Screaming at the Ump (15 page)

And then I heard someone
kalump
ing up the stairs.

“Go away,” I said when the door opened.

“Don't make me sing,” Zeke said.

I put the pillow over my head and pulled the blanket up over it.

He started singing that I was his sunshine. His only sunshine. I made him happy. When skies were gray. “Ready to start your day?” he asked.

I let the silence answer that one. I couldn't be less ready.

“Let's go eat breakfast.”

“Izzat Zeke?” I heard from Dad's room.

“Ow,” I said, having literally kicked myself for forgetting to lock the doors last night.

“Good morning, Ibbit,” Zeke called, all crazy-morning happy.

“Morning, Zeke.”

***

When I got downstairs, all the cereal boxes were on the table, along with four bowls, and Zeke was sitting by himself, looking over the new notes I'd made for You Suck, Ump! Day.

“What's this about crowd control?” he asked.

“Remember the year we had too many people, and Joe Blevensky, the cop, came and threatened us?”

“Oh, yeah. Blevensky.”

“We need someone at the gate to count, so that doesn't happen again. We need to turn away people after we get six hundred and forty. I checked with Mrs. G. That's the number.”

“Okay,” Zeke said. “I'll do that. I'll be like a bouncer. That'll be sick.”

We stopped to pour cereal into our bowls. Zeke started eating but didn't let that keep him from talking.

“So you remember I'm recording the whole thing, right?”

“While you're working the front gate as bouncer?”

“Oh.”

“Right.”

“So you're saying I can't do two things at once.”

“What we need is a staff,” I said.

“Or a servant,” Zeke said.

That's when I thought about Sly. And how she wanted to do something for me after I saved her skateboard from meeting Ralphie-O's truck. But more than that, I thought about how she was always asking for something to do, how she seemed to really want to be part of BTP.

“What about Sly?” I said.

“She's what, two?”

“I think she's eight, and yeah, that's young. But she's older than her age, kind of.”

Zeke was making a face and shaking his head. “I can't see her being a bouncer.”

“Yeah, I know. But I think we should find something for her to do this one time. Like maybe she could be the No-Produce Enforcer.”

“We never had one of those before.”

“So?”

“So we can do that?” Zeke asked.

“We are the kings. We can do anything.”

We sat at that table until we had reviewed every single thing we needed to do for You Suck, Ump! Day one more time. And then we headed back to Sly's house, me on my bike and Zeke on his skateboard.

“Go ring the bell,” I said to Zeke. Sometimes I could trick him into things if he wasn't thinking.

“No way. You ring the bell.”

We heard a loud sneeze from the front porch of the house, and then Sly's mother walked outside in her robe. If she was surprised to see two guys she didn't really know in her driveway, you'd never have known it.

“Good morning,” she said. “You must be Sly's new friends.”

I wanted to kick Zeke before he said anything stupid. I asked, “Is she around?”

She sneezed again. “She must be. Hey, would you mind bringing me that paper?”

Zeke ran down to the end of the driveway, grabbed the yellow-bagged newspaper, and ran it up to her.

“You're the one with the camera?”

“Zeke,” he said.

“And you're Ibbit's son? The one that played in the street with Sylvia?”

I nodded. Then said, “Well, I'm his son, but actually, I was just trying to keep—”

“And you're filming something with the cat? Why are you doing that?”

“For fun,” Zeke said.

“Not for TV?” she asked.

“Oh, well, yeah. I did want to try to get something onto
That'sPETacular
,” he said. “But Tiny, well—”

“Okay,” she said, interrupting. “But nothing dangerous today, guys, okay? Sylvia's not allowed to play in the street.” And she stepped inside.

Zeke and I looked at each other, like
What was
that?
“I kind of wanted to say to her, ‘Yeah. We'll stay out of the street. And maybe you'll remember to pick her up after Brownies next time.'”

“You should have!” Zeke said. “She was acting like we were terrorists or something.”

Sly's mom was a weird mix of protective and . . . whatever's the opposite of protective. Absent, maybe? I knew a lot about absent moms, but Sly's mom was kind of in a category all her own.

Just then, Sly came outside with her hands up, like she was showing us she wasn't holding Tiny's box. Or a weapon. “I told you I don't want to play that video thing anymore with Tiny.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “There's something else I wanted to ask you. Do you want to help us at Behind the Plate? You'd be totally in charge of an important part of security at a big, important day.”

She just looked at me, silently, like she was waiting for the bad-news part. So I kept talking. “It's this sort of crazy day, and we need extra people to help, and I thought you'd be really good at helping us with this one thing.”

She put her hand on her hip. “What one thing?”

“Produce control,” I said.

“Yeah, I don't know what that means. What do I control?”

Zeke sighed—loudly, theatrically—then sighed again and sat down, like he had tons of important plans and we were keeping him from them. This kid who had dragged me out of bed when I was sleeping.

“We have this day when hundreds of people come to the school and watch the umpire students. And they yell at them too, but it's okay, because we want them to do that.” I never realized, until I started explaining it out loud, how incredibly stupid You Suck, Ump! Day sounded. “Anyway, we need to make sure that no one brings in any fruit or vegetables to throw at the students, and I thought you could help us with that.”

She gave me a look like she was waiting for me to say “Just kidding!” But I didn't, and so she said, “Wait a sec.” She ran into the house, screaming, “Grandma! Grandma!”

“You sure this is a good idea?” Zeke asked. Honestly, I was shocked. He did so many things that were not good ideas that I hadn't even known the concept of
good idea
was one he was familiar with.

“Well,” I said, “to quote every cartoon ever, ‘What could possibly go wrong?'”

Sly came running back. “I can do it,” she said. “I'm, like, totally in charge of the fruit, you said, right? Like I'm the fruit boss?”

“Yup.”

She smiled. And then she saluted.

T
HE
day before You Suck, Ump! Day was my favorite. Because it was when my dad was so not my dad.

Students were now all more confident than when they had arrived. The ones who could tell they were doing well were strutting a bit. The better students hung out together, and the not-so-good students stayed in their own groups.

Dad and Pop called all the students and staff out onto field one. Dad explained, kind of, what was going to happen over the next two days. But not completely. I never missed this speech. Even though it was one of those gray, heavy-air, humid days, the kind that usually make me move slowly, I ran home from the bus to make sure I was there in time.

“You guys have done a lot of great work out here so far,” Dad said. “But these haven't been real baseball conditions, have they?”

He paused, but it was just to let them think. He wasn't waiting for an answer.

“Baseball's not a quiet game. When you're in a ballpark, there are people selling beer, there are loud and rowdy fans, there are managers unhappy with the calls you've made, there are hecklers screaming at you, there are players grumbling or eyeballing you for a called third strike. It is not a classroom setting.

“Over the next two days, you're going to get a taste of that. Today you'll mostly deal with playing-field situations. You'll see a little later on. And tomorrow, we invite some of our town's good people to fill these stands and, well, yell at you.”

There was a laugh that sort of rippled through the students.

“Okay, let's break down into our assigned areas. Groups H and J, you're in the cages. The rest of you, those who were on field two, can head over there now with Soupcan and Pop.”

Dad walked off the field and I followed. He went into the small office he had off a classroom and called out to Mrs. G., “Is it ready?” I noticed he hadn't shaved—that was part of the show . . . It helped him feel like a manager for some reason.

She brought in a Braves uniform and smiled. “I feel like this session just got started.”

“Any calls?” Dad asked.

“Yes. There was one from someone with the Phillies about Florida? Something like that.”

Dad sneaked a look at me and then nodded quickly at Mrs. G. He slipped the uniform over his clothes, then slowly walked back out to the field.

Before I could ask her, “What was that about Florida?” the phone rang, and she answered it. I followed Dad to the field.

Bobbybo was calling situations, and students in the plate ump and base ump positions were trying to remember everything they'd learned about what position they were supposed to be in, how to spot and call a balk, the infield fly rule . . . baseball is so complicated. And Dad was about to make it a million times worse for them.

“Ball,” the student called, just like he'd been instructed to do.

“Whatzat?” Dad called out from the dugout in a weird, fake southern accent.

“I said ball,” the student said, not looking at Dad. Just looking out at the mound.

“You called that strike a ball?”

“Quiet now,” the student said. He sounded terrified.

Dad was near home plate now. The student looked a little freaked out. Who wouldn't, with a deranged-looking not-clean-shaven version of my dad, talking in a crazy southern accent and wearing a Braves uniform instead of his usual umpire blue?

“Listen,” Dad said, “you're giving all the calls to the other team. I don't know if you've got something going on with them—” Here Dad stopped talking and poked his finger in the student's chest.

The student should have already thrown Dad out of the game. Instead he said, “I'm sorry. I thought it looked like a ball,” sounding like he was about to cry.

“Whatzat, son?”

“I thought it was a ball.” Seriously, about to cry.

Dad turned around to all the students watching. His body language changed at once. He was no longer a slouching, slow-talking, somewhat-deranged-looking manager. He was Ibbit. Instructor Ibbit. “That, boys and girls, is how not to be an umpire.” He turned to the student and said, “I'm sorry you had to be the first one. It's hard. But you need to work on conveying authority. And not letting a manager walk all over you. If you think this was hard, wait until the crowds are screaming at you tomorrow.”

And how lucky he was, I thought, that Zeke and Sly and I would be on hand to protect him from having tomatoes hurled at his head.

A
FTER
dinner I went outside with a notepad and pencil, and I waited. I was out of my comfort zone, but there are some things you can't prepare for.

I knew what I had to do.

I sat on the bench between the cafeteria and the dorms, trying to calm the sloshy feeling in my stomach. The night grew dark around me.

I heard steps on the path. “How's it going, Case?” Bobbybo lifted my baseball cap and slapped it back down. “I'm going to Clay Coves Cones. You wanna come?”

“No, thanks,” I said. I actually did want ice cream—I always wanted ice cream—but I wanted what I was there waiting for even more.

I couldn't see much in the darkness, but I heard a car door open and shut, Bobbybo's motor starting up. The wheels worked against the gravel in the lot until it grew quiet again. Just the buzz of New Jersey insects and the dim light of the moon.

More steps on the path, not him. Not him. Not him. Groups of people who weren't him. Not him. Lone guys strutted along who weren't him. Not him. Not him.

I thought about having to go back to Mr. Donovan without an interview. With one of the not-yet-exactly-great revisions I had written in my notebook. Maybe there were some old interviews online I hadn't found yet. Maybe if I looked harder, I'd find some good information I could use to make my article better. Did I really need an interview for this to work, just because Donovan said I did?

And then, finally, one more person, passing with a quick “Wassup?” MacSophal was about to walk right past me, back to the dorms.

This was it.

“Could I talk to you for a few minutes?” My voice was loud, maybe too loud.

In the darkness, I could make out the shrug of his too-big shoulders. “What's going on?”

One deep breath. “I was wondering if I could interview you.” I'd been focusing on his shoulders, then his chest, but I shifted, looked him in the eye. It was dark, but we could see each other well enough.

“I don't think that would be such a good idea,” he said, turning toward the dorms. As he started to walk away, there was a quick sound, and then a sudden shock of brightness. The field lights came on. Like something brought back to life, the bright summer green of the outfield grass shone where an instant earlier it had been dark. J-Mac turned. There was something about a diamond under the lights. It reminded you of what you loved about baseball. It stopped J-Mac right in his tracks.

“You're not just looking to interview some run-of-the-mill umpire-school student, right? This is about me? My life?”