Screaming at the Ump (9 page)

“Thanks, Pop. I better do some homework, or I won't have a future.”

Pop laughed and then started yelling at Turner, “What kind of position is that? Look at your feet! Is that how your feet are supposed to be?”

I went inside and found a pad and paper. I needed a solid story idea. It had to be better than good—the very best I could do. I wished articles were submitted without names on them, because there was no way anyone was going to judge anything I wrote fairly anyway. I sat under a tree near the parking lot and turned to a blank sheet and wrote the words
Story Ideas
.

Then I stared into space for fourteen hours. At least it felt like it. This was one of those times when I wished Dad weren't so busy, so he could sit down with me and think. But the five weeks of Academy were always like this. Just as I was ready to start feeling a little sorry for myself, Soupcan came and stood in front of me. “Hey, Case,” he said. “What're you up to?'

“Trying to come up with ideas for the school newspaper, but I can't think of anything.”

“Could you write something about this place?”

Soupcan used to be famous for sneaking off to take cigarette breaks, but for the past few years, he'd been famous for trying to quit smoking. He said that coming to BTP always seemed like the perfect chance to try to leave a nasty habit behind. The fact that
always
was in that sentence showed that he had not been terribly successful. I checked his hand. He was clean. Some guys from his group were lined up at the cooler for drinks. “It's not really news,” I said. “You know? It's a
news
paper.”

He nodded.

“Actually, it's like the stupidest thing, because I'm in sixth grade and they have never even published an article by a sixth-grader, so I'm not even sure why I'm bothering.”

“Because it's what you want to do.” He pulled a toothpick out of his back pocket, put it in his mouth, and started chewing on it. “It's what you've always wanted to do, as long as I've known you.”

“I'm trying to come up with an idea so great they have to publish it.”

“Something they can't refuse,” he said, spitting the toothpick onto the grass and reaching into his back pocket for a piece of gum. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“You know, You Suck, Ump! Day is coming up. Maybe you could write about that.”

“Everyone in Clay Coves already knows about it.”

Soupcan was quiet for a minute, chewing. “I have two thoughts on that,” he finally said. “First, it's like umpiring in some ways, isn't it? The way it's always the same game, on paper. But some guys just know how to call a game. There's a difference between a game called by a pro and one called by a hack—an obvious difference. So maybe it's not the game, it's how you call it. Maybe writing's like that.”

I thought about that, then asked, “And what's your second thought?”

“There was a second thought? Man, I need a smoke.” He took the wrapper his gum had been in, spit the gum out, and put it back in his pocket. Gross. “The second thing, come to think of it, is kind of the same as the first. It's not what you write about. It's how you write it. I love baseball, but there are some baseball writers I can't stand. I'd rather read about, I don't know, sewer construction, than read what they have to say about baseball.” He stuck a new toothpick into his mouth. “And there are some writers whose articles I read no matter what, even if the subject doesn't interest me. Because they're such good writers.”

This was, by far, longer than any conversation I'd ever had with Soupcan. I liked what he was saying. “Thanks,” I said. I
was
a good writer. Whenever I read through my stories about World Series games—I'd written up every postseason game for the past three years—I couldn't imagine anyone reading them and not loving them. Not that it was hard to write well about something as exciting as a championship game.

“You coming back?” Hank Lorsan yelled over. Soupcan waved and turned to me. “Did that help?”

I nodded.

“Excellent,” he said, looking a little surprised. “Good luck.”

W
HEN
Zeke got on the bus, it seemed like he was almost bouncing down the aisle to me. I sent a silent bit of thanks out into the universe that Zeke was not someone entrusted with extremely important secrets like, say, having to do with national security, because we'd all be in trouble. He held a story he wanted to tell almost the same way a puppy holds joy—with lots of wiggling and moving parts.

He sat next to me. In fact, he sort of sat on top of me, but then he shifted over. “You won't believe this. You won't.”

“Okay,” I said.

“There's no such person as Patrick MacSophal.”

“Oh. Okay. So that person named Patrick MacSophal, the one I saw running laps around the rear field before I came to school this morning, he's actually—”

“J-Mac!”

“Right,” I said. “A former major league pitcher is attending the least good umpire school in the country. And he's using a fake first name. And why is he doing that?”

“To sell drugs to the umpire students?”

“What are you
talking
about?” I must have started speaking loudly because the seventh-grader who always sat in front of us turned around. I think he knew it was me, but he swatted Zeke on the head anyway.

“I haven't figured out the why yet. But I went online, and J-Mac doesn't have any brothers. He's an only child.”

“That's your big proof?” I said. “Don't become a lawyer. I am almost certain that you need to have more than one unrelated fact to prove a case. This is just . . . so what, Zeke?”

“Listen,” Zeke said. “This guy shows up. Admits he's a relative of J-Mac's, right?”

“Well, doesn't deny it,” I said.

“He looks just like him, right?”

“Does he? I mean, I know a person can shave a beard, but who even paid attention to what he looked like behind all that face hair?”

“Case, it's not like there's a twin walking around. No siblings. Only child. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon.”

“So maybe it's a cousin or something,” I said.

Then, for no good reason at all, I started thinking, what if it really was him?

The whole J-Mac scandal had really, really bugged me. I didn't like the way baseball got a bad name because of all the rumors about players using drugs. Steroids, all that stuff. It started when that big superstar, Reggie Rhodes, got busted. His blood test showed he'd been using steroids. It was big news. When they asked where he'd gotten the drugs, Rhodes claimed he didn't know he'd taken drugs, he had just helped himself to what he thought was herbal stuff from J-Mac's locker. There was going to be this whole big investigation, but instead of clearing his name or explaining what had happened, J-Mac, this youngish star-on-the-rise relief pitcher, had vanished.

“I wanna find out what happened to J-Mac, don't you? I mean, people don't just disappear.”

“Zeke. It wasn't magic. J-Mac didn't disappear for real. He just left baseball. Maybe he got a job at a bank. Or he's working as a janitor somewhere.”

“Don't you think it's weird, though? Not trying to defend yourself?”

I shrugged. I didn't really know what to think. Some relative, some connection to that old mystery, might be at BTP. I had to admit it was kind of interesting.

But in the end, it didn't really matter. There were no second chances in baseball. You could read
The Snowden Guide to Umpiring
a hundred times, and you'd never come to a section titled “Do-Overs.”

I
COULDN'T
explain why I did it. The next morning, from the privacy of my own room, where I couldn't be seen, I watched MacSophal jogging around the rear field. I opened the window and yelled out, “Hey, J-Mac,” and he looked up right away.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't answer to other people's names.

***

Waiting for the bus to get to Zeke's stop, my foot was tapping and my fingers were sort of scratching the seat; I was anxious to tell him what I'd learned.

And I did, the minute he sat down. “So when I yelled it, no hesitation or anything, he just looked right up.”

“Well, I'd normally think that was proof, except it was early morning, and it's weird to hear a voice yell, right? Maybe he was trying to figure out who was making the noise.”

How had we gotten here? When, exactly, did the world turn upside down? I was acting like Zeke. And he was shooting holes in my theory—acting like me.

“You know what this means, right?” Zeke said.

“That I shouldn't hang out with you so much.” The bus pulled into the long driveway. Another day of school.

“We have a mystery to solve. Let's think about it this morning and discuss our strategy at lunch, okay?”

“Um, no.” There was no way an MLB star pitcher was ever going to be taking classes at BTP. It made no sense. I walked off the bus, feeling like a moron for screaming a major league ballplayer's name out my bedroom window. I had a mostly functioning brain. How had I let Zeke convince me of this? This was like pretending our very own mailman was Joey Collins of
That'sPETacular
all over again.

The morning dragged on, as mornings do in school. But then, lunch! Some days it was almost as good as vacation. Sometimes it was just what I needed, to sit down with my friends and let my brain stop thinking for a while.

I found Zeke at our table with Charley Haddon and Evan Bergino and sat across from him. I opened my Chet-packed lunch. A bagel with cream cheese, two big chocolate chip cookies, water, and some cut-up watermelon. It sure beat middle-school cafeteria food.

I waited for the fun of Zeke unveiling his lunch. Yesterday he'd had three peanut butter granola bars, and one day last week, he brought in two eggs that were hard-boiled and one that wasn't. That was literally the funniest mess I had ever seen.

He opened his bag and pulled out two apples and a drink.

“That looks like lunch for a pony,” I said.

“Good one,” he said. “But until you get Chet to start making my lunch, you don't get to comment. This is what we had this morning. Anyway, did you come up with any ideas for proving that it's really J-Mac?”

I unwrapped the bagel and started eating. “No. Listen. I don't want to ruin your fun or anything, but I think I just got caught up in . . .” There was no nice way to say
your insanity
, so I just looked at him. But he was still waiting for more info. “I mean, it's not J-Mac. And even if it is, so what, right? It's like getting excited because there's a criminal in your neighborhood. The guy's just a cheater, not some Cy Young Award winner.”

“So you
do
think it's him!”

“I don't think it's him. That's the main point. But the subpoint, if you will, is that even if it is J-Mac, I don't want to know.”

“I do.” He put down the core of one apple and bit into the second. “Do you remember that joke about what's worse than biting into an apple and seeing a worm, and the answer's seeing half a worm?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“That's a good one,” he said.

Wow.

“So anyway, I have a plan. Today after school, when everyone's doing outdoor drills, I'm going to sneak into the dorm, find his ID, and prove it.”

“First of all, no. You're not. My dad would kill you and then he would kill me for being the reason he knows you and had to kill you.”

The lucky thing about being Zeke's friend for so long is I know he says he's going to do a ton of things that he never really does. Which is good. Because his ideas can be terrifying.

“Second of all?” he said after a weird pause.

“And second of all, just no.”

“Yeah, I'm totally sneaking into his dorm room,” Zeke said. “And you're coming with me.”

“I
WISH
I had like a cat-burglar suit,” Zeke said as we walked toward the dorms. We hadn't even said hi to my dad yet. Zeke believed—and he was probably right—that my dad had no idea what time I got home from school and wouldn't notice if we got out to the fields ten minutes later than usual. But this, sneaking into a student's room, was really something Zeke shouldn't do. Why didn't he know that?

“MacSophal's in Group H, right?” he said.

“I'm not answering. The whole reason I'm here is to get you to stop doing what you're doing. And you know what? Why don't we just go play catch or something? I'll even let you pitch. From the mound.”

I never offered that, because it meant chasing a ball all afternoon, but I was feeling a little desperate. I had definitely gotten his attention, because he stopped walking. But then he said, “Nah. I just need you to be my lookout.”

“No,” I said. “Seriously, you could get me into a lot of trouble with this, and I really—”

“Hiiiii!” we heard. And then saw. Sly. Oh, I felt like maybe I loved her in that moment. She was a little one-girl superhero, whose superpower was the ability to rescue me from my best friend's bad judgment.

“Hello, Sylvia,” Zeke said. “Where's your grandma?”

“It's Sly,” she said.

“Don't you have school today?” I asked. I had stopped following Zeke and was standing right behind the school office's back door—so happy to not be walking toward the dorms. And trouble.

“I did, yeah.”

I could see Zeke beginning to tense up, like a supercharged energy ball, desperate to get away.

“But doesn't elementary school end at three fifteen?” I asked, determined to make this conversation last forever.

“I go to St. Luke's now,” she said, as though that explained everything. “What are we doing?”