“No, not that I can remember.”
“Then you’re probably doing all right, as long as you don’t add much. Not that I wouldn’t recommend a thorough overhaul. You could probably save money in the long run if this place was wired more efficiently and you put in low-energy lighting fixtures.”
“That’s a good point. Shelby, you listening?”
She nodded. “I am. It might be nice to work up some numbers showing how the cost savings would offset the installation costs. Barney, can you help us out there?”
“I could.” He looked at Shelby, then at me. “I told Shelby I’d be happy to take a look at this stuff for you, but she may have mentioned I wanted something in return.”
“Yes, she said that,” I replied cautiously.
Barney smiled. “What do you know about Philadelphia baseball history?”
I hadn’t expected that question. “Not much. I don’t really follow sports.”
Barney looked disgusted. “You’ve at least heard of the Phillies?”
Was he being sarcastic? “Yes, of course.” I’d have to be blind and deaf not to know our city’s own baseball team. Even the William Penn statue atop City Hall occasionally sported a Phillies cap. Hard to miss.
“They weren’t always the Phillies, you know.” Barney got a faraway look in his eye and seemed to be settling in for a long story. “They’re the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports. They were founded in 1883, but in the very beginning they were called the Quakers. That name was used on and off, as well as the Phillies, up until 1890, when they made the Phillies name official. They even had a permanent home by 1887-the Baker Bowl. Over twelve thousand seats it had. First one burned down in 1894, and they built a bigger, better one on the same spot, with more than eighteen thousand seats. Won their first pennant there, in 1915, and they kept on using it until 1938. Betcha don’t know where it was?”
I shook my head. I could find the current stadia only because they were obvious if you drove past Philadelphia on I-95. I’d never been to an event at any of them.
“Little over three miles from here, up Broad Street. Nothing left now-coupla gas stations, some factories. What was still standing was torn down in 1950. Ah, but it had a great history. Babe Ruth-you’ve heard of him?” He was looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, clearly enjoying educating me. “He played his last major league game there. Woodrow Wilson was the first president to ever attend a World Series game-right there in the Baker Bowl.”
Clearly I was in the presence of a rabid sports historian. I could sympathize with his enthusiasm. “I never knew! So tell me, what is it you want in return for sharing your electrical expertise?” I was pretty sure I could guess.
“I want to know what kinda stuff you got in your collections, about the team and the Baker Bowl.”
“Surely there are better sources than the Society for information on the team?”
“I’ve looked.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “The Atwater Kent-they had a good show there about local baseball a couple of years ago. The Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. The Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, out in Hatboro. Even Comcast, and the architects for the new park.”
“So what can we add for you?”
“My great-great-grandpa played for the original Quakers, the first couple of years. My great-grandpa went to a lot of games in that park, starting out as a toddler-he remembered seeing Ruth play there. I want to know more about the team and the players, maybe find a few photos. I bet you might have some records here that nobody knows about. You’ve got great stuff about the city, going way back. And Shelby here tells me a lot gets misfiled somewhere. So, say I was to look in one of those boxes that just says
This was going to be a pleasure. “Barney, I would be delighted to provide you with an honorary membership to the Society and assure that you will have free access to our sports archives, in exchange for your advice on our electrical systems. I’m sure we can even find another enthusiast among our library staff who would be delighted to help you. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds terrific.” He beamed.
But I wasn’t done. “Okay, Barney, we’ve got a deal. But I’ve got a condition, too.”
“Yeah?”
“I want you to explain to me how that poor man came to die at the Let’s Play Museum.”
As I watched his face fall, I felt sad to have burst his happy bubble. “Awful thing,” he said somberly. “Shouldn’t have happened.”
“So why did it?” I asked. “Or would it be easier to start with the
“I got time if you do.”
“Shelby? You want to join us?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. How about the alehouse on Cedar Street?”
Perfect. An easy walk, and a pleasant place where we could talk without anyone listening in, and I figured Barney would be comfortable there. “Let me grab my coat and close up.”
We all stood, and Shelby and Barney headed toward the elevator while I took one last look around, turned off my computer and the lights, and followed.
Outside it was cool and damp-probably rain coming. Luckily we didn’t have far to go. Walking into the pub was like jumping into a warm bath of sound and color and smells, all good. We had no trouble finding a shabby booth in a corner that offered some privacy. We ordered a round of drinks (one of the plusses of taking the train in was that I could indulge-just a little-after work without worrying about driving home) and settled ourselves comfortably. The drinks arrived promptly, and we put in an order for a batch of bar munchies, which at least would be decently handled here, then we got down to business.
“All right, just how much do you know about electricity?” Barney began.
“I can plug something into a socket, and I know where my breaker box is at home. Assume that’s it.”
He sighed, a bit dramatically, I thought. “How about the difference between AC and DC?”
“We use AC in this country, right? And most of Europe uses DC?”
He looked disgusted. “Okay, I’ll take it in baby steps. You do know what an electron is?” I nodded. “Current is the flow of electrons through a conductor-that’s most often a metal wire-and it’s measured in amperes. AC is most popular because you can increase or decrease it through a transformer. Like the wires to your house-lots of amps in the overhead power line, but it’s stepped down to household level through a pole-mounted transformer.”
“Got it. So outside power lines have more juice than lines in the house, right?”
“Yeah, more or less. Now, by code these days, the plugs you use have to be grounded. That’s the third wire, if you take your line apart. You can see it in any box behind a plug or switch plate in your house. In the most basic terms, you’ve got three wires: the hot wire, the one that isn’t hot, and the ground. The ground is what keeps you from getting fried when you get between the hot and the neutral wires, because a ground wire has a lot less resistance than a human body, and current likes to take the easy way. Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt, though. Look, most of your household stuff is twenty amps, okay? A milliamp is a thousandth of an amp. You grab something with sixteen milliamps and an average guy can hold on and let it go. Twenty milliamps and you stop breathing; a hundred milliamps and your heart short-circuits.”
“That doesn’t sound like very much. Why aren’t there more fatal accidents?”
“OSHA-that’s the Occupational Safety and Health Administration-says there are maybe two hundred a year, and a bunch of those are electrical workers messing with high-voltage lines. Not many household accidents, because the circuit breaker usually blows before anybody gets seriously hurt.”
While I appreciated the general information, it wasn’t what I was looking for. “So what are you telling me? That the accident at Let’s Play required something out of the ordinary? Was it just a couple of crossed wires, or somebody forgot to attach something right, or would somebody have had to make a deliberate effort to increase the current and booby-trap it?”
Barney didn’t answer right away. He’d finished his first drink and signaled the waitress for a second, glancing at Shelby and me to see if we wanted another. We were both still working on our first, and barely half-finished. Luckily the food appeared at the same time as Barney’s fresh drink-I didn’t want him to get sloshed before I had the information I was looking for. Shelby and I exchanged a glance, and she shrugged.
When Barney finally spoke, he didn’t look at either of us, but stared into the depths of his drink. “I knew Joe
