Zeke, the ever-hungry, started to reach for the bag, and I swatted his hand away.
“Chet should really make me lunch too. Could he do that?” Zeke asked.
“So I could carry two lunches to school?” I said. “Anyway, it would remove the comedy from my life. Your lunches are always one of the highlights of my day.”
Zeke’s parents stopped making his lunches when Zeke was in third grade, when they found that he kept trading away what they gave him for fruit roll-ups. He would trade anything—sometimes his whole lunch—for fruit roll-ups. Which he wasn’t supposed to eat. Because of his braces. Ever since then, he had just . . . had a very creative approach to what belonged in a lunch bag.
We were about to head out to the lecture hall when Mrs. G. said, “Oh, I almost forgot. One new student showed up this morning.”
“Do you have the papers?” I asked. “Is he all set?”
“We put him in that room with Jorge Washington,” she said. “That student with no roommate. I took care of the papers.”
“Great,” I said. “What’s his name?”
“Cabrera,” she said. “Hang on a second.” She quickly looked through a pile and pulled out a form. “Lincoln Cabrera.”
I was back outside before it hit me. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
Zeke looked at me like, Hear what? before it registered for him, too. “Jorge Washington’s new roommate is named Lincoln?”
We high-fived. “Roommate pair of the year.”
“Quite possibly of all time,” I said. “All hail Jorge Washington and Lincoln Cabrera!”
“And their presidential suite!”
“Sweet!” I said.
***
We walked to the lecture hall. Dad and Pop were at the front, rows of students with notebooks looking up at them. Pop, in the grungy green baseball cap he always wore through all five weeks of Academy, was sitting on a stool looking out at the students, and Dad was talking, pacing back and forth at the front of the room. There was something about my dad, something hard to name, that screamed teacher. It might have been the way he’d stop pacing and roll back on his heels. That always seemed like a teacher thing to me. I happened to know this was his secret way of stretching his hamstrings. Or something like that. But it really did make him look like someone in charge.
When you looked at umpires at a major league game, so many of them seemed to be big, overweight guys. But they didn’t leave umpire school looking that way—most students were in their twenties, and BTP had had guys as young as eighteen. (And we once had a sixty-eight-year-old guy from Canada.)
Seeing major league players in person was always surprising. They looked bigger than they did on TV, like supersized humans. Umpire-school students looked more like the way you’d expect a baseball player to look, without the supersizing.
Dad was going over the necessity of wearing a cup at all times. I scanned the seats for June Sponato, and before I found her, Zeke poked me in the stomach with his elbow and pointed at her. As predicted, she was not a supermodel. I glanced at Zeke, but he didn’t look disappointed. In fact, he was beaming. He lived for this. We both did. (You probably got that already. And if not, hello? Is everything okay over there?)
Dad was near the end of his lesson. “We’ve gone over some of the most basic rules and interpretations of the rules. We’ll be doing that through the whole five weeks. And just so everyone understands the process from day one, here’s how our Umpire Academy works. At the end of five weeks of intense education, training, and drills, we will select the top students based on your performance here in the classroom and, even more so, out on the field. Up to ten of you will have the opportunity to attend the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp. Evaluation Course for minor league umpires in Cocoa, Florida, next March. As you know, that’s pretty much where you audition to be selected as minor league umpires. From there, you can work your way up to the major leagues. But you can’t get there if you don’t do your work here.”
I looked around the room for familiar faces. Sometimes students who didn’t make it to PBUC came back for another try. No one in this group looked familiar to me, though.
“We’re going to finish up in here, then head to the field for some stretches and drills,” he said. “When you’ve finished your drills, I want Groups A and B to report to field one for filming. Everybody turn around and wave to my son, Casey, and his friend Zeke back there in the last row.”
There was a loud rustle as heads turned around to look at us. People nodded or smiled or put up a hand to say hi. Some had smirks on their faces, like, Look! Little kids! Probably the same way Zeke and I looked when Sly came into the gym yesterday.
“Those boys are two of the hardest workers you’re ever going to want to meet.”
I knew I was turning colors that were more natural in fruit and flowers than they were in human persons. I liked what he was saying—kind of loved it—but it hurt my face when this much blood went there.
“They are going to film your technique beginning this afternoon,” Dad said. “You will not be judged on your performance today, as we understand that some of you have more experience than others. Each of you will leave here with, in addition to your filmed batting cage work, a before-and-after video. I don’t mean to sound like an infomercial here, boys. Boys and June, that is. But I stand up here today to guarantee that even those of you coming here with years of experience will see a huge difference in the work you do, in your body language, your confidence, your authority, your stance, your posture, your command of the game. Even those of you not selected to go to Cocoa will leave here better umpires. Okay, let’s hustle out to the gym.”
Dad stood there, rolling back on his heels.
I watched as the class stood. It was an every-man-and-June-by-and-for-him/herself kind of scene. As the days went on, they’d break up into groups and cliques. Right now they seemed a little nervous, a little like, say, middle-school students. Within days, they’d learn how much Dad and Pop liked to see hustle. They’d be jogging between stations, standing straight, looking their instructors in the eye when they talked to them. Everyone wanted that shot at being a professional umpire.
Mrs. Bob the Baker always complained that everything at BTP seemed so military. She said that word as though it were something negative.
But that was one of the things I’d always loved best about BTP. The order. By late tomorrow, students would know how to stand in formation on the field, Group A two feet off the right-field foul line, and all the groups back from there, spread out at exact and even intervals. They’d learn the basic mechanics of calling balls and strikes, safe and out, foul balls and balks. They’d run through the drills, doing the exact same moves at the exact same time, like they were one person.
But not yet. Now they were this big globby mob, all trying to fit through one narrow doorway at once.
Zeke was still sitting there, grinning like some kind of learning-impaired monkey.
“What?”
“Did you hear what he said?”
I knew Zeke was talking about the videos, but I couldn’t resist. “Oh, don’t worry. You don’t need to wear a cup. He meant the students. It’s in case they get hit. With a ball. In that spot. Where it hurts.”
He slapped my head the same way Pop sometimes did.
“I’m really doing the filming.”
Televised Game
ZEKE spent two hours filming. I worked as his assistant, organizing and labeling, running students through the different calls, making careful notes about the order, so that the before videos would match the afters.
Once we got through Groups A and B, Zeke went home.
Sometimes the first day ran really long. Most BTP school days were eight to five thirty, followed by dinner in the cafeteria. Dad and Pop had dinner with me most nights, but on the first day of school, they liked to be available to students, because they were usually falling all over each other with questions.
I finished my homework and turned on the game. Jac
kson Alter was trying to extend a twenty-four-game hitting streak, and there was no way I was going to miss that. If anyone was ever going to beat DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game streak, he was the one my money was on. I watched, scribbling in my notebook.
Dad and Pop watched games on TV like umpires. They saw which crew was calling the game and said things like “Oh, at least it’ll be a quick one” or “You know a manager’s going to be thrown out tonight.” It made sense: Both Dad and Pop had worked as umpires. Dad made it to the minor leagues before he and Pop opened up BTP.
For me, though, it wasn’t about the umpires. There was time within a baseball game—lots of time—but unlike most other sports, no clock. The game had a rhythm, a slow one, familiar. It was the kind of sport that let your brain drift a little, almost, to find the connections, the surprises, the stories.
I didn’t even have a favorite team, unless it was whatever team Jackson Alter was playing for. He started as a backup utility infielder for the Yankees. And then, even though he was an amazing shortstop, he got traded a lot. He went from the Yankees to the Cubs to the Phillies to the Cardinals, and for the past year, he’d been on the Orioles. Wherever he was, I loved watching him play. He was fast and crisp, and he seemed like a really good guy.
I loved the way Jackson tried to make plays that seemed impossible and often made them, and how he was always hanging over the dugout rail when the game was on the line, the way the camera kept showing him clapping, cheering on his teammates.
When Alter came up in the fifth, he hit into a double play. Ouch. Maybe the pressure was getting to him.
***
Pop came home before Dad. They used to both stay out really late the first night, but Pop had gotten to be kind of set in his ways when it came to his bedtime.
I asked, “So, what do you think? How do they look?”
“You tell me. What did you and Zeke see in your before videos?”
“We filmed ten,” I said. “But it’s only the first day, right? They’re not supposed to look good.”
“That bad, huh?” Pop asked. “Here. Chet sent these back for you.” He offered me a plate of brownies. I took two. “Did you see any promise?” he asked.
“One guy was pretty decent, seemed to know what he was doing, sort of. His mechanics were off, but I think with training, he’ll do okay. He was in Group B.”
Pop stretched and pulled off his grungy green cap. He looked older without it. You could pretend there was hair up there when his hat was on, I guess. He stood and rubbed his hip a little. The hip replacement surgery he’d had two years ago acted up a lot, gave him some pain. He’d had a lot of parts replaced. I sometimes wondered what percentage of his body was Original Pop.
“You going to bed, Pop?”
“At the end of the day, you can choose to think about what’s tearing you apart or what’s holding you together,” Pop said.
I knew my punch line. “And you’ve got lots of screws and spare parts holding you together.”
Pop smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth. “I’m calling it a night,” he said. “If I can still get up those stairs. You?”
“Alter should get one more at bat. I want to see if he gets a hit—he’s hitless so far tonight.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Twenty-four,” I said. I heard Dad come in as Pop nodded, impressed, and then went upstairs.
Dad came into the room, and without even a hello or anything, he just asked, “Did you talk to your mother?”
I shook my head.
He sighed and said, “This is ridiculous, Casey. Your mother is not a villain. You know this situation is not all her fault. And you need to call her.”
I had nothing to say.
He looked over at the clock—it was almost eleven—and said, “Tomorrow, then,” as he started up the stairs. It was pretty obvious he was disgusted with me.
Not her fault? Yeah, I knew married people got divorced all the time. But I bet that every kid whose parents got divorced felt the way I did. Especially if it was clearly one parent’s fault, I bet they all felt like that parent pretty much murdered what had once been known as their family. Just killed it.
I knew she couldn’t stand living here, but it’s not like Behind the Plate didn’t exist before they got married. She knew what she was getting into. It was what she signed up for, wasn’t it? Everything—the school, the husband, the kid.
But no. I was not going to think about that.
Nope.
I started to write up the game while I waited for Alter’s next at bat. Turkleton, who batted ahead of him, got walked and then stole second. So when Alter finally came up, he was intentionally walked. Streak over. He didn’t seem mad when he got to first—he gave a sort of “What are you going to do?” smile right at the camera.
On Deck
IF she had known anything at all, Mrs. Bob the Baker wouldn’t have worried so much about talking to me on the first day of middle school. Because there wasn’t anything special about it. The second day of middle school had been the exact same thing. And the third. It was really kind of amazing how fast something new could become so boring.
It wasn’t that I hated school, but I sure didn’t love it. I think I enjoyed going when I was in nursery school, and maybe even the early grades, but somewhere along the line, school became one of those necessary unpleasant things, like shots and dentist visits and shopping. It wasn’t worth getting upset over—you’d have to do them anyway. That was something I’d learned from Pop: There’s no sense in getting upset about things you can’t change.
The best times of the school day were lunch; phys. ed., where they mainly had us running in circles around the school for some reason; and of course, going home. To be honest, my English teacher, Mr. Donovan, wasn’t bad either. He sometimes ended a class by reading to us from the newspaper or a cool article he’d found in some magazine or online. At least I was able to keep my eyes open. And it was the only class I had with my friend Charley Haddon.
I was actually paying attention when Mr. Donovan announced that he was the supervisor for the school paper and that the first meeting was tomorrow.
I poked Charley and gave him a look like, So, you in? Charley looked back at me like I was asking if he wanted to consider joining the Talk About Embarrassing Hygiene Problems Club.
I was hoping I could trick Zeke into going with me—maybe he could write a column about reality TV shows—but when he got on the bus, he was sort of bursting with needing to tell me about his latest great idea.
“Is Ibbit running BTP the same way he always does?”
“I guess,” I said.
“So You Suck, Ump! Day—he’ll still have You Suck, Ump! Day?”
“I guess.”
“I want to film it,” he said, and then waited.
I knew some big response was expected, but all I said was, “Why?”
“Think about it from like a director’s point of view, or a TV watcher’s point of view—it’s a sort of amazing concept.”
“I’m not seeing it,” I said. I looked out the window to track the bus’s progress, but we were only passing by 4-C, Clay Coves Community College; we still had quite a way to go.
“Really? You are so lucky to have me for a friend, to explain stuff like this to you.”
The logic of that—the lack of logic of that—would have made me want to scream if I weren’t so tired. The bus was always hot, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes for a few minutes. I had to help out at BTP when I got home, and I had at least an hour and a half of homework, and for a second, I thought about what it might be like to have a different best friend. Maybe someone bookish—maybe just for today.
“There’d be no need to explain it to me if you weren’t here, because you’re the one—never mind. What? Go ahead and explain.”
He was on his knees on the seat, like the excitement of this made him bigger or something. “So picture two students out on the field, calling a game. That’s what I’d film
first, close-ups of the guy behind the plate and the umpire covering first, right?”
“Okay.”
“There’s no sound at first, just silence.”
“But it’s on You Suck, Ump! Day, right?”
“Exactly. Slowly, I’ll bring the sound in, beginning it at a really low level, and then louder and louder. Until you realize that there are hundreds of people screaming at these guys. It’s like a horror movie or something. But it’s better, because it’s real.”
A seventh-grader sitting in front of us turned around and said to Zeke, “You talk too loud, man.” He put his hand of top of Zeke’s head and shoved him back so that he was sitting.
Zeke’s eyes bugged, and he went to knock the hand away, but the kid had already turned around.
“So that’s your big plan? You want to film You Suck, Ump! Day?”
He nodded, really excited.
Then I asked, “And do what with it?” But then I realized—oh, my GOD, You Suck, Ump! Day.
“Zeke,” I said, and my no-longer-bus-tired voice must have sounded full of something, because he actually stopped talking. He gave me his nonverbal “Go on,” which was kind of a tilt of his head with his eyes wide open.
“No Steamboat.”
He gave me an instant replay of his nonverbal “Go on” look.
“There’s no one to be in charge of You Suck, Ump! Day. Steamboat’s not here.”
***
You Suck, Ump! Day was one of the things that made Pop and Dad’s school unique. Not that I’d been to the other two umpire schools, but I just couldn’t imagine anyone but a Snowden thinking of it—inviting everyone in town to come scream at our students when they were trying to make calls on the field. That was the point. That baseball wasn’t a quiet game. Students had to learn to stay calm and do their job well even when it was loud and unruly.
And You Suck, Ump! Day was both. Loud. And unruly. One year Franco Spinelli’s cousin came from New York. He brought a bag full of rotten tomatoes and started throwing them at students while they were calling plays. It had been so surprising, seeing those red blobs fly through the air and then splat right on a student’s shoe. Of course, someone made the mistake of also hitting a senior instructor, Lorenzo Watkins. Lorenzo was not amused.
Screaming at the Ump Page 4