Screaming at the Ump (12 page)

“Did you decide what to write about?” It took me a minute, squinting through sun, to see that it was Soupcan.

“I need to turn something in on Monday,” I said, putting the folder down.

“Monday like the day that is tomorrow?”

I had half a day. I nodded slowly. I already knew, kind of, what I was going to write, but my conscience was keeping me from starting.

Soupcan spotted a group of students walking toward us. “How you doing?” he called. It was June Sponato, one of the Franklins (I still couldn't tell Robbie and Bob apart), two short guys, and MacSophal.

“What're you up to this evening?” Soupcan asked. “You all know Casey, right?” He pulled something—a lollipop—out of his back pocket and unwrapped it, then stuck it in his mouth.

They nodded at me. June Sponato smiled.

I smiled back at her, but had a hard time looking at MacSophal. Who did he think he was, telling my dad it would be fine to leave me? To go to Florida without me. Why didn't Dad talk about taking me? And who was this idiot cheater guy to tell my dad it was okay for a dad to leave his kid for five weeks anyway? It was annoying that I only knew this stuff because I'd listened to something I wasn't meant to hear, but it wasn't like I could unhear it now.

“Thinking about heading into town for some burgers,” the Franklin said. “You want to come?” he asked Soupcan.

“May as well. Good luck with that, Casey. Let me know how it goes.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Oh, hey. Do you know how I can get in touch with Steamboat?”

“Sorry, man.” They all walked toward the parking lot.

I put on my sweatshirt—even with the sun still out, a chilly hint of fall was in the air.

I wondered if I could really write the article I wanted to write. It was exciting to think about being the writer who solved one of baseball's big mysteries—what had happened to J-Mac? Even if the story did fall into my lap, I was still going to be the one to break it wide open. This could be really big. I could tell the world, or at least the middle-school students of Clay Coves, that the accused steroid user, the big-bearded wonder who never cleared his name, was now trying to start over right here in our town. That the former megabucks relief pitcher was now a lowly umpire-school student, fighting it out to get a shot at the Professional Umpire Evaluation Course in Cocoa.

Except.

I was pretty sure this fell under the category of Things You Know You're Not Supposed to Do Even Though No One Ever Exactly Told You. Other things on that list probably included putting beans up your nose and painting your guinea pig with honey.

I could ask Dad if it was okay to write about one of his students. But I knew he'd say no, not without MacSophal's permission, anyway.

So I could
not
ask and not give him a chance to say no. And learn to live with a little guilt. Maybe Dad would never even know. Maybe I'd just start writing, and it wouldn't be good, and I wouldn't even have a whole stupid conflict on my hands.

I wrote my headline:
BASEBALL'S MYSTERY MAN SPOTTED IN CLAY COVES
, with the subhead What Happened to That Big-Headed Cheater?

I started writing, getting more and more keyed up as I went on. This could be the hugest article ever. Not only the kind that makes them publish a sixth-grader's piece for the first time. But the kind that some other kid might read, next year or years from now, and think,
Wow. A kid wrote this? A kid wrote this huge breaking-news story that won the Honorbound Competition?
He'd look at the byline and see
by Casey Snowden
.

I went back inside and got online to research J-Mac's career and his mysterious disappearance. It hadn't been in the news much lately, since it happened years ago, but back then, wow. It was a really big story. And then for a while afterward, there had been all these photo-only pieces about J-Mac sightings—in Tampa, at CitiField in New York. I guessed these days maybe people had stopped wondering. That was how it was with news. But what would happen if I really got this totally out-of-nowhere scoop, reminded people about J-Mac, told the true, breaking-news story . . . that MacSophal was really here, in Clay Coves, New Jersey, trying to become an umpire in the sport he ran away from. A rule breaker was studying the rules of baseball. It was too much!

There was so much to think about—right and wrong, exciting and scary—but instead of thinking, I just wrote.

W
HEN
I got on the bus, all I was thinking about was handing my article in after school. It was a lot better than thinking about Dad shipping me off to Mrs. Bob the Baker, and if I'd learned anything in the past few years, it was how not to think about her.

I was so excited about this article. I had worked really hard on it. I kind of couldn't wait to see everyone's reaction. I, Casey Snowden, was going to be the one who solved the mystery of baseball's great disappearance, the accused steroid user who fell off the face of the earth. Uncovered. By me!

I wouldn't be able to stay for the newspaper meeting after school today—I had to figure out how to get ready for You Suck, Ump! Day, how to get in touch with Steamboat—so I was planning to give the article to Mr. Donovan in English. I wondered if he'd be annoyed with me for not accepting the unwritten rule about sixth-graders, or if he'd maybe think it was cool that I was challenging it.

I had a hard time staying focused all day, even during English. At the end of the class, I took my time packing up my stuff, and I said, “Mr. Donovan?”

“Will I see you at the meeting later?”

“I can't,” I said, standing up from my desk. “It's a really busy week at home, at the school, at Behind the Plate. You Suck, Ump! Day is coming up, and this year I'm kind of running the whole thing myself, so I need a ton of time to get ready.”

He nodded.

“And I know this is weird, and that it's sort of a little against the rules, or the unwritten rules, but I don't agree with the rules, so I figured, well, I wrote an article, and I was hoping you could look it over. I won't be there to hand it in myself, so—”

“You really can't be there or you don't want to be there?” Mr. Donovan asked.

“I really can't. I mean, you're right that I don't exactly want to see Chris Sykes's face when I say I wrote an article, or listen to him, or whatever, but I really can't be there today.” I almost said, “You could call my father if you don't believe me,” but then I remembered I was twelve. Not six.

“I'll read it,” he said.

***

At home, Zeke and I sat down with pretzels and milk, a disgusting combination that he ate and drank all the time and which, to my own horror, I was starting to like too. As soon as we were done, I went to ask Mrs. G. if she had any other contact info for Steamboat.

She didn't.

“Okay, so his first name was Kelly. I know that. Do you at least know his last name?”

She didn't even go to a file drawer or anything. She just said, “Um,” and looked at me. “Kelly? Really? I only knew him as Steamboat. And because his family was in Rhode Island, he didn't have a local bank account. So, Rhode Island, that's something, right? Or wait. It might have been Vermont. Or possibly Maine.”

“Really? All I have to go on is the name Kelly, in the Northeast?” Perfect.

So Zeke and I went back to the kitchen, got more pretzels and more milk, and tried to think of everything we could having to do with You Suck, Ump! Day, from the flyers we needed to put up all over town, to letting people know when it was, to what time we needed to start, to what we needed to do to get the fields, stands, and public areas ready. It was a lot. I was pretty sure we could do it.

***

Zeke had to go home right away to “get some important stuff out in the mail.” I wished him good luck with that, because his room was an organized person's nightmare—DVDs, addressed envelopes, stamps, postcards, reality TV contest entries—everything everywhere. I had no idea if half his ideas or entries or whatever were ever even submitted or if they were still in various layers on his bedroom floor, maybe to be discovered by some research scientists years from now, who would try to understand the deep meaning behind the video cards and entry forms addressed to
So You Think You're the Biggest Idiot?

***

I went outside and made my way to the batting cages. I stopped in the space between two cages to watch Jorge Washington run through his calls. Bobbybo was there too, shaking his head (he didn't hide his disgust very well). “Look at your feet,” he said to Jorge. It was bad news if you had to be told to look at your feet this late in the game.

“Right, right,” Jorge said. I stepped a bit farther into the cage and watched as he separated his feet more, shifted one a little ahead of the other. He got down into the crouch. His balance looked wobbly, and he flinched each time the pitching machine sent a ball into the catcher's glove. He was good at the rest of it, though: coming up to standing position, moving his right arm at a 90-degree angle with a single knocking motion, and calling a big, loud “Strike!” Then he got back into the crouch with his feet in the wrong position again.

I pushed tarp after tarp back, walking past the other cages until I spotted Dad and J-Mac talking outside, near the door and thought,
Wow, look at that—I don't even call him MacSophal anymore. He's J-Mac
. And at that very moment, I tripped over an Ibbit stick. I fell straight to the ground and looked around, relieved no one had seen. From the dark inside the cages, Dad and J-Mac looked like they were in a movie or onstage in a play—two big well-lit actors. I scooted closer and tried to hear what they were saying, but I couldn't make out a word. Until they were done, when J-Mac, walking away, turned back to yell, “Yeah, give him a call. Maybe you could start this January.”

Start what in January?

January was when the Florida schools held their sessions.

What was with this guy, working so hard to get my dad to move BTP's Academy to Florida? I had to figure out how to stop this. Which would be doubly hard since I wasn't even supposed to know about it.

W
ORRY
and excitement were fighting it out in my head. And my stomach. I was able to forget about the whole Florida nightmare, though, for nice patches of relief, when my excitement about the article would fill in that place. I couldn't wait to hear what Mr. Donovan had to say about what I wrote. I knew sports stories were always in the back of newspapers, but I wondered if maybe mine could end up on the front page because it was so much bigger than just another sports story.

I didn't know what Dad would think about me writing about one of his students without asking first, but journalists probably didn't ask their parents for permission, right? And what kind of rights was a cheater entitled to anyway?

Could this lead to a whole paparazzi kind of thing, with reporters all over the place, trying to get their own pictures and access to J-Mac? Even if that happened, wouldn't it be good for BTP, in a way? Maybe the wrong way, but still, in a way?

It was complicated.

***

At lunch, Zeke asked why I was so squirmy. He hardly ever noticed anything, so I guess I must have been pretty bad. But instead of telling him about my article or J-Mac, the reasons I was squirming, I looked at what he had brought—a squished banana and a pack of Oreos. That was all.

“Okay. Tell me again why you don't just buy lunch.”

“With what money?” Zeke asked. Andrew deFausto reached to take one of the Oreos, but Zeke swatted him away before he could get it.

“I know your parents have money, Zeke. They'd pay for your lunches.”

He nodded. “Yeah, they do.”

Sense. All I wanted was for him to make some sense.

“How do you think I pay for the entry fees and postage and everything on all my entries?” he asked. “I use my lunch money. And then I find things around the house I can eat at lunch.”

“Do you want half?” I asked, unpacking my sandwich.

He nodded. And looked grateful. Maybe I could talk to Chet about making two lunches.

***

I waited and squirmed and nearly exploded through English, and then Mr. Donovan told me he hadn't had a chance to read my article but that he'd speak to me after class tomorrow.

Sure. I'd just wait another day. Because waiting was really easy for me.

When we got home from school, I needed some BTP time, so we went straight to the fields. Today they were working on stillness. When you call balls and strikes, you have to keep your head from moving. If your head moves at all, you change the angle you are viewing from, and it messes up your ability to see the line of the ball.

Before we even saw a whole group's rotation through the drill, Mrs. G. called Zeke and me into her office. “Okay. I have the flyers here,” she said. “You better get them out today. And on your way out, Baby, please give these to your father.” She handed me two phone-message slips. “I'm leaving early. Dana's picking up Sylvia, and I have a doctor's appointment. I can't be late.”

All I really wanted to do was sit in the stands and watch some doofy students learn how to stop their heads from bobbing around while they crouched behind the plate, but there was no way I was going to mess up You Suck, Ump! Day
. I went out to the garage and got my bike.

I took a quick look at the phone messages crumpled in my hand. The first one was from Clay Coves Community College, about setting up an umpire workshop for early next year. The other one was from the Phillies, and the message was “about spring training fields/January.”

The Phillies' spring training fields were in Clearwater, Florida.

This was bad.

“Are you coming?” Zeke asked, pushing his skateboard onto my foot. He held up the camera and started recording me reading the phone message while kicking away his board.