Screaming at the Ump (2 page)

Pop was watching Zeke and shaking his head. “I'd like some of what he has,” Pop said.

Dad laughed. “Casey, you and Zeke head out to the cages. Make sure the cameras are all working, the pitching machines, all of it.”

“Right,” Zeke said. “Excellent.” You could probably tell him to scrub the toilets and clean out the goop at the bottom of the gym garbage pails and he'd thank you for the opportunity. I worried, not for the first time, about his parents' choice to name him something that rhymed—so easily!—with
freak
. And
geek
.

“Are you hungry?” Dad asked.

Zeke nodded.

“Okay, then. Let's all go eat something first.”

“I'll keep working,” Bobbybo said.

I knew there was, like, no food in the house. No one had gone shopping in a while. Even though it had been just the three of us for years, no one had yet figured out the grocery part of our daily lives. As we walked into the kitchen, Dad asked, “Casey, how are we for cereal?”

Cereal we had.

I pulled out three boxes and put them on the table. Pop got the milk. Dad grabbed some bowls, and Zeke pulled four spoons out of the drawer.

“Here's to a great beginning,” Zeke said with a big smile. We reached for our spoons, but he wasn't done yet.

(Pop couldn't wait. He snuck a spoonful into his mouth.)

“And here's to teaching fair and foul. Safe and out. And doing whatever it takes to get it done.” He made us clink spoons before the rest of us could start eating.

***

We were clearing the table when Dad said, “Casey, your mom called again.”

I moved the bowls from where Zeke had put them, on the top shelf of the dishwasher, down to the bottom, where they fit better.

“Casey?”

“He heard you, Ibbit,” Zeke said.

“All right, then. Pop and I will meet you at the cages. And, Casey, make sure you call your mother today.”

We walked out to the gym, where I grabbed a handful of trash bags from the supply closet.

“Why's your dad all over you about your mom?” Zeke asked.

I shrugged.

“You been talking to her more?”

I shook my head.

“Hmm,” he said, as though he sensed deep meaning.

L
ONG
before I was born, back when Pop was an umpire for Major League Baseball, the grounds that now belonged to Behind the Plate were used by a reform school. I didn't think they still had reform schools exactly. Dad said they probably called them something different now, like Attitude Improvement Academies or Boarding Schools for Pre-Criminals, but back then, this was where the bad boys of New Jersey—too young for prison—had been sent.

Reform-school students attended classes here and were also expected to maintain the grounds. Which could have made me feel like a reform-school kid. I did a lot of chores at BTP—checking inventory, ordering supplies, inspecting the dorms. It was expected of me, the same way a farm kid would know it was his job to milk the cows. Except . . . I wondered if farm kids minded doing their chores. Because I never did.

Zeke, of course, didn't
have
to do anything—but he loved this place as much as I did and spent nearly as much time here as I did. We only spent time at his house when we had to study for a big test or get school projects done—because there was nothing there that could distract us. Like, nothing. His parents were always at work, and their house was just . . . boring. They didn't have any video games, no pets. There weren't even any chores for us to do there. (Not that I was complaining about that.)

There was always something to do, or watch, at BTP. Zeke once got to chalk the fields for a month, the year Pop had knee replacement surgery. It was the highlight of his life.

The only thing Zeke liked as much as being part of BTP was watching reality TV. Stupid animal tricks, brainless gross-out challenges, talent show performances, all the garbage you could never pay me to watch—Zeke never missed it. He wanted nothing more than to be on one of those shows.

He said it would be his claim to fame. Breaking into reality TV.

The claim to fame I wanted was more serious: I wanted to write award-winning newspaper articles. It was weird—I didn't know what they would be about. In fact, the only thing I could see was my byline—
by Casey Snowden
.

I pushed open the door to the batting cages. The building used to be a garage for whatever kinds of vehicles they housed at reform schools, but it always looked more like a stable to me. There were five batting cages here, divided by netting and some kind of plasticky tarp. Each cage had a pitching machine and home plate/backstop set up and an Ibbit stick, the contraption Dad, aka Ibbit, invented to show students how to line up their feet when in the crouch behind the plate. (If you didn't know what it was, you might wonder why someone would nail rulers and yardsticks together at weird angles.) Students came out here in groups of five every day to work on the mechanics of making calls behind the plate. Most students came to Academy with some umpiring experience—Little League, rec leagues, travel baseball, sometimes college ball. They knew the basics, but at BTP, we taught the exact-right way to umpire a game.

Zeke was examining a video camera. “Can you give me one of those memory cards?” he asked, pointing at the little box where we kept all the camera stuff.

I handed him one. “We forgot the first-aid kits,” I said. “I'll check on those. Be right back.”

I walked through the gym back to the first classroom, where the desks were already in neat rows. I finally found Dad and Bobbybo unstacking desks in the classroom at the end of the hall. Pop was supervising.

“Do you need the first-aid kits restocked?”

“It's on the master list, isn't it?” Pop said.

“We probably won't need them right away,” Dad said.

“Famous last words,” Pop said.

“Well, we don't do much fieldwork at first, so no opportunity for anyone to get hurt.”

“Then watch a student get stabbed with a pencil in the first hour here. It's never a mistake to be ready for everything.”

Bobbybo smiled at me, and I knew why—Pop always spoke in life lessons, and I bet he'd missed Pop, and Dad, and everything. I was sure Behind the Plate was a hard place to be away from. Luckily, I never had to find out for myself.

“Just tell Mrs. G. you're taking care of it,” Dad said. “So she can mark it off the list.”

“Will do,” I said.

I crossed the hallway to the office. Mrs. G. was sitting with her granddaughter.

“Hi, Sly,” I said. For some reason, my voice sounded like I was talking to a baby. She scowled at me.

“Baby, you know my daughter, Dana, right?” Mrs. G. said.

I'd heard of her. I nodded.

“She's been taking on some extra jobs—you know how that goes. She'll be coming to pick up Sylvia later.”

Mrs. G. talked to me sometimes like I was fifty or something. “Sure, sure,” I said. Because I couldn't really say, “Mrs. G., I'm twelve. What do you think I really know about extra jobs and little kids?” Not to mention mothers.

She was still talking. “Anyway, Dana's sitter quit, so I have Sylvia with me here today. Is there anything she can do to help you boys get ready?”

“Sly!” the girl said. “No one calls me Sylvia, Grandma.”

“I don't think so, thanks. I was just getting the first-aid—”

“That is
exactly
the kind of thing Sylvia can do. Get the kits—they're in the clos—Oh, why am I telling you? Sylvia, this boy could run this whole school by himself if he had to.”

I didn't really think I could run the school, but I did know a lot.

I pulled the first-aid boxes from the supply closet, then climbed to the top shelf and pushed aside random spare parts from leg guards, helmets, and chest protectors (the Snowdens were of the you-never-know-when-you-might-need-this school of never throwing anything away) until I found the checklist of all the things that needed to be in each kit.

I showed Sly the list and explained that she needed to open every kit, check the expiration dates, count out bandages, and make sure everything on the list was in the box.

“Hey, what if a bandage is kind of gross, like this one?” She held one up that was half opened and nasty looking.

“Then you throw it out.”

“Could I keep it?”

The kid was creepy. “I guess,” I said.

“Cool.”

By the time I got back to the batting cages, Zeke had finished checking all the cameras. He was holding one and playing with its buttons.

“Does your dad know this one's broken?” he asked.

“What's wrong with it?”

“This thing doesn't stay closed, so you have to keep your hand on it. It's no big deal or anything, as long as whoever's using this camera knows about it.”

Dad and Pop joined us then, and Zeke showed them the sort-of-broken camera.

“So how many are working?” Dad asked.

“The other four are fine. And this one still works. You just have to hold it shut.”

“You never want to make it easy for someone to screw up,” Pop said.

“We have what,” Dad said, “eighty students? Four cameras'll be enough. But let's replace that one so we're ready for next year.”

“You can probably get it fixed, right?” Zeke said.

“It's usually as much to fix it as it is to replace it, and that's a pretty old one,” Dad said.

Wait, what? Did Dad say eighty?
That had to be wrong. There were always at least a hundred students for Academy.

“I have this idea,” Zeke said before I could ask. I managed not to groan.

Dad said, “Let me guess: You want to keep the camera.”

“No,” Zeke said. “I mean, that wasn't my idea. But wow, yeah. Sick! I do.” He looked at me. “But wouldn't you want it?” he asked.

Sly walked in with two first-aid kits. “Where do I put these?” she asked me.

“Why's the kid here?” Zeke asked.

Pop fake-slapped Zeke's head with his open hand. “Don't be rude. This is Mrs. G.'s granddaughter, Sylvia.”

“Sly,” she said with a sigh.

“So I had this IDEA,” Zeke said again. “Have you ever thought of shooting before-and-after videos of each student?”

“We film them every day,” Pop said. “In the cages.”

“No,” Zeke said, “I mean if I get each student out on the field, doing calls behind the plate the first few days and then again at the end of the session. The cage tapes are so gradual, but if you showed a real before-and-after tape—”

“Excuse me,” Sly said. “Where are the cages?”

“These are the cages, sweetheart,” Pop said, motioning to the whole building.

“You lock people in there or animals?”

“No,” I said. “No one gets locked in. They're called batting cages.”

“So they practice batting hits in there?”

“Where's Mrs. G.?” Pop said, his patience suddenly evaporated. “Let me take you back to the office.”

“Thanks for bringing out the first-aid kits,” Dad said. Then he turned to Zeke and said, “I like the idea, but you can't do all that camera work. I'll put some staff on it too. It's a good idea. You can help out after school.”

Even I had to admit it—it was good. The students all improved so much, and seeing it like that, on video, would be really sweet.

Zeke was still beaming as we headed back outside. “About that camera,” he said. “Your dad should have offered it to you first. I mean, he's YOUR dad.”

“He knows I wouldn't use it,” I said. The thought of going out and filming stuff did seem pretty cool, but I knew I'd never really do it. There was this big box of stuff, unused stuff, in my room: lacrosse stick, bowling ball in a rolling case, microscope. I knew the camera would just get added to it.

But I did have a quick and bad thought about how we might actually be helping Zeke achieve his stupid goal of getting something on TV by putting a camera in his hand. It was as though I could see this huge banner headline:
BREAKING NEWS: GUESS WHO GAVE REALITY TV'S ZEKE THE FREAK THE CAMERA
?

Z
EKE
and I were sitting in the center of the gym, surrounded by a sea of registration papers. I looked a second time at the form in my hand. “I didn't know there was a woman this year,” I said. “June Sponato.”

“I love the lady umpires!”

Zeke really did. Every few years, a woman signed up, but none of them had been very . . . girlie. Students all wore the same gray-pants-blue-shirt-and-hat uniform, and the women pretty much blended in. Zeke always held out hope that some contestant from
America's Next Top Model
was going to sign up at BTP.

“So no roommate, right?”

“Not unless there's another woman,” I said. “Put her on the third floor. She'll get that extra bathroom all to herself.”

This was the absolute highlight of getting ready for Academy. We were checking the list over to catch things a computer might miss, like making sure no woman had been assigned to room with a man. But really, what we were hoping to discover was the next great roommate name matchup. Dad's umpire-school roommate had been Joseph Costello. Everyone called them Abbott and Costello, and somehow—this is the part I always wondered about, but Dad said he had no idea how it happened—Abbott turned into Ibbit, which is what everyone but Pop and I called him now.

I loved this part, the name part. I guess there was a pretty good reason for it—my own stupid name. The way the story goes: my parents could not agree on a name, even after I was born. For days, the names my dad liked—Jeter, Gehrig, Robinson—were all just too much baseball for my mother. Finally, still unable to agree when I was almost a week old, she asked Dad, “Wasn't there a poem or something about a baseball player named Casey? Could we maybe compromise and go with that?”