn’t just a great figure in baseball history,” Ms. Moriarty reminded them now. “He was an important part of American history. By opening up the major league to people of color, he made baseball, and the country, better.”

  They saw one of Jackie Robinson’s old No. 42 uniforms. None of them could believe how thick and heavy it was compared to the uniforms players wore today. They knew there was a Jackie Robinson Day every year, when players from every team wore No. 42 in Mr. Robinson’s honor. Other than that, the number had been permanently retired from major league baseball.

  Not all of the exhibits were about Hall of Fame players. There was one room honoring the Yankees of the 1990s, another for the Yankee team that had won four World Series in five years. There was one about the Red Sox of 2004, who’d won the first World Series for their team since 1918.

  Zach and Zoe took their time in front of each display. They listened closely as their tour guide, Wendy, told them fun facts about Jackie Robinson’s career. Sometimes Ms. Moriarty or Tess Walker would chip in with a fun fact of their own.

  “The last player to wear No. 42 before it was retired permanently was Mariano Rivera of the Yankees. He was the first player elected to the Hall of Fame with one hundred percent of the vote,” Tess Walker told the group.

  “Quit showing off, Mom,” Zach whispered with a wink.

  She smiled and whispered back, “Sometimes all this baseball in me just needs to get out.”

  With every display and exhibit, the twins were learning a lot about baseball they never knew. But they were also impatient to get to the Hank Aaron exhibit. Because he’d played in Middletown once, the twins thought of him as being from Middletown.

  In fact, when their grandpa Richie was their age, he’d seen Hank Aaron in person when he played for the Milwaukee Braves. It was at their game against the Mets in New York that Grandpa Richie had caught Hank’s home run ball. He still had it on the mantel of his fireplace. Hank Aaron had been his favorite player ever since that day.

  The twins had seen that ball plenty of times. But they’d never seen the home run ball Hank Aaron had hit in Middletown. That was about to change as Zach and Zoe’s tour group entered the Hank Aaron exhibit.

  Little did they know, the exhibit wasn’t the only thing waiting for them inside the room. In fact, they were about to walk smack into a brand-new mystery.

  Pop-up baseball museums rarely came to Zach and Zoe. But mysteries? Those seemed to follow the twins wherever they went.

  TWO

  The first thing they saw inside was one of Hank Aaron’s old uniforms, No. 44. Like most of the items in the exhibit, it was placed behind glass to keep it safe. On the wall hung an old photo of Hank at Middletown Park the day his team played the Thunder. There were baseball bats and batting helmets. Zoe noticed a glove that looked really small compared to what outfielders wore now. Along the wall, there were lots of old photos. One showed Hank Aaron standing with Jackie Robinson. Then there were all the caps: the ones Hank Aaron wore with the Milwaukee Braves, the Atlanta Braves, even the Milwaukee Brewers, the team with which he ended his career.

  Zoe said to Zach, “I really love history.”

  “Same,” Zach said.

  “More than ice cream?” she said, nudging his side.

  “Yes,” Zach admitted, “but don’t let that get around.”

  “Mom says studying the past can help us understand the present,” Zoe said, “and even predict the future sometimes.”

  “Well, I’m going to predict the future right now,” said Zach. “This is definitely going to be the best field trip ever.”

  The Hall of Fame visitors traveled around each exhibit in an orderly way. Zach and Zoe were toward the front of the line, ahead of Kari and Malik and Mateo, going from one item to the next. The whole time, Wendy told them facts and trivia about Hank Aaron. She said his Braves teams played the Yankees twice in a seven-game World Series, each team winning one. The twins listened closely, and patiently moved along, knowing that their day was only about to get better. Because pretty soon, they’d actually get to see the one thing at City Hall they’d been most excited about: the baseball hit by Grandpa Richie’s favorite player right in Middletown—the home run baseball they’d been hearing about their whole lives.

  Right before they got to the table with the Aaron baseballs, Zoe and Zoe looked down and noticed a pair of latex gloves on the floor in front of them. Zoe got to them first and picked them up. Both the Walker twins were taught not to ignore litter of any kind. Luckily there was a trash can in the corner of the room, and Zoe quickly deposited the gloves there before getting back into line with Zach.

  The twins finally got to the baseball table. It was protected by a large glass partition and roped off on either side. Only Hall of Fame personnel could get behind it. Malik, Mateo, and Kari came up next to the twins to gaze inside. Tess Walker and Wendy stood behind them. Ms. Moriarty had left to join another group.

  The first thing they saw on the table was a large index card. It explained how Hank Aaron had played a game in Middletown once, years ago. When he hit the home run, someone retrieved the ball for him, and he held on to it for years. Then he decided to donate it to the Hall of Fame museum. The card had the date of the game on it.

  There was only one small problem. Actually a big one.

  When Zach and Zoe looked up from the card, they noticed the stand where the ball should have been. Except there was no ball to be found. The stand was empty.

  Zach and Zoe immediately pointed this out to Wendy and their mom. For a second, Zach thought Wendy appeared to be a little nervous.

  “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation . . .” she started to say.

  Zoe frowned. “Of all the baseballs here,” she said to Zach, “the one we wanted to see the most is gone.”

  “But probably not gone for good,” their mom said. “I know you both like to jump, especially when you do one of your special high fives. But let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet.”

  Wendy, the tour guide, said she was going to get to the bottom of this. She spoke quietly into the microphone attached to her headset and walked calmly out of the room.

  “I’m sure it will turn up,” Tess Walker said.

  “But this is the last day the museum is in town,” Zach said.

  It was true. Everything would be packed up after their class left the museum and driven to its next stop in Massachusetts.

 

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