Takedown
Authors: Matt Christopher
Sports Stories
The Lucky Baseball Bat
Baseball Pals
Basketball Sparkplug
Little Lefty
Touchdown for Tommy
Break for the Basket
Baseball Flyhawk
Catcher with a Glass Arm
The Counterfeit Tackle
Miracle at the Plate
The Year Mom Won the Pennant
The Basket Counts
Catch That Pass!
Shortstop from Tokyo
Jackrabbit Goalie
The Fox Steals Home
Johnny Long Legs
Look Who’s Playing First Base
Tough to Tackle
The Kid Who Only Hit Homers
Face-Off
Mystery Coach
Ice Magic
No Arm in Left Field
Jinx Glove
Front Court Hex
The Team That Stopped Moving
Glue Fingers
The Pigeon with the Tennis Elbow
The Submarine Pitch
Power Play
Football Fugitive
Johnny No Hit
Soccer Halfback
Diamond Champs
Dirt Bike Racer
The Dog That Called the Signals
The Dog That Stole Football Plays
Drag-Strip Racer
Run, Billy, Run
Tight End
The Twenty-One-Mile Swim
Wild Pitch
Dirt Bike Runaway
The Great Quarterback Switch
Supercharged Infield
The Hockey Machine
Red-Hot Hightops
Tackle Without a Team
The Hit-Away Kid
The Spy on Third Base
The Dog That Pitched a No-Hitter
Takedown
Animal Stories
Desperate Search
Stranded
Earthquake
Devil Pony
Text Copyright © 1990 by Matthew F. Christopher
Illustrations Copyright © 1990 by Margaret Sanfilippo
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: November 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-09436-8
To Richard and Celeste
A special thanks to my nephew, Craig Christopher, former wrestler at Lansing Central School, Lansing, New York, and to Coach
Jim Barnes, wrestling coach at Rock Hill High School, Rock Hill, South Carolina, for their help with the wrestling portions
of this book.
Contents
How many of these Matt Christopher sports classics have you read?
One minute the street in front of us was completely empty. The next minute three guys appeared as if by magic. Each was about
my age, but bigger — about the size of my stepbrother, Carl. They stood spread-legged in the middle of the street, glaring
at us as if to say, “Come on! If you’ve got the guts!”
“Look!” Carl cried, his voice frightened. “It’s that new kid they call the Octopus! And two of his punk buddies!”
I recognized them, too. Max Rundel, “the Octopus,” was in the middle. Hunter Nyles, “the Squasher,” was on his right, and
John McNeer — who hadn’t earned a crazy nickname, yet — was on his left. Rundel had moved
into Mount Villa during the summer and already had created a name for himself. And I don’t mean just the nickname pinned on
him because of his wrestling style. He had also gained a reputation as a leader, and if you refused to follow him you’d pay
for it, one way or another. Anyway, that’s the word that got around.
Me, I’m no follower, and I don’t intend to be.
“Go past ’em!” I yelled at Carl, who was riding his dirt bike on my right side. “You swing to the right, I’ll swing to the
left!”
I don’t often order Carl around. Even though I’m two years older, he’s bigger than I am. It’s generally he who tries to give
me orders. But I seldom, if ever, pay attention to them.
This time he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t look to see what kind of expression he had on his face, either. I had no time.
I wheeled to the left and Carl wheeled to the right. At the same time the guys split up, Nyles sweeping directly into my path.
A scared look
came over his suntanned face, as if he thought I was going to smash right into him.
But I took my thumb off the gas lever and braked, stopping less than a yard in front of him, and looked him straight in the
eye. Then I glanced at Carl and saw that he’d done the same thing with McNeer.
“What d’you think you’re doing?” I snapped at Nyles. “Who says you own the street?”
“I says,” Max answered, sounding like a tough army sergeant.
I stared at him. He was about five-ten, with heavy eyebrows and wavy blond hair that swept back over his head and ended in
a bunch of curls behind his neck. His cream-colored shirt and blue jeans were so tight I wondered how he’d gotten into them.
A round button with
I AM KING
inscribed on it was pinned to his shirt.
“Off,” Nyles said, grabbing the handlebars of my bike. “Off! You hear me?”
I glared at him, my heart thumping like a hammer, then glanced back at Max. He grinned at me, one of those grins you’d like
to wipe off with a fist. “You heard him, Bailor. Off! We’d like to check out your wheels. Nothing wrong in that, is there?”
“There sure is!” I yelled, and socked Nyles’s hand with a fist. “Out of my way, Nyles!” I shouted, and started to twist the
gas lever.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Max yelled as he rushed at me, grabbed my leg, and started to pull me off my bike. “Off, Bailor!” he
snarled again. “This is no joke, Squirt!”
I couldn’t believe this! What guts! Did he think they could take our bikes from under us without our putting up a fight? I
didn’t know about Carl, but
I
wasn’t going to let them get away with it!
I shut off the engine as Max dragged me off the seat, and, moving as fast as I could, I grabbed him around both legs. He went
down like a sack of potatoes. I landed on top of him, got my right leg around his thighs in a scissors hold and started to
wrap one arm around his neck. I was hoping to tie him up in a hold and make him promise to leave us alone, but I didn’t count
on him turning into a maniac. I guess I’d forgotten for a minute that this was
no wrestling match but a street fight, and that Max Rundel would use any method he could to win.
He squirmed out of my hold in nothing flat, slugged me on the jaw, then sat on my back with one hand pressed against my head
and the other bending my left arm up between my shoulder blades.
“Wrestler, too, huh, Bailor?” he grunted. “Heard you were. But you’ve got to grow a few more inches, Shorty, and learn better
holds than whatever it was you just tried to pull.”
I said nothing, but I was doing a lot of thinking. If Max and his friends got away with bullying us this time, they’d try
it again. They had to be stopped… now.
But I was on the bottom…
“You going to play with us like a good boy, or do I have to —” Max started to say, when I made my move. Gathering all the
strength I could, I rolled over and pulled Max after me. I did it all so quickly I surprised him. For just a couple of seconds
I had broken his hold and was on top of him again, grabbing his left arm and pulling it over his back in a hammerlock.
I’d started to wrestle in school only last year, but I wasn’t too bad at it, for a beginner. Being short for my age, it was
the one sport that I could get into and really excel at.
I had Max where I wanted him, but again for only a few seconds. He grunted and cursed as he twisted and bolted. Then he squirmed
out of my hold and had
me
in a hammerlock.
“Thought you had me, huh?” he snorted, yanking on my arm so hard it hurt. “You giving up, or you want a little more of this?”
“Let him alone, Rundel!” I heard Carl yell out. “You’re hurting him!”
I glanced at Carl and saw him clutched between Nyles and McNeer. Both guys had his arms pinned to his sides.
“I am, huh?” Max sneered. “Well, let me hear him say that. Okay?”
“Okay. Okay,” I said, feeling the pain all the way up my arm.
He let go of me and pushed down hard on my back as he rose to his feet. I lay there a few seconds, waiting for the pain in
my arms and legs to ease up. By the time I felt better and was on my feet, Max was riding my bike down
the street. The other two guys were on Carl’s bike, with Nyles steering.
There go our bikes, I thought. We’ll never see them again, not after that fight. If Max had enough nerve to take on Carl and
me in the middle of the street in broad daylight, what would stop him from keeping the bikes?
“You’re a fool, Sean, you know that?” Carl snarled at me. “It’s a wonder he didn’t break your arm!”
I looked at him. According to Mom I was temperamental and headstrong. She had reminded me of that a dozen times, saying that
I couldn’t control myself, that I got into fights with the least provocation. Well, maybe that was true. But one thing I wasn’t
was a fool, and I resented Carl’s remark.
“I’m no coward,” I said, angrily. “And I’m not going to let anyone take my bike without a fi—”
Just then something glittering on the grass caught my eye. It was Max’s button, the one that said
I AM KING
.
I picked it up, wiped the dirt off it, and stuck it into my pocket.
Carl frowned. “You’re not going to keep that, are you?” he said. “That’s Max’s button. You’d better give it back to him if
you know what’s good for you.”
I locked eyes with him. “Yes, I
am
going to keep it,” I said firmly.
“Why? You want to get in more trouble?” he snapped.
“If you don’t say anything to him he won’t know I’ve got it,” I said, trying to keep my cool.
He kept staring at me.
“I might give it back to him sometime. But not now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t think he deserves it,” I said, determined to keep my word. “He’s no king. If he can ever prove he’s a king,
I’ll give it back to him.”
“You’re really an idiot,” Carl said, shaking his head.
I shrugged. “You think what you want to think,” I said calmly.
Carl was a lot like his father, my stepfather. Neither of them cared for me very much. As a matter of fact, I sometimes felt
that there was
even a gap between Mom and me, or she wouldn’t get on my back for every little mistake I made. Sure, I’d clobbered a few kids
who had made fun of my height, but I couldn’t just stand back and take it, could I?
“You’re just too impetuous,” Mom had once said. “You can’t control yourself. At the slightest notion you want to drop everything
and fight. I sure hope you’ll grow up one of these days, Sean — if not physically, at least mentally — and straighten up into
a decent young man your father and I can be proud of.”
Sure, I thought. And let my name be muddied all the time I was growing and straightening up. Why couldn’t anyone see things
from my point of view? It was no wonder I felt lonely most of the time, as if something — or someone — was missing from my
life.
Mom and my natural father had divorced when I was about two years old, too long ago for me to remember what my father looked
like. Mom rarely spoke about him. It was as if there was something about him she didn’t want me to know.
Once she did say that he had wrestled in high
school. I guess that may have been one of the reasons I took up the sport. It was something I could do to remind me of him
once in a while.