Screaming at the Ump (16 page)

“Yeah. For the school newspaper.”

“What does your dad think about you interviewing me?”

I shrugged, since he didn't know anything about it at all. My dad had his secrets, and I had mine.

A motor started up and drowned out the sound of chirping insects. A lawn mower rolled out to center field. Ralphie-O sometimes came to mow the fields really late here, as BTP was his only client with nighttime lighting.

J-Mac turned back to me. “Your dad's a really good guy, Casey. I'll talk to you, but just for a little while, okay?” He sat down next to me on the bench. I could feel it shift from his weight and thought about how if it were a seesaw, I'd be flying up into the sky.

I took another deep breath. I wanted to start with the juicy part—the minute he heard that Reggie Rhodes had ratted him out. But I knew it would be a better strategy to get him talking about the good times. I asked, “What's your best memory of playing in the major leagues?”

He leaned back and rubbed the back of his neck, the start of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “The time I came in for the eighth inning in a tie game and mowed down three batters with nine pitches,” he said. “Nine easy strikes. Or maybe the first time my parents saw me play at Wrigley. No, you know what the best was? When I realized I could throw this cutter. That it worked. This crazy pitch that most other guys couldn't throw. You should have seen the looks on coaches' faces when I had my stuff working, when the cutter had all that late movement.”

I was taking notes as fast as I could, not wanting to miss one word of this.

“Have you ever seen a good cutter, Casey? It's a magic pitch. It's not a fastball. It's not a slider. When your cutter's working, you get guys chasing pitches. And when they
do
connect, they break their bats. One game, Brady Burnett broke three in a single at bat.”

One story led to the next. I hoped he'd never stop.

“My first time in the show, first major league game, I faced two batters. And I walked each one. On four pitches each.” He paused for a long time, and I was afraid he was going to stand up and head for the dorms. There was a low rumble of thunder in the sky. I kept waiting, and finally, he started talking again. “It was a long flight back to Phoenix. I wanted to cry the whole way.”

But the best was when he talked about his playing time with other players, guys I'd heard of—Billy Bolter, Orlando Williams, Pedro Francisco. Even Jackson Alter! I told him Alter was my favorite, and he told me about the year they played together on the Phillies.

“Alter ate a cheesesteak after every single home game. Cheesesteaks with pepper and onions. That's something I hope never to smell again.”

“What's he like?” He actually knew Jackson Alter!

“He's a rock-solid guy. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He works really hard. A good teammate. There's nothing not to respect about Jackson Alter.”

I knew that. It was the kind of thing you just knew, watching Jackson Alter play ball, listening to him talk, seeing how he acted with his teammates.

“I miss it so much,” J-Mac said, his eyes on the brightly lit field.

The sound of Ralphie-O's mower grew louder as it worked its way from the outfield toward the infield.

“So what happened?” I asked, remembering what I was really after. Not great stories. An explanation. A confession.

The happiness of those memories had been lighting up J-Mac's face, but it faded fast, a screen turned off. “I guess to you it looks like there was one minute when everything changed. But it didn't feel like that.” He paused, kicking at the grass in front of the bench. “This might surprise you, Casey, but I didn't know too many guys who played naked.”

I burst out laughing.

He shook his head. “Not that naked,” he said. “No, I mean back then we'd all take some pills, you know, so we'd have the strength to get out there and play hard every day. It's not as easy as it looks.”

As I wrote down every word he said, something was crackling beneath my skin, almost like a lie detector going off.
No! That's bull. That's just bull. No!
They didn't
all
take pills. That was a lie.

“Are you saying every player took steroids?”

He looked at me like I was some stupid little kid. “I didn't say anything about
steroids
. I'm talking about other stuff, like greenies, you know, stimulants.”

“Legal pills?”

“Well, not exactly. But they weren't banned by Major League Baseball at that time, either.”

I couldn't sit next to this guy anymore. I jumped up from the bench and stood in front of him. I wanted to get right in his face. “But that thing with Reggie Rhodes, where he said he got stuff from your locker, wasn't
that
steroids? And then why didn't you speak up? Why did you run away and hide?”

“Hold on, Casey. Slow down. It was complicated. Reggie Rhodes was a user. He used steroids for years. And he took greenies too, all that stuff. And, yeah, he probably got something from me. Not the steroids, though.”

“So you're saying you never used steroids?”

“I'm not saying that. I'm saying he didn't get them from me.”

I sat back down. “But I just don't understand. Why would you?”

He closed his eyes for a long time. The sky continued with its low rumbles, though I didn't see any lightning.

“It got to this point where if you weren't taking something—whatever kind of drug you want to call it—good luck keeping up with everyone else, because all your teammates were. And all your opponents were. Is it fair for a clean pitcher to have to face a juiced-up power hitter? It wasn't like you were trying to get some unfair advantage. You were trying to keep up with everyone else.”

Every tendon and muscle and nerve in my body was tense and angry, because I knew what he was saying was wrong. It was completely wrong. You couldn't say,
I did it because everyone was doing it
. Rules govern the game of baseball—rules govern everything!—and you don't get to pick which rules you want to follow. There's integrity to the game. And the rules apply to everyone.

But.

I hated that there was a
but
. I wasn't even sure what that
but
was, but there was a part of what he was saying that I almost understood. I didn't like it. I didn't think he was right. But I wasn't sure he was completely not right.

And it definitely wasn't the story I had thought it was.

“So if Reggie Rhodes was lying,” I said, “if he didn't get steroids from your locker, why didn't you defend yourself?”

“I'm trusting you not to tell anyone this, not that anyone would necessarily believe you anyway. This is off the record.”

Whoa. I put my pad down. When someone says something is off the record, there's no messing around. It's serious and important, like an oath: the person is talking freely, willing to say things he might not other-wise say. A reporter is never allowed to use anything said off the record.

“I wasn't exactly innocent. I'm not saying it was right, but I
had
taken steroids. I'd been off for a while by the time this happened. But like I told you, I was still taking other drugs, nothing big, just some little stuff, and so were a lot of players. The thing is: I knew who was taking. And if I came forward and ended up being questioned, I was going to bring down a lot of other people. Really good players. Good men. Good friends.”

“If they were guilty, they should have paid the price.” Pop would have been proud; there was strength and conviction in my voice. I sounded like the best kind of umpire, confident in his call.

J-Mac shook his head like I had no idea what I was talking about. “You sure about that?” he asked.

“No doubt,” I said. “There's no place for drug-taking cheaters in baseball.” I couldn't believe I'd said that to his face. I felt like a tiny mouse from a fable or something, taking on a giant elephant.

“So I should have brought them all down, Casey? Really? All the players I knew who had been taking drugs, I should have sold them out, named their names.”

I nodded my head, hard.

“Do you feel any different knowing that Jackson Alter was one of the people I'd have had to name?”

It felt like he had reached down my throat and pulled my lungs right out of my body. I could not breathe in the same way I'd always been able to breathe before.

He shook his head, put up his hand, and said, “I'll deny ever having said that. I didn't say that, okay? Just—I didn't say that.” Then he stood up and walked away.

I
JUST
sat there, not sure I'd be able to get my legs to function how they were supposed to. I looked over my notes. I thought about what he'd said. And I didn't think I'd ever again summon the strength to move. But I did when the sky broke open and rain started pouring down. I protected my notebook under my shirt and ran to the gym. I stood there, staring at that sign:
SURPRISE IS THE ENEMY OF THE UMPIRE
.

And maybe it's the enemy of the reporter, too. Maybe surprise is the enemy of the baseball fan. Or the Jackson Alter fan.

Or maybe it's just the enemy. Always.

I paced back and forth, shuffling my feet to make that squeaky gym-floor noise, to try to drown out the grinding jumble of thoughts slogging around in my head. I had gotten the interview—I could write the article now. J-Mac had told me so much stuff. But when my brain even started to reveal the tiniest corner of what he said about Jackson Alter, I started pacing faster, scuffing more, making a roomful of sneaker noise.

How could I write that article? I knew I couldn't touch any of the off-the-record stuff, but still! He said so much before he went off the record! But how would it even be possible to be objective, to be fair, when I had such strong feelings about what he told me? It was all wrong, wrong, wrong. But still, somehow it felt like I was starting to understand what made him do it. While at the same time, I still thought it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I finally sat down. Then I stood right back up and started squeak-pacing that floor, hoping some smart thought, some decision, some something would come to me.

But it didn't.

B
ASEBALL
is always best on warm, sunny days. Even the kind of baseball that involves screaming wildly, loudly, and maybe inappropriately at umpire students. And that was the kind of day we woke up to on Saturday, You Suck, Ump! Day. A strong powder-blue sky, fluffy white clouds. Perfect.

I hadn't figured out what to do about my article, but I made a deal with myself to put that on hold until I got through this day. I could not mess up this day.

When Zeke arrived, I already had the big signs in place, and I was cleaning up the bleachers on the first-base side. “Did you do the third-base side yet?” Zeke asked. I shook my head, and, not missing a beat, he grabbed a trash bag and broom and got to work.

He was back in five minutes.

“Do you think your dad could spare a memory whatchamacallit for the video camera? I have one here, but I always like to have a backup.”

“You're definitely videotaping?”

He nodded, but he wasn't looking at me.

“My dad doesn't know?”

“He, uh, doesn't know that I'm not taping, if that's what you mean.”

“I don't even understand that,” I said, then realized I sounded like Sly. I picked up the rake to get started working the dirt on the infield. I had so many things to keep track of today that I didn't want to get too deep into Zeke's own particular freak show. Simple answers, Casey. “Dad keeps the extra memory cards behind the first-aid kit outside of cage three,” I said. I'd bet he already knew that. He really just wanted me to say it was okay that he was taping. Which I didn't think I said.

I went into the men's and women's bathrooms, checking soap, toilet paper, paper towels. Emptied all the garbage cans so we wouldn't have overflow. And then I went to close the gate so no one could come in until we were ready for them.

***

The line of spectators started early, and I could see students peeking their heads out of the classroom. Some of them must have heard about You Suck, Ump! Day from staff, but until you lived through it, it had to be hard to imagine.

I was nervous when I saw Sly approaching. What had I been thinking? Did I really need to think about entertaining this little kid on the busiest day of my life? But Mrs. G. had a lot to do on You Suck, Ump! Day too, so I knew I couldn't back out now. I heard Sly asking Ralphie-O, “Do you know the
Brady Bunch
episode where Bobby finds that weird little tiki thing in Hawaii and then they all have bad luck?”

Ralphie-O shrugged and walked past her toward the end of the entry line without saying a word.

I yelled, “You are not allowed to mention any
Brady Bunch
characters for the next two hours.”

She put her hands on her hips and stuck out her tongue at me.

We were not off to the best start. Then I remembered what was in my pocket. “You know how you're in charge of making sure no one sneaks in any fruits or vegetables?” I asked. She nodded. “Well, I thought you should have this. But only use it if you need it.” I handed her a silver whistle on a chain.

She nodded in a very serious way and slowly placed it around her own neck, as though it were as important as—more important than—an Olympic medal.

“All right, then,” I said. “For now, stick with me.”

I had to get the bleachers filled with people before students came out for their morning break. If I'd been a student and seen all those soon-to-be-screaming people waiting, I thought I might have pretended to be on the verge of vomiting and gone back to the dorm. But that was just me. This was the one day students always remembered about their time at Behind the Plate.