Here's a sneak peek at the next baseball card adventure "Ted & Me," which will be published by HarperCollins in 2012...

Chapter 2. A Mission

It took a few days for life to return to normal after we got back from Williamsport. Me and the guys weren't celebrities anymore. We had to go back to cleaning our rooms, mowing our lawns, doing our summer reading, boring stuff like that.

I was playing a video game in the living room one day after we got home. My mom was paying the bills in the den. She was all worried because she read an article in a magazine that said it costs over $100,000 to send a kid to college for four years, and she doesn't have anywhere near that kind of money.

"I don't have to go to college," I told her. "I'll get a good job."

"You're going to college," she insisted. "That's how you'll get a good job."

My mom is a nurse, and she works in a hospital here in Louisville. My dad is currently unemployed. I was going to tell my mom that I could get a baseball scholarship to college. But after my performance in The Little League World Series, that didn't seem very likely.

I looked up from my game when I head a car door slam shut in our driveway.

"You expecting anybody, Mom?" I asked.

We both got up to peek through the blinds. There was a guy getting out of the car. Young guy, maybe thirty or so. He was wearing a black suit, black tie, and sunglasses. His car was black too.

"He looks like an FBI agent," I whispered. "They're coming to take you away, Mom." My mother giggled.

"Do you really think he's an FBI agent?" she asked.

"Nah, can't be," I told her. "FBI agents only dress like FBI agents on TV. I bet real FBI agents dress like normal people so nobody will know they're FBI agents. This guy is probably selling insurance or something."

The guy walked up the front steps. My mom ran to wipe her hands on a dish towel and started fussing with her hair, like she was getting ready to go out on a date or something. When the guy knocked on the door, I opened it. He had taken off his sunglasses.

"Excuse me," the guy said politely. "Are you Joseph Stoshack?"

My mom stepped in front of me protectively. She blocked the doorway, like she didn't want this stranger coming into our house.

"Who wants to know?" she asked.

"Agent Donovan," he replied. "Federal Bureau of Investigation."

The guy was an FBI agent!

He flipped open his wallet and stuck his badge in our faces, just like they do on TV. It was a real badge too, not one of those phony plastic ones you can buy at a Halloween store. He looked serious.

Why would the FBI come to our house? We never did anything wrong.

Then it hit me. Flip asked me to carry the American flag at the Little League World Series and I turned him down. I had committed an un-American act. I was totally unpatriotic, and stupid too. The FBI probably suspected that I was a terrorist.

"I'm really sorry!" I blurted out. "I didn't mean it! Really. I won't do it again."

"Do what again?" my mom asked.

My mind was racing. This could ruin my life, I thought to myself. I'll never get through airport security again. I'm probably on a no-fly list already. It will be on my permanent record. I might go to jail. Or be deported. They might send me to one of those countries that tortures people to make them talk. I would never see my parents again.

Flip must have tipped off the FBI about the flag, I figured. Or maybe it was one of my teammates. Some of them couldn't be trusted.

I felt like I might start to cry, but I fought against the tears.

"Did my son do something wrong?" Mom asked, tightening her hold on me.

"No, no, of course not!" Agent Donovan said, a tiny smile appearing on his face for the first time. "May I come in, Mrs. Stoshack?"

"Of course."

Mom ushered Agent Donovan in and offered him coffee, tea, a sandwich, Fig Newtons, and just about everything she had in the refrigerator. But he said he just wanted to talk for a few minutes. We went to the living room. I sat on the couch next to my mom, who held my hand. Agent Donovan sat stiffly on the wing chair across from us.

"Let me get right to the point, Joseph," he said. "We at the Bureau know about your...uh...shall we say...gift."

I glanced at my mother, and she glanced back at me. Suddenly I felt hot. My forehead was sweaty.

"Gift?" Mom said innocently. "Did you get a present that you didn't tell me about, Joey?"

"No."

"I'm really sorry," my mother said, "but we don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you know exactly what I'm talking about, Mrs. Stoshack," Agent Donovan said. "Joseph, we know that you can travel through time, using baseball cards."

I exhaled. I must have been holding it in for a long time.

He was right. I can travel through time with baseball cards. But how did he know?

Here's the story, in a nutshell: Something must have happened to my brain when I was very little. I remember picking up one of my dad's old baseball cards. I couldn't even read yet. After a few seconds, I felt this strange tingling sensation in the tips of my fingers. I dropped the card right away, but I was fascinated. When I picked the card up again, I held onto it and the tingling sensation moved up my arm. It was a pleasant, buzzy feeling, but scary at the same time. I dropped the card again.

I kept experimenting in my room, and then one day I decided not to drop the card. As I held onto it, the tingling sensation moved across my body. I closed my eyes. I felt myself getting lighter, like I was being lifted up off my bed.

And then, I was gone. When I opened my eyes, I was in another place, another time, another year.

A baseball card, I discovered, was like a plane ticket to me. It would take me to the year on the card.

I started going on adventures to the past. I met famous players like Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Roberto Clemente. I also met some not-so-famous players like Ray Chapman, Mickey Maguire, and Jim Thorpe.

But those are stories for another day.

At first, nobody else knew that I had this power. Then my mom found out, of course. I told my dad, who lives in an apartment on the other side of Louisville. I ended up telling Flip too. Only a few other people knew about it. But now this FBI agent knew. And if he knows, how many other people in the government know? Maybe hundreds. The information must be in a database somewhere.

"How did you find out that Joey could travel through time with baseball cards?" my mother asked Agent Donovan.

"It's our job to find things out, Mrs. Stoshack," he said. "Gathering intelligence is what we do."

"If you're so good at finding stuff out," I asked, "then how come you didn't know about 9/11 before it happened?"

"Joey!" Mom scolded me. "It wasn't his fault. He was probably in high school when 9/11 happened."

"It's a fair question, Mrs. Stoshack," Agent Blank said, "and I'll answer it. Joseph, the FBI is not infallible, unfortunately. We make mistakes. Sometimes bad mistakes. And yes, I was in high school on 9/11, in New York City. I was in science class. I remember it very clearly. It was horrible. In fact, that was the reason why I joined The Bureau in the first place. I wanted to help prevent another 9/11."

"So why are you here today?" my mother asked. "Why is the FBI interested in my son?"

Agent Donovan leaned forward in the chair and clasped his hands together. He lowered his voice slightly, as if there was somebody in the next room. My Uncle Wilbur was home, but he was upstairs sleeping. We're the only family that he has, and he's been living with us for a while now.

"Time travel is a subject that has been of interest to our government for a long time," he said slowly. "We've spent a lot of money, and a lot of time, researching it."

"I'm not sure I like where this is going," my mother said.

"Please hear me out, Mrs. Stoshack. You can imagine how time travel could be used to our country's benefit. If we made a serious mistake sometime in the past, we might be able to correct it. Or, we could go back and revise the historical record, just like you can revise a document on a computer. If there was something that happened in the past that we didn't like or approve of, maybe we could go back in time and do something so that thing never happened in the first place. Do you see? Time traveling could be a very valuable tool to the government, just like diplomacy, military force, foreign aid, and the other tools we have at our disposal."

"In other words, you want my son to change history for you," my mother said, a worried look on her face.

"Not for me," Agent Donovan replied. "For America. You see, despite all the effort we've put into time travel research, nothing productive has come out of it. Even our top scientists had come to the conclusion that time travel was a physical impossibility. Until now, of course."

He was looking at me.

"So you want me to go back in time?" I asked. "What do you want me to do, kill Adolph Hitler or something?"

"That's not a bad idea, Joseph," Agent Donovan said, chuckling.

"My son is not going to kill anyone," my mother said sternly. "Not even Hitler."

"Of course not," Agent Donovan said, smiling again. "We would never send a child to assassinate anyone. Or an adult, for that matter. At the FBI, we don't do those sorts of things."

"I got it," I said excitedly. "You want me to prevent an assassination, right? Is it John F. Kennedy? Or Abraham Lincoln?"

"No," Agent Donovan said. "It's bigger than that."

"Bigger?" I asked. "What could be bigger than preventing the assassination of the president?"

Agent Donovan clasped his hands together and looked me in the eye.

"I'll try not to bore you, Joseph," he said. "But I need to give you a little history. In the spring of 1938 Hitler and the Nazis took over Austria. The next year, they conquered Czechoslovakia and Poland, and World War II was on. In 1940 they swept over Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France. The Nazis controlled most of continental Europe. They were bombing England. They had teamed up with Italy and Japan. Joseph, do you know what happened on December 7th, 1941?"

I thought for a minute. It didn't ring a bell.

"Pearl Harbor," my mother said.

"That's right."

Oh yeah. I learned a little bit about that in Social Studies. Pearl Harbor was an American naval base in Hawaii. It was attacked on that date by Japan. The next day America was part of World War II.

"Wait a minute," Mom said, holding my hand tighter. "Are you expecting my little boy to prevent Pearl Harbor?"

"I'm not that little, Mom," I protested.

"In a way, yes," Agent Donovan told her. "You see, it was a surprise attack. Nobody knew it was coming. If the president, Franklin Roosevelt, knew that Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7th, we could have been ready and waiting for them. We would have blown those planes out of the sky like it was a turkey shoot."

"So you want me to go back in time and warn President Roosevelt that Pearl Harbor is going to be attacked?" I asked.

"That's right," Agent Donovan said. "Joseph, do you have any idea how many lives would have been saved if our government had known in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?"

"No..."

Agent Donovan pulled a calculator out of his pocket and started punching the buttons.

"First of all," he said, "2,400 American soldiers were killed at Pearl Harbor that day. If the attack had been prevented, we would not have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few years later. Those bombs killed approximately 200,000 people. It is very possible that America would have never even entered the war if there had been no Pearl Harbor. And do you know how many American soldiers died in World War II? 416,000."

"Wow," was all I could say.

"You can change the world, Joseph," Agent Donovan said, looking at me seriously. He punched the final numbers into the calculator and held it up for me. "You can save...618,400 lives."

He let that sink in for a moment.

"But isn't it going to be dangerous?" my mother finally said. "I mean, what if Joey changed some little thing in the past and it set into motion a series of events that changed things for the worse? What if he...stepped on a twig or something in 1941, and as a result millions of people died? I've read about that possibility."

Agent Donovan smiled.

"So have I," he said. "Joseph would have to be very careful. We would pick and choose what parts of the past he would change. That's why we've chosen a very simple two-part task for Joseph to complete. One: get to President Roosevelt. Two: warn him about Pearl Harbor. That's it. Then come right back home. And avoid stepping on any twigs along the way."

Up until now, I had just traveled back in time because I was a big baseball fan. I wanted to see if Babe Ruth really called his famous "called shot" home run. I wanted to see if Satchel Paige could throw a hundred miles per hour. It never even crossed my mind to do anything that would affect lots of people.

I looked at my mom.

"How much would Joseph be paid for this?" she asked.

A look of disappointment passed over Agent Donovan's face.

"Mom!" I exclaimed.

"We're not wealthy, Joseph," she said. "If you're the only person in the world who can do this, and you're going to risk your life for your country, you should get something out of it. That's only fair. This could pay for your college education."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Stoshack, but we're not offering any money. Budgets...cutbacks..."

"So you expect my son to save hundreds of thousands of lives and change the world to suit you," my mom said, "but you're not willing to pay him a dime?"

"He gets to help his country," Agent Donovan said. "That's the payment. It's an honor to be asked to serve your country."

"I don't know," my mother said doubtfully. "He's just a boy."

"Oh, Joseph won't be working alone," said Agent Donovan. "Of course there would be adult supervision."

"Who?" I asked.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a card that was in a clear plastic holder. He put it on the coffee table. I didn't pick it up. I knew what would happen if I did.

It was black and white, and larger than a regular baseball card. It looked almost like a post card. And it was autographed.

"Ted Williams?" I asked.

I didn't know a whole lot about Williams. He was a great hitter, of course. Everybody knows that. He played for the Red Sox. He was in the Hall of Fame. That's about it.

"You could have chosen any player from that era," my mother said. "What's so special about Ted Williams?"

"We've done extensive personality research into the players from decades past," Agent Donovan told us. "We have reason to believe that of all the players in the major leagues, Ted Williams would be most likely to help Joseph carry out this mission."

Agent Donovan stood up, pulled out his wallet and removed a business card. He handed it to my mother.

"I don't expect you folks to make a snap decision about this," he said. "I understand the risks that are involved. But think it over. Call me and let me know what you decide to do. And this is top secret, obviously. Not a word about this to anybody."

"What if we say no?" my mom asked. "Will this go on Joseph's permanent record?"

"Of course not," Agent Donovan said simply. "There are no repercussions. We just thought that if Joseph is traveling through time anyway, he might want to do something to help his country."

Mom and I walked him to the front door. He put his sunglasses on. When I opened the door, he turned to face me.

"Joseph," he said, "I told you that I joined the FBI to prevent another 9/11. Pearl Harbor was the first 9/11. In just two hours on that day, twenty-one American ships were sunk or damaged. Over three hundred planes were destroyed. And besides those 2,400 soldiers that were killed, 1,200 more were wounded. A lot of those guys were teenagers, not much older than you. Keep that in mind when you make your decision."

"I will," I said.

"And Joseph," he added before leaving, "this is just my opinion, but you really should have carried that flag at the World Series."