by Steve Moore
Derp!
There was no one there to catch my throw, of course. The first baseman was standing at first base, and the second baseman was standing at second base.
My throw landed in the deserted stretch of dirt between the bases and rolled into the infield grass.
Brilliant.
Jimmy Jimerino retrieved the ball and he yelled, “Atta babe, Steve!”
I probably should have given Jimmy the benefit of the doubt, but I’m pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
When Skinny Dennis took his turn as right fielder—after losing his staring contest with the rodent—he caught an easy fly ball and threw it to second base just as Coach Earwax had instructed.
The rest of the fielding drills went well, which means I didn’t suffer any more brain wrecks. I caught every ball and threw it to the correct base. But I had a feeling that Skinny was in the lead for first-string right fielder.
CHAPTER 12
My ranking didn’t improve during batting practice. In fact, it hit rock bottom. Bean-O-Phobia reared its ugly head.
Coach Earwax did not pitch for batting practice. He probably had developed a phobia of his own the day before. Like, er, maybe a morbid fear of clobbering a player right in the schnoz with a baseball.
Instead, he put Jimmy Jimerino in at pitcher, which was the worst thing that could have happened to someone who was struggling to make first string.
Quick Time-Out about Jimmy Jimerino
Jimmy insists on playing only shortstop in games, but he is by far the best pitcher his age in the entire city. Maybe even the world.
His fastballs make scary hissing sounds on their way to the plate. They’re freaky fast, like Joey. If you blink, the ball is already in the catcher’s mitt.
And Jimmy’s curveballs are practically impossible to hit. They come in right at your head, and at the last instant they loop down and right over the plate. As Coach Earwax says, they fake you right out of your jock!
No one on the team got many hits off Jimmy during batting practice. Even Becky had a hard time. She took ten swings and only got one hit. But it was an epic hit—a screaming line drive right back at the pitcher’s mound.
Everyone on the team except Jimmy’s kiss-up posse yelled, “Atta babe, Becky!”
I was the last player to hit in batting practice. On the way to the plate, I tried not to think about Dewey Taylor and the bloody gore, but Bean-O-Phobia had grabbed hold of my brain.
While Jimmy was waiting for me to step into the batter’s box, I stalled by going through a series of useless motions that I learned from watching major league baseball players:
Coach Earwax finally ran out of patience and yelled, “Batter up!”
I stepped into the batter’s box and twisted my body into the Mind-Bender batting stance. I pointed the end of my bat at Jimmy and wiggled it to mess with his weak and useless brain.
It didn’t work out.
Jimmy just grinned and started into his windup. I swallowed hard, and my legs started shaking. Then my hips. Then my arms.
My entire body was shaking!
Jimmy threw the pitch. The baseball streaked toward the plate. It seemed to get bigger. And bigger. And BIGGER.
It was my nightmare!
I dove out of the batter’s box. At the last instant, the ball looped down and right over the plate. Curveball. A perfect strike.
And I was facedown in the dirt.
I stood up and spit dirt out of my mouth. The entire team was laughing—even Joey and Carlos, although they were trying to hide it behind their gloves.
I looked over at Coach Earwax. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. His face was all scrunched up as if he was in horrible pain.
At least he wasn’t laughing.
I retrieved my helmet, which had flown off and landed next to the dugout. My bat was lying next to third base.
I felt like running off the field, sprinting down Seventh Street, and never coming back, but Coach Earwax ordered me to get back up to the plate.
Ouch.
Jimmy Jimerino was waiting for me, smiling like a cat who was toying with a mouse.
All his pitches were right over the plate. Fastballs. Curveballs. Sliders. Even a knuckleball!
Each time, I ducked or flinched or closed my eyes and covered my head. I swung the bat only once, but the ball was already in the catcher’s mitt.
Derp!
Finally, Coach Earwax had seen enough and told the entire team to run ten laps.
I got the major stink eye from everyone on the team except Joey, Carlos, and Becky.
CHAPTER 13
My descent into the pit of Bean-O-Phobia had begun.
In every batting practice, I tried my hardest to hit the ball. But I either dove into the dirt or swung and whiffed.
The fear of getting beaned in the schnoz had scrambled my brain and bamboozled my body.
Skinny Dennis was chosen to be the starter in right field, and I took my position on the bench.
We started playing league games, but I didn’t get to the plate very often. I was right back to the role I’d played in the youth leagues. Coach Earwax only put me in when it was garbage time and the score was about a hundred to zip.
And whenever I did get to bat, my phobia kicked in with humiliating results. Let me walk you through a few of the, er, highlights.
In our first game of the season against the A. E. Neuman Middle School Madmen, I got up to bat in the last inning. Bean-O-Phobia kicked in, and I slunk as far back in the batter’s box as possible to keep from getting hit. Then I swung at the ball like a lunatic.
Three pitches, three whiffs.
In our game against the Fighting Fur Balls of T. S. Eliot Academy, I got another chance at bat. The image of a baseball the size of a meteor flashed before my eyes, and my entire body froze. I couldn’t move a finger. I was like that gopher—I didn’t even blink!
Brilliant.
And when we played Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Bean-O-Phobia totally possessed my body. In a panic, I threw my bat at the ball as it crossed the plate. Miraculously, it made contact.
The bat skidded all the way down the first-base line, and the ball ricocheted into the umpire’s face mask.
Derp!
I got kicked out of the game for purposely throwing my bat.
At the next practice Coach Earwax told everyone to run twenty laps because “Mighty Plumbers do not throw baseball bats.”
I got the worst group stink eye in the entire history of baseball.
After those humiliating incidents, my reputation spread throughout the league. I was a marked man.
Even at school there was no escaping the shame of Bean-O-Phobia. It was as if I had some kind of hideous disease. I couldn’t walk the carpeted hallways of Spiro without sensing that every whisper was all about me.
Or maybe it was just my imagination.
CHAPTER 14
On the day of our last regular-season game, I just wanted to hide in a toilet stall instead of going to class. And I especially dreaded walking into Gossip Central.
The cafeteria.
Quick Time-Out about the Cafeteria
A middle school cafeteria is the last place you want to go if you have a humiliating phobia.
It is a major gossip zone. The entire student body is crammed into one place. There’s nothing to do there except stuff your face with crummy food and yak about other students.
Our cafeteria is the only place at Spiro that is just like every other middle school. We even have linoleum floors!
Mother T. once tried carpeting in the cafeteria. The day after the carpet was installed, the lunch menu featured spaghetti and meatballs. You can probably guess how that worked out. They yanked the stained carpet and put in linoleum the very next day.
Our cafeteria walls are plastered with all kinds of goofy school spirit slogans.
Oh, yeah. Our school color is teal.
Teal is sort of a sickly green, like what you
’d get if you mixed brussels sprouts and milk in a blender. I am not even going to show that color to you because you might blow chunks.
Joey, Carlos, and I always sit at the same corner table in the back of the cafeteria. It’s an excellent location, because we have a great view of the entire room.
You can’t just walk into the Spiro cafeteria and sit anywhere. You can, but you’d be taking a huge chance, because every table is pretty much “claimed” by a certain social group. If you choose the wrong table, it would be awkward.
My friends and I call our table “C Central.” That’s because our cumulative GPA is just about a C average, which also happens to match our average athletic ability.
The C Central table isn’t exclusive, though. We welcome anyone. The table’s cumulative GPA can rise or fall depending on who joins us for lunch. So if Jessica Whitehead, the school genius, ever sat with us, our table GPA would instantly shoot up.
And if Jimmy Jimerino ever sat down with us, the table’s athletic ranking would skyrocket.
Never gonna happen, though.
Jimmy sits at the head of the Jock Table. He’s like a king presiding over the daily feast. All the chairs at the Jock Table are assigned to Jimmy’s kiss-up posse, who laugh their buns off at all his lame jokes.
Here’s one of Jimmy’s nuggets:
Jimmy tells that same joke about twice a week, but it’s a rule at the Jock Table that you have to laugh your buns off even though you’ve heard the same joke a billion times.
On the day of the last regular-season game, Jimmy and his entourage walked by C Central table on their way to the Jock Table.
Jimmy greeted our table with his pet nicknames for us. The nickname he gave Joey was sort of a slam, although I think Joey’s psychic mind was on something horrible looming in the future.
His nickname for Carlos is a real zinger: “Belch Boy.” Thinking up that one probably drained Jimmy’s entire pool of imagination.
For a long time Jimmy couldn’t think of a nickname for me. He would look at me and try to think of one, then give up. I think it’s because there wasn’t anything about me that stuck out as nickname material.
(That’s an advantage to being average, by the way. You don’t attract attention. I would probably be a really good international spy, because I blend right in with the crowd.)
But that day Jimmy finally came up with my nickname.
At baseball practice the day before, Coach Earwax announced that I was a candidate for “Goose Egg.” It is a “trophy” awarded to any player who finishes the entire season with a batting average of, er, ZERO.
No one in the history of Spiro T. Agnew Middle School had ever been Goosed.
Jimmy walked by our table and announced my nickname to the entire cafeteria.
Brilliant.
CHAPTER 15
The Mighty Plumbers’ last regular-season game was against a team at the very bottom of the league standings, which was appropriate, because my struggle with Bean-O-Phobia was about to hit an all-time low.
It was an away game against Nike Preparatory Academy, the newest member of our league. Not much was known about the private school except that it had superb academics, vast wealth, and crummy athletics.
In youth baseball an away game just means that you move from the third-base dugout to the first-base dugout, because all the teams play on the same fields.
Big deal.
In middle school you actually travel to a baseball field at a school in a different part of the city. Away games are a blast. It’s like a field trip: bus ride, snack bags, and—best of all—early dismissal from school!
Coach Earwax had the team gather in front of school. We were all decked out in our mighty teal-colored uniforms. I could see students watching us out the windows from their final-period classrooms. They all had glum looks on their faces as if they regretted not trying out for the baseball team.
The bus pulled up. As we filed on board, Miss Ekolie, the cafeteria manager, handed out our snack bags. Carlos always thinks about his stomach, so he was all excited.
Until he looked inside.
Brussels sprouts!
I knew Mother T. had to be responsible for that dirty trick. How did she expect us to perform at a peak athletic level on the baseball field with vegetables in our stomachs?
Fortunately, we had been warned by Becky’s older brother not to count on the road trip snack bags. Everyone on the team had loaded their gear bags with bubble gum and sunflower seeds—all the essentials for peak athletic performance.
My friends and I got on the bus and immediately tried to get the best seats.
At the very back of the bus you can pull all kinds of pranks without getting in trouble with the coach or distracting the bus driver.
It’s always good to have some kind of activity planned to help kill time on a road trip. I was thinking about starting a vegetable food fight. Carlos claimed he was going to moon a pedestrian, but I think it was all talk.
Joey wanted to play a road game called Perdiddle, where you get points for spotting cars with one burned-out headlight. We had to point out to Joey that it was still broad daylight.
Unfortunately, our plans for the back row were ruined by Jimmy Jimerino and his jock posse.
Joey, Carlos, and I were stuck with the worst seats on the bus.
The front row.
Carlos and I sat in the two seats right behind the driver. Joey sat across the aisle in the seat with Coach Earwax.
Joey got the worst of it. Apparently Coach’s bad habit with the car key and the earwax is only a habit for the dugout. On road trips Coach Earwax yanks out nose hairs with his fingers!
The highlight of the trip happened after Joey did his psychic thing.
About ten seconds later the bus hit a huge rut in the road. The jolt caused Coach Earwax to sock himself in the schnoz, and it started bleeding.
Carlos laughed out loud but then immediately tried to cover it up with a coughing fit.
I would have laughed too, but the blood streaming out of Coach Earwax’s nose looked too much like the Valentine’s Day Schnoz Massacre.
CHAPTER 16
We spotted the Nike Preparatory School baseball stadium from two miles away. It was that big.
As we got closer, we could see on top of the scoreboard a gigantic sign: Home of the Fighting Platypuses.
Whah?
None of us, including Coach Earwax, had ever heard of a platypus. But the bus driver spoke up for the first time in the entire trip. He must have been some kind of zoologist moonlighting as a bus driver.
Whoa! That is way cooler than a Mighty Plumber mascot.
Our bus pulled into the Nike Prep parking lot, and we were greeted by a man in a green blazer with a yellow tie.
We couldn’t tell whether he was the school principal or a butler. He stood at attention outside the door of the bus and waited for us to exit.
Jimmy Jimerino immediately gave him the nickname Jeeves, which I hate to admit was sort of clever.
When we exited the bus, Jeeves greeted us with a stern look.
I couldn’t tell if he meant watch your step getting off of the bus or watch your step as in “behave yourselves.”
Nike Prep’s stadium had skyboxes and a center-field scoreboard with a giant video screen. The only thing missing was a Goodyear blimp circling overhead.
It made the Mighty Plumbers stadium look like one of those ancient Greek ruins you see in history books.
Our dugout had a refrigerator stocked with imported bottled water and stacks of scented towels to wipe the chick-magnet sweat off our skin. A flat-screen TV monitor was mounted on the wall so that we could watch instant replays.
And the dugout had a cushioned bench!
One of Carlos’s biggest complaints about sitting the pine is that wood benches are uncomfortable. And if you’re not careful you can get a sliver stuck in your butt cheek.
(I had a teammate in youth leagues who got a sliver stuck in his rear end. He was
too embarrassed to tell anyone, so he left it there for a week, hoping it would go away. But it got infected, and he had to drop his trousers at the doctor’s office for an emergency sliver-ectomy.)
But Carlos was in heaven on the cushioned bench.
Becky O’Callahan was our starting pitcher. She and our catcher, Dominic Mumalo, walked out to the bullpen to warm up. (Nike Prep actually had bullpens just like the major leagues!)
Coach Earwax told us to take the field. We paired off to play catch and warm up our arms. Usually the other team also warms up.
Not the Platypuses.
The Nike Prep players marched out of their dugout single file in designer uniforms that looked like green-and-yellow space suits.
They didn’t run. They didn’t jog. They marched like robots onto the baseball diamond and circled the bases.
That was their pregame warm-up. It was both strange and awesome at the same time.
In the bullpen, Dominic Mumalo was like the rest of us—totally baffled by the Platypus marching routine. He stared at the bizarre parade and forgot all about catching Becky’s first practice throw.
Her fastball nailed him right on the noggin. Fortunately, he was wearing his catcher’s helmet, but when I saw it happen, what little confidence I had disappeared. It was another reminder of the Valentine’s Day Schnoz Massacre.
CHAPTER 17
The game began, and we could tell right away that the Platypuses could march way better than they could play baseball.
Jimmy Jimerino hit a grand slam, a triple, and a double—and that was just in the first inning!
Meanwhile, Becky struck out every Nike Prep player who marched to the plate. She was awesome.
But the game itself was getting boring. So Joey, Carlos, and I decided to kill time on the bench with one of our famous pranks.