Say It Ain't So
Authors: Josh Berk
Strike Three, You're Dead
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Josh Berk
Front jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Media Bakery
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berk, Josh.
Say it ain't so / by Josh Berk.
pages cm
“Lenny & the Mikes.”
Summary: “Lenny gets jealous when Mike makes the school baseball team, but together they and Other Mike stumble upon a stealing signals scandal that could go further up than anyone knows”âProvided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-375-87009-5 (hardcover) â
ISBN 978-0-375-97009-2 (library binding) â
ISBN 978-0-375-98737-3 (ebook)
[1. BaseballâFiction. 2. Best friendsâFiction. 3. FriendshipâFiction.
4. SportsâCorrupt practicesâFiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.]
I. Title.
PZ7.B452295Say 2014
[Fic]âdc23
2013015225
Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
It looks like Schwenkfelder is going to the bullpen. Byron Lucas contributed a solid outing, stepping in to start game one of the play-offs in place of Hunter Ashwell. Byron wasn't perfect, but he gave the Mustangs the lead. He gave the Mustangs the chance to win. That's all you can ever ask. But it looks like he's out of gas. Griffith's bats started to wake up last inning. They hit the ball hard and brought the game to a score of two to one. Schwenkfelder is ahead by one run. Here we are, getting ready to start the top of the seventh. The final inning
.
The head coach confers with his assistant. And yes, they make the call to the bullpen. They're going to turn the ball over toâ Oh my goodness, the call goes to the newest addition to the team. They call him “the Lunatic,” and from the looks of it, it's with good reason. He's a wild man out there on the mound. He has less
control than a toddler in potty training. He's firing warm-up tosses like a blind monkey playing darts. Not a lot of strikes, but the coaches must have faith in him to put him into a high-pressure situation like this
.
One more move on the fieldâthe Lunatic's “personal catcher” comes in from first base and takes his customary spot behind the plate. He's the human backstop. The best catcher at stopping wild pitches the league has ever seen. Knowing he's there to block pitches has to give the Lunatic some confidence. But still, it's tense out there
.
The game is on the line. The season is on the line. The championship trophy is on the line
.
It's all, as they say, on the line
.
The Lunatic nods his head. He's ready. He adjusts his cap and steps to the mound. The catcher flashes the sign and the Lunatic nods again. Here's the windup, and the pitch.â¦
I could tell it was going to be a good year when Mike called me up on New Year's Day and asked me to kick him in the crotch. I'm sorryâdid I say “good year”? I meant “sorta-terrible-really-bad-then-kind-of-cool-but-mostly-just-weird year.” I guess you could simply say it was going to be an interesting year.
Last year ended on a bad note, so I should have predicted weirdness. The holidays around the Norbeck house were just
awful
. My parents (mostly Mom) got it into their heads that we shouldn't celebrate Hanukkah
or
Christmas. My dad is Jewish and my mom is Christian, so usually we'd celebrate both. I was always pretty pleased with this arrangement, as you can imagine. It meant the old eight days of gifts during Hanukkah and still a pretty sweet Christmas haul. Presents galore! Trees
and
menorahs! Candy canes
and
potato pancakes! Actually, I don't really like potato pancakes. And candy canes always start out exciting but end up being disappointing. They're basically just a sticky mess you're sick of before you're even halfway done. But that's beside the point. The point is, every December for the first twelve years of my young life was awesome.
Not this one.
This year, Mom said, we'd still celebrate the
spirit
of those holidays, but when it came to gift getting, we'd celebrate zilch. I'm not kidding!
Zero! Zip! Nada!
She had it in her head that I had way too many toys and things. So her brilliant idea was that instead of Christmas or Hanukkah, we'd celebrate
Discardia
. Yeah, I had never heard of it either. It's a made-up holiday. And okay, maybe all the holidays are made-up holidays if you think about it. Ever look at one of those calendars that has every holiday on it? There are some weird ones. Grandparents Day? Administrative Professionals Week? National Mustard Day? (That's actually a pretty good one that I look forward to every year.)
But seriously, sports fans, I would have
much
preferred celebrating Principals Day for a whole month to the travesty that is Discardia.â¦Â (Yeah,
Principals Day is also a real one. I wonder who made
that
up.â¦)
Picture me waking up on the morning of December 25. The room is
not
packed to the gills with presents. There are no stockings hung by the chimney with care. There are no halls decked with boughs of holly. No fa! No la! No la-la-la-la-la-la-la! Instead, by the tree there is an empty wheelbarrow. This would be bad enough if the wheelbarrow were your only gift. (Unless you were some sort of barrow collector and the wheelbarrow was the last one you needed for your barrow collection.) But no, not in the Norbeck house. During Discardia the wheelbarrow is there to
steal
your toys. To cart away your happiness like some sort of Grinch on wheels. (Grinch on
wheel
, I guess.)
On the morning of Discardia you glumly fill up this wheelbarrow with your favorite toys. Okay, at first it's not your
favorites
. At first it's the oldest and worst toys you're not even sure why you still own. It's the broken trucks, the outdated video games, the superhero action figures missing one or both legs. A puzzle of the Rocky Mountains you lost, like, ninety pieces to and you never really liked doing anyway. Books you are more than glad to get out of reading. But no, these things will not make
your mother happy. She will invite you to “dig deeper.” To “truly give.” To “give until it hurts.” You respond that it already hurts, even though you should know better than to say anything. Because any time you say anything, Mom just launches into another speech.
“Lenny, don't you know that others have nothing? Nothing at all! Others would be happy with just a warm meal. Others would be thrilled just to have a roof over their heads. Others would
appreciate
things.”
“Hey,” you say. “If others are so easy to please, then they're sure going to love this Spider-Man head! I have no idea where the body is.”
When will you learn? Why do you say things like this? Because the response is just more speeches.
“Lenny, I am truly disappointed in you. You have a chance to make yourself a better person this Christmas season. Isn't that the greatest gift of all? You have the chance to make yourself a better person
and
the chance to brighten the life of some poor kid who has nothing, and you're going to make jokes? You're going to throw a fit that you don't have the new baseball game for the video-game machine?”
You want to point out that you already do have
the new baseball game and that no one says “video-game machine,” but by now you've learned your lesson. You want to point to the new car in the driveway and ask Mom when she plans on giving that away. You want to point to the jewelry around her neck and the rings on her fingers. But you don't. You know that saying this would be a terrible idea. You know that saying this would probably make said baseball game end up in the wheelbarrow. So you shut your mouth and bite your tongue.