Screaming at the Ump (17 page)

At a regular ball game, sometimes one or two fans would yell at an umpire, maybe a dozen. But how often do you gather hundreds of people together to watch a fake baseball game and get everyone to scream at the umpires? What could be more American than that?

I wished I knew how Steamboat had filled the stands, but just like with every You Suck, Ump! Day thing, I had to come up with my own idea. Zeke and I let in twenty-five people at a time so there wasn't some huge stampede, and that seemed to work. As people entered, Sly looked at them with this crazed inspector-in-charge glare in her eyes. If they had a bag of any kind—purse, backpack, cooler—she made them open it so she could inspect. One time she yelled, “Attention, Casey!” When I looked, she was holding up a banana the way a cop might show his boss a murder weapon. She pointed at the
NO PRODUCE
sign. The guy—I didn't know him—shrugged, peeled the banana, ate the whole thing, and tossed the peel into the trash can. You can quote me on this: When a banana is your biggest problem, you're having a pretty good day.

Once everyone was seated, we could see that we hadn't overfilled the stands—there was still extra room out in right field. That meant Zeke's bouncer duties weren't needed, so he was free to shoot video.

When students started trotting out to the field, some looked nervous. June Sponato was laughing; maybe she didn't know what was coming. Lincoln Cabrera and Jorge Washington were as goofy as ever, doing their crazy twenty-part high-five, which now seemed to involve bowing and twirling.

I stood near home plate as Dad walked out near the pitcher's mound. The crowd and students grew quiet. He talked into this weird old bullhorn. An overloud and unfamiliar voice said, “Thank you, Clay Coves residents, for joining us today.”

A loud cheer went up in the stands.

“We hope you will be very loud and distracting as our students attempt to umpire a fake game.”

Another roar.

“I will ask that when you see us speaking to a student between plays, you keep your roaring down, as the whole purpose of this day is to help our students. We know that for you, it's about screaming and yelling until your voices are gone. And that's great. It's why you're here. But we want a chance to educate the students, to point out what they've done wrong and congratulate them on all they're doing right.”

At this point, all the instructors ran out to different positions on the field. Usually, drill practice involved a mix of students and staff—but today it was all staff. The infield instructors were throwing a ball around. Soupcan motioned to me from out in center field that he needed a ball. I grabbed one out of the equipment bag and was about to run it out, but saw . . . actually, it was more like I felt . . . Sly looking at me, waiting for something to do now that her inspecting-for-produce responsibilities were over. “Could you take this out to the guy with the big head in center field?'

She took the ball, then asked, “Which big-head guy?” I pointed and she ran off.

My dad was talking again. “We ask that you remember that there are some children in attendance. Oh, hello, Sylvia,” he said, as she ran by.

“Sly!” I said under my breath.

Dad was still going. “Baseball language is not always clean, but do remember the little ones, and try to be creative as you scream at this year's students.”

“Shut up, Sloppy Jerk Hat!” someone yelled.

“Like that, yes. Sloppy Jerk Hat is a perfect example. Thank you. We'll be beginning in a few minutes.”

The crowd grew loud again.

Even in the past, before You Suck, Ump! Day was my responsibility, I never participated. I just liked watching. Well, listening. It was hilarious. What I remembered most, every year, was looking at a wordless, open-mouthed, howling-with-laughter Zeke. We must have been the two luckiest guys in the world, with full access to every part of the field and stands at BTP.

Before practice drills got started, I looked around. It really was amazing how many people were here. If you thought about it—how it wasn't a real game at all, just a bunch of umpire-school instructors acting out different baseball situations—basic and complicated drills, the kind of stuff they did at BTP all the time—it was just wild that hundreds of people showed up to watch. And scream.

When You Suck, Ump! Day got under way, I walked out to the bleachers past the first-base dugout. My friend Charley Haddon was off to a good start. “Hey, ump! I was confused the first time I saw a baseball game, too!”

Andrew deFausto added, “It's called a
ball
when they don't swing and it's outside the strike zone like that. Come on, blue!”

That was an old-time thing, calling umpires “blue.” Where did Andrew pick that up?!

Leah and Marley, the girls I helped with their lockers on the first day of school, and this other girl, Jane, from my old elementary school, were sitting next to Andrew. We didn't usually get a lot of girls here, especially girls our age. They were mostly just yelling, “Come on, ump!” And “You suck, ump!” LOUDLY. They seemed really into it.

I stood there for a while, listening to them, and then to Dr. Farber, the eye doctor. He was screaming the same stuff as everyone else at first: “Wrong call, moron!” or “You call that a strike?” And then he started going off on his eye calls, something Zeke and I looked forward to every year.

“When's the last time you had your eyes checked?

“Do you even have eyes?”

“Hey, blue! Call my secretary and make an appointment—I'm concerned about your vision!” He sipped some water, then yelled, “Hey, ump! How many fingers am I holding up?” (It was just one. Guess which one!)

I kept walking around, listening and looking to make sure trouble wasn't popping up anywhere. A lot of people compared the umpires to famous blind people; those lines were older than Pop. I liked it better when they came up with new material.

There were a few big clouds in the sky, but the sun was shining bright and hot. I looked to see where Zeke was and spotted him crouching in front of the third-base dugout. Beyond him, I saw a man, a tall guy, with a clipboard on the other side of the fence. Reporters always checked with Dad or Pop before they showed up, so I knew it wasn't anything like that. And then I noticed the guy was wearing a Phillies shirt. And just like that, it was all so obvious: He was checking out BTP because Dad was going to use the Phillies' spring training fields in Florida this winter. Every time I had pushed the idea out of my head, there was new evidence, proof that Dad was really doing this.

I felt something big building inside of me, building fast, scary, strong. I walked out to where there weren't any people, by the right-field foul pole. There was an awful swirling, building, building. Raw—it was raw and building. When there was no room left inside, it pushed out. The strength of it, like the scariest howling storm wind, forced out this miserable, broken, horrible moan.

“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

I looked around, but no one had seen me. No one had even heard me, because all the others were shouting their heads off at the umpires. And then it was like everything stirred itself together at once, all these bad thoughts a toxic swirl. My father leaving New Jersey—and me—behind. I couldn't stand straight. I bent over, clutching my stomach as the moan picked up words and carried them along. “I can't.” Oh, my God, I was crying. “I just can't.” Sound kept pouring out of me, me who was left behind because my mother had met some stupid loser baker and could no longer stand to live at Behind the Plate, because she hated the place I loved most on this earth.

How could my own mother hate the place I loved most on this earth?

I let out all the pain but it didn't lessen. I wasn't screaming at the umpires, but this low moan of misery kept pouring out, like it might never stop.

It changed form, but held a steady pitch of gloom. “Nooooooooooooooooo” and then the no had no
n
and was all
o
—oooooooooo—and it wasn't just my father leaving and my mother leaving, but it was also the totally screwed-up fact that Jackson Alter was just another dishonest drug-taking fake.

There was nowhere for my brain to turn without bumping into another painful thought. This You Suck, Ump! Day, my first responsibility, would also be my last. It came in waves as it all became real—moving away from Zeke for over a month or more every year, thinking I was this stud writer and learning my article sucked.

I wanted to stop, but there seemed to be an endless supply of every sad fact I'd been holding inside, waiting to scream its way out.

I had no idea how long I was screaming. Me! Screaming, groaning, crying in the general direction of umpires, if not really quite at them. My throat was sore, so sore. And I was hot, hot, hot. My body felt drenched, my eyes were wet too. I wiped them fast and looked around.

That guy in the Phillies shirt was taking tons of notes, and I wanted to march over to him and tell him to get lost, to go back and tell them thank you but we were not interested. But that was when I heard a whistle blowing.

E
ITHER
it was the loudest whistle ever invented or Sly had whistle-blowing abilities that were way off the charts. She was standing in front of the bleachers on the third-base side, blowing her whistle and pointing. I jogged over.

I had really only given her that thing to make her feel important! She wasn't supposed to be using it!

Sly was still blowing it when I reached her—and saw Chris Sykes with a tomato in his hand.

Instead of letting up, even though I was right next to her now, Sly was still blowing and pointing. She had caused all other sound to stop. Even on the field, Dad and the instructors and students were all looking at us.

“No produce allowed, Chris,” I said with the very tiny voice I had left.

I turned around and got Zeke's attention. His hands were out to the side, like,
What's going on?
I motioned for him to come over. He put up his index finger.

Sly wasn't waiting for anyone or anything. “How did you get that in here?” she demanded.

Chris showed us a big bottle filled with red sports drink. And lots of hard-to-see tomatoes.

What if he refused to stop? Would I need to throw him out? And then what? What would happen when I finished my new article? No way that was going in the paper, no matter what.

Before I could even start, Sly said, “I'll take that, thank you very much!”

Stunned, Chris Sykes handed the dripping tomato right over.

“AND?” she yelled.

Chris gave her the bottle. Then he and I looked at each other, like,
What just happened here?

I shrugged and kept my mouth from turning up the way it was trying to, into a smile or smirk or some expression of pure relief that this was over and that Chris Sykes had just been schooled by eight-year-old Sly.

When it was all over, Zeke finally showed up. “What?” he asked. “What's up?”

All noise had stopped. This was not good. “Why's it so quiet?” I asked.

“Hey, you okay, Casey?” Zeke asked. “What was going on out there before? By the foul pole.”

“I was screaming at the umps.”

He looked at me like he doubted it. Zeke knew I'd never done that before. But what other explanation could there have been? He couldn't have known I was having a nervous breakdown out there, right?

Sly reached up her hand and put it on my shoulder. “You scream good,” she said. There was something about the way she let her hand stay there, something almost comforting, that made me wonder if somehow she had really seen me crying. If I'd been more obvious than I realized.

But that didn't matter now. We still had a ton more students to go—like twenty-five pairs. The whole point of You Suck, Ump! Day was creating a lot of noise. A LOT OF NOISE. LOUD NOISE. And somehow, the year I was in charge, we seemed to have gotten ourselves an opera audience.

The students might not have noticed, but Dad kept looking around, like he was wondering what was going on. He and Pop and the instructors were standing just outside the foul lines. They were supposed to be evaluating how well students responded to the pressure of being screamed at. Only it was silent.

Dad caught my eye and shot me a panicked look, his arms out to the side asking what was going on.

“We need to get this going again,” I yelled. “Hey, ump! You couldn't make a good call if someone handed you a phone!”

Lincoln Cabrera was behind the plate. He turned to see who was yelling junk at him after all that quiet. He had a pretty fierce look on his face. He tried to stare me down.

I smiled a guilty smile and shrugged, but somehow, the way he was glaring at me made the whole section sitting behind me a little angry.

“What are you looking at, blue?” a big guy growled.

“Eyes on the game, ump,” the high school football coach yelled. “Not that it matters!”

“Turn around, loser! The game's in front of you, not behind you.”

“Hey, ump! Wipe the plate! At least you'd be doing something more than just standing there!”

And it caught on—somehow a new surge of energy passed through the stands—people tried to outdo each other, to be louder than the guys next to them, more creative in their noncursing (and sometimes cursing) streams of nasty words.

“We're good?” Zeke asked, with an awkward pat on my back.

I nodded. My throat was still sore. I walked to the water fountain and drank, then splashed some water on my face. Okay. We had gotten through the hard part. The crowd was back to its roar, screaming at the umpires, telling them how much they sucked.

In fact, somehow, the crowd even got the wave going. A first at You Suck, Ump! Day.

All in all, you'd have to say the day was a great success. I had taken care of the whole thing, start to finish. Sure, I still had some stuff to sort out—okay, a lot of hard, feelings-y stuff to sort out—but this part, this You Suck, Ump! Day part, had been very good.