David Michael wound up and pitched. The ball flew out of his hand, straight upward. It landed about two feet to his left.
Everyone started giggling.
“I said, ‘Throw a knuckleball,’ not ‘Be a knucklehead.’” Abby slapped her forehead, pretending to be exasperated.
“Uh, I hate to interrupt,” I said, “but we have this game?”
Abby stood up, smiling. “Hi, Kristy! Is it time already?”
“Yes, it’s time,” I said, trying my hardest to be polite. “Where’s Dru?”
“Practicing with Anna in the backyard.”
“I’ll get them,” I said. “David Michael, you get ready. Hannie and Linny, we’ll see you there.” (The Papadakises were going to the game with their parents.)
“Can I go, too?” Abby asked.
I was polite. I kept my cool. “If you want,” I replied.
“All riiiiiiight!” David Michael shouted.
I ran around to the Stevensons’ backyard. There, Anna and Dru were sitting side by side on a picnic bench. A paperback book was on the bench, too. Between the girls was a metal music stand holding a hefty-looking book. Dru was staring at the book and struggling to play scales.
“Excellent,” Anna was saying. “And don’t forget, the whole notes are very sloooooow.”
“Ahem, excuse me,” I said.
Anna looked up with a start. “Oh, wow, we went overtime! Sorry, Kristy.”
“That’s okay,” I replied.
Druscilla was beaming. “I can play an E major scale! Listen.”
As she put the flute to her lips, I said quickly, “Later, Dru. I really want to hear it. Seriously. But we have to go.”
“Oh, all right.” With a pout, Dru began packing up her flute.
“You, too, Anna,” I said. “I mean, if you can. We need a big cheering section.”
“All right,” Anna replied.
As she picked up her paperback, I noticed the word Season in the title.
Cool. I once read a great baseball book called Short Season. “Is that good?” I asked.
Anna’s eyes lit up. “Wonderful. I’ve read it twice. Would you like to borrow it?”
She held it out. I could see the full title now. It was The Mozart Season.
“Uh, maybe some other time,” I said.
When Dru was finished, we ran around front and collected Abby and David Michael.
Dru made a quick stop next door to let Mrs. Porter know she was going to the game. Then we took off.
“That practice was fun,” David Michael said, skipping along. “We played some backward ball. Can we do that sometime, Kristy?”
Backward ball, by the way, is just like regular softball, except you run backward around the bases. During the regular season, we played it during practice sometimes. When we were feeling silly.
“Not before a big game, David Michael,” I said.
“Rats,” he muttered. “Why are we always so serious?”
* * *
A Davis Diapers truck was parked by the field when we arrived. Mr. Davis was unloading boxes from the back.
He was wearing a Davis Diapers uniform. I kid you not. It was just like the kids’ and mine, only much larger.
“Hey, there!” he called to us. “Surprise, surprise!”
David Michael ran to him, goggle-eyed. “Is this the new equipment?”
Mr. Davis grinned proudly. “Yes, sir! And just in time for your victory today!”
Actually, the equipment wasn’t a surprise to me. Mr. Davis had told me the delivery date after that horrible, embarrassing practice he’d visited.
I helped him open the boxes. Inside was everything he’d promised — bats of different weights and lengths; a new, adjustable rubber tee; a little gizmo filled with a spring-loaded spool of twine and powdered chalk (for making base lines); a catcher’s mask, chestpad, and kneepads; new batting helmets; and a megaphone.
“Testing, Testing!” Mr. Davis shouted into the megaphone. “Presenting the new World Champions — the Davis Diapers!”
Mr. Davis chuckled. Abby broke into hysterics. David Michael looked as if he were going to puke.
The game? Frankly, I’ve blocked a lot of it out of my mind. I do remember the fierce look on Mr. Davis’s face when he saw that eight team members were wearing their uniforms inside out. And the sound of the Basher left fielder screaming, “DIAPERS! DIIIIIAPERS!” in an obnoxious, singsong voice. And Linny Papadakis, struggling like mad as I held him back from a fistfight.
But most of all, I remember the score, which was Bashers 24, Diapers 7.
Mr. Davis’s smile disappeared by about the third inning. He tried to remain optimistic and friendly throughout the game.
But the last thing he said to me before I left was, “Next time, I want all the players in proper uniform.”
And he was not smiling.
“I’ll be at the Addisons’ that day,” Stacey said.
“I have ballet,” Jessi reminded me.
Claudia shrugged apologetically. “The Arnolds.”
“Rosie Wilder,” Mary Anne said. “And Logan has a game. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’ll be there,” Mallory said.
I love when the Baby-sitters Club is busy. Really. That’s the point of the club, right? But sometimes — just sometimes — I wish things would slack off.
It was Monday, two days after our Big Defeat. I had scheduled a practice for Tuesday. An intensive practice. I told the players we’d work on the fundamentals. But I also offered to have a little game of backward ball, just to cheer them up. Anything to restore that old Krushers spirit.
The only problem was, I needed help. Practices are always better with BSC members around. Especially someone like Logan, who’s so good at sports. Or Shannon, who’s always gung-ho. Claudia and Mary Anne barely know which end of the bat to hold, but they’re good at following instructions and organizing the kids.
At least Mallory was going to be there. That was better than nothing. But just barely. She always has her hands full with her siblings (and she hates sports even more than Mary Anne does).
Rrrring!
“Baby-sitters Club!” Jessi said, picking up the receiver. “Friday? I’ll check and call you back, Mr. Hill.”
Looking at the calendar, Mary Anne frowned. “Uh-oh.”
“We’re all booked?” Stacey asked.
Mary Anne nodded. “Except Logan and Shannon, and I know Logan can’t miss practice the night before a game.”
“I can call Shannon later, after she comes home from space cadets,” Claudia said. “Call the Hills and tell them we’ll be in touch tonight.”
Even though we were short one full member, we hadn’t yet missed a job. But we’d come awfully close. Mary Anne practically had to bribe Logan to convince him to skip a football practice the Wednesday before. (He hates doing that. His teammates act like such goons about his membership in the BSC.)
No, I had not forgotten about the idea of a new member. I just hadn’t had time to consider it. Not until the World Series was over. Besides, any day now the early autumn sitting rush was bound to ease up.
At least I hoped so.
* * *
At practice Tuesday afternoon, I counted seven uniformed players.
Groan.
That was fewer than before. I was furious.
Did I scream and yell at the renegades? Throw them off the field? Bean them over the head?
I wanted to do all of the above. But I couldn’t. First of all, I knew how bad they were feeling. I didn’t want to lower their morale even more. Second, if I banished the non-uniformed players, we wouldn’t have enough left for a team. That meant we’d have to forfeit the game.
And I would never do that. If we were going to lose to the Bashers, we’d do it with a fight.
Besides, Mr. Davis wasn’t there. And as far as I knew, he had no plans to show up.
So I did not explode. I was mature. Professional.
All I did was call a team meet
ing and tell the kids that whoever didn’t wear uniforms Saturday to the third game would not play.
That threat seemed to work.
“Okay, players, let’s look alive!” I shouted.
They shuffled back onto the field. You’d think they were going off to prison.
I tried to run a good practice. Really. You should have seen me. I hit so many grounders and pop flies that my thumbs chafed. I was coach, pitching instructor, head cheerleader, and counselor.
How did they do? Whoa! Home run derby! Double and triple plays galore. The Diapers were so full of team pride they begged me to let them run home for their uniforms.
Just kidding. Wishful thinking, I guess.
The truth? The Diapers were more like Droopy Drawers.
When a couple of Bashers wandered by, things went from bad to worse. They hung out behind the third-base line, snickering. Once or twice I heard someone mutter, “Dirty Diapers.”
I don’t know what they said to Nicky, but at one point he took off after them, fists clenched. Fortunately they ran away and didn’t come back.
I was breaking up a group of outfielders who were searching for four-leaf clovers, when I heard a familiar voice call out, “Pretedd you’re a chimpadzee!”
I turned to see Abby behind home plate. She was dressed in sweats, her hair was pulled back in a pony tail, and she held a softball in her right hand.
Terrific. Just what I needed before the biggest game of the season. Goofing off. “Abby, don’t —” I began. I wanted to kill her.
“Cub od, guys, how does a chimpadzee walk?” she shouted.
The infielders spread their legs far apart and loped around, their fingertips scraping the ground. One of them started grunting, “Oooh-oooh-oooh!” and the rest followed.
“That’s perfect!” Abby said. “Dow look where your glubs are. That’s where they should be all the tibe — touchig the dirt. Okay, here cubs a groudder.”
She tossed the ball, on a bounce, toward the area between first and second.
Bobby, still imitating a chimp, scooped up the ball and threw it to first.
Smack. It landed right in first-baseman Linny’s glove.
“Eeeeeee-ee-ee-ee!” Linny screeched, jumping around like Curious George.
I took a deep breath. Okay, okay, it had worked. Gimmicks do, sometimes. But, seriously, you can’t expect your infielders to grunt and scratch every time a ground ball is hit.
“Abby,” I said patiently, “thanks for the help, but —”
Abby smiled. “I did’t bead to butt id. Sorry. I was just waddering aroudd, add I saw the practice —”
That was all she said. Her eyes widened. Her face turned red. Out of her mouth came a strange wheezing noise.
“Abby, are you all right?” I asked.
Nodding weakly, Abby stumbled to her backpack, which was lying in the grass beyond the on-deck circle. She reached into it and pulled out a small plastic pipe. Then she inserted one end in her mouth and inhaled.
After a few moments, she sat against the backstop. “Asthma,” she said with a thin smile. “I’m used to it. It looks worse than it is.”
“Can I do something to help out?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. I figured you could use a little help before the game.”
I looked around. None of the kids seemed to have noticed what had happened. Most of them were still throwing the ball around like monkeys.
With lots of enthusiasm. And accuracy.
Gimmicks or not, having Abby around couldn’t hurt.
She seemed healthier. Even her stuffed-up voice had cleared. “Are you sure you can handle it?” I asked.
“Sure! Hey, if I drop dead, bury me under the pitcher’s mound.” She grinned. “That was a joke.”
“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “Why not?”
“Yeah? Should I work on offense or defense?”
I spotted Patsy and Laurel near the first-base line, doing a little soft-shoe dance with their bats.
“Offense,” I said. “I’ll take the field.”
Several players lined up in front of the Kuhn girls for batting practice. “Who’s next?” Abby asked.
“Me,” Dru replied.
“Hey, you cut!” Jackie said.
“Did not,” Dru protested.
“Did, too!”
“Did not, Tacky Jackie!”
“Kristyyyyyyyyyy!”
“Hey, easy, Druscilla,” Abby said.
Dru stuck out her chin. “Well, he wasn’t paying attention, so he loses his turn.”
“Ahhh, you’re using American League rules,” Abby said. “I’m used to National League rules. Even if the batter spaces out, he keeps his turn.”
Huh?
It was ridiculous, and the kids knew it. But it stopped the argument, and it made them both smile.
Me, too, to tell you the truth.
“Choke up on the bat, Jackie,” Abby instructed. “And try bending your knees a little more.”
She ran to the pitcher’s mound and tossed the ball to him. He swung and missed. Buddy, who was catching, threw the ball back.
“Spread your legs a little wider,” Abby said, winding up for the next pitch. “Now, here comes a giant brussels sprout, heading right for your dinner plate. What are you going to do?”
Jackie’s eyes lit up. “Yeeeeeeaaagh!” he cried.
Smack! He hit the ball up the first base line. Linny stopped it with his glove, and it bounced back toward home. Jackie, still angry at the brussels sprout, chased after it with the bat. “Yeeeeeeaaagh!”
“Hey, watch it!” Linny shouted.
“Who-o-oa!” Abby ran to him and snatched the bat away.
(See what I mean about gimmicks?)
“Don’t forget your safety rules!” I reminded them.
I have to say, practice became much better with Abby there. I was able to focus more attention on individuals.
I did have to tone her down sometimes, though. Especially when she tried to train players to step on the bases by imagining a cockroach on each one. It’s one thing to be a natural athlete, but it’s another to be an effective coach. Fun is fun. But you can’t have a team of monkeys and cockroach stompers on the field.
Still, Abby had potential. She sure knew how to break the tension. And the Krushers — I mean, Diapers — were starting to look more like their old selves.
Druscilla, however, was another story. I’d never seen her so sour and sullen. She kept snapping at the other players, sticking out her tongue, teasing the younger ones.
She really annoyed me. Finally I saw her say something to Jamie Newton that made him storm off the field, crying and taking off his uniform shirt.
I stopped the practice. “What happened?” I asked Jamie.
“She called me a baby and said I should really wear diapers!” Jamie blurted out.
I looked at Dru. She was smirking.
What did I do? The only thing I could do. I benched her.
You know what she said? “I quit!” Just like that.
After that, and until the practice was over, she was nice as can be.
Honestly, I could not figure her out.
Stacey was exaggerating. About the Medal of Honor, that is.
But she was right about the other stuff. She was a model reinstated BSC member.
She was still going out with Robert, but the relationship was no longer her whole life. She was her old, non-snobby self.
When was Stacey’s probation going to end? I didn’t know. I had never put a time limit on it. But at the rate she was going, it would be soon.
That Thursday, Stacey was sitting for Dru. It was a last-minute job. You see, I had scheduled a practice for that afternoon. Knowing Dru had joined the team, Mrs. Porter had scheduled a late lunch date. But now that Dru had quit the team, Mrs. Porter was stuck.
Stacey to the rescue.
Dru was in her room, tooting away on the flute. Stacey walked in and smiled.
“I can pla
y ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’” Dru said. “It goes like this.”
Stacey listened. It did sound like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Sort of. If you imagined it very slowly, all on one note, with a few squeaks thrown in.
“Great!” Stacey burst into applause.
“You mean, ‘brava,’” Dru said. “You yell ‘brava’ for girls and ‘bravo’ for boys. That’s what Anna says.”
“Oh, sorry. Brava!”
“Thank you.” Dru stood up and curtseyed. “Flute is really easy, you know. Anna taught me the right arm butcher. It’s like this.”
She spread her lips into a funny, flattened-out shape.
Huh? Stacey just smiled and nodded.
(Actually, Dru was trying to say embouchure, which means “the way you form your mouth when you play an instrument.” We checked it out with Anna.)
“You know what?” Dru went on. “Scott Hsu tried to play my flute at school. He was soooo bad. But he says he’s an expert on the kazoo. That’s even easier than flute. And this girl at Stoneybrook Day, Sheila Nofziger? She takes trumpet lessons. That’s hard. Plus Moon Pinckney plays drums. That’s enough for a band, isn’t it?”
“Hmmmm, four kids?” Stacey said. “I guess so. A small band. A quartet.”
“Cool. Can we practice today? Please please please? The next game is Saturday.”
“Game? I thought you quit the team.”
“No. I was kicked off because I really stink. Moon and Sheila stink, too. Once they played on the Diapers, when they were the Krushers, but Kristy kicked them off, too. So we can all be in the Diapers official band, since Kristy won’t let us join the team.”
Stacey nodded. “All right. Give me those names again, and we’ll make some phone calls.”
Okay, I need to stop here a moment. Don’t think Stacey is a dope. She didn’t believe a word of Dru’s lies. Kicked off the team? No way. Those other kids had been temporary subs for vacationing Krushers. I had offered them full-time slots when the players returned. But they had quit, same as Dru.
Stacey has a theory for why Dru lied. She thinks Dru never wanted to play ball in the first place. Dru said I threw her off the team because she needed an excuse not to play, so she could form her band. She was probably provoking me during practice.
(Well, all right. It sounds believable. Dru is going through a tough time. But still, I think Stace at least should have said something to Dru. I mean, a lie is a lie.)
Kristy and the Dirty Diapers Page 7