Captain America Week! Day Two: Death Loads the Bases

So this Captain America story (which is called "Death Loads the Bases", by the way), is a Scooby-Doo style mystery about a spooky character trying to spoil victory for the Badgers baseball team which is on a twelve-game winning streak.

Here's the bad guy, which should come as no surprise, since he's vaguely threatening the team's owner with injury to his star players:

The bad guys, they just love the purple and the orange.

I just thought I'd spoil that for you. Since you never find out who this man is or why he's threatening the team owner until the big reveal at the end, you have no reasonable way of deducing who the villain is or what his motive is. Apparently Brad Meltzer originally wrote for Timely.

And, per Brad's usual style, here's the red herring, Pop Grimes:

Yeah. Sure. This guy has 'criminal mastermind' written all over him, Daphne!

Dude; you have a job with the team, when, in fact, you shouldn't be anywhere near the stadium; shut up. In my day, people who are barred from baseball become announcers on ESPN8, covering the World Extreme Ironing Championships in Denmark. So count yer lucky stars and get me some fresh towels, grampa.

In the stands for Game Thirteen in the Badgers' streak sit Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Steve's, um, friend. Really really young friend. In dress uniforms. They are enlisted men. Even though Bucky is, what, 14? Did the Army just pick up truckloads of pubescent A1s from the state orphanage to use as cannon fodder? I don't ... well, I'm not going to think about, because it's giving me a headache. I'll just accept it as is.


Sure enough, Buck's hunch is roughly correct: this will be an unlucky thirteenth for the Badgers. For some more than others:

"He was tagged out by the Grim Reaper himself!"
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the world's most inappropriately poetic shortstop.