Say It Ain't So (8 page)

These thoughts were running through my head as the recorded brass band hit the final home-of-the-brave high notes at the end of the anthem. The umpire yelled, “Play ball!” and the game was begun. The season was begun. I got goose bumps.
They really should have given me some time to practice. I had questions. Like, was I supposed to announce the starting pitcher? Coach Zo only said to announce if there was a pitching
change
, but in the first inning … I just decided to go for it. Thankfully, I was an old pro at this sort of thing.

“Pitching for the Schwenkfelder Mustangs,” I said in my booming announcer's voice, “number twenty-five, Hunter Ashwell.” There was wild applause, presumably all for me. The leadoff batter for Griffith was named Jaxon Sadler. Jaxon? I hoped I pronounced it right. Why did people always have to go sticking random
x
's and
q
's into names? Thankfully, Jaxon fouled off a few pitches, which gave me a bit more time to get acclimated and to scan the lineup card and get used to the names. Then he struck out on a wicked palmball and I had to bite my tongue. I couldn't yell out “Whiff!” or anything like that. Just announce the batters and pitching changes. That's it.

There was also a guy on the Griffith team, no lie, named Trebor. Trebor Fenner. His twin brother was named Robert Fenner. How mean. To have twins and give one of them a regular name like Robert and then the other one a name like Trebor? Poor Trebor. And poor me! How are you supposed
to pronounce that? Tree-boar? Treb-or? I thought about just going with
Fenner
when he came up, but there were two of them. I went with
Tree-boar
. Sounded kind of cool, really. Some sort of wild animal. Like a, uh, boar. That lived in a tree.

It didn't really matter how anyone on Griffith spelled their names. They might as well all have spelled them with nothing but
K
's.
K
is the baseball term for strikeout. My point is, Jaxon, both Fenners, and even Jagdish Sheth were hopeless against Hunter Ashwell. (Jagdish came in to pitch in the third inning after their starter got hit around a bit. He stayed in to bat, but whiffed mightily. I mumbled his name a little bit and hoped he'd forgive me.)

Hunter Ashwell really was an amazing pitcher! He just had those two pitches—the fast one and the slow palmball. But the way he threw them, you could never tell what was coming. Everyone was always hacking really early or really late. You would have thought that they'd make contact half the time just by guessing, but he always kept them off-balance.
Mike
kept them off-balance. He was a genius at knowing which pitch to call and when. When the hitters did make contact, it was weak contact. Hunter was unstoppable.

I started to have visions of Hunter Ashwell pitching in the big leagues. It was kind of funny to ponder because Hunter Ashwell didn't look like much. He had braces and the same swoopy haircut I mentioned a lot of the kids had. Hunter was on the short side and maybe they ran out of uniforms that fit him, because every bit of his Schwenkfelder maroons hung a few inches long. He was basically swimming in the shirt and the pants. Even the hat seemed oversized for his small head. Maybe he was one of those short guys who refused to admit that he was little and couldn't let himself mark
S
on the
S-M-L
sheet they hand out when you have to sign up for uniforms. He insisted on being a large, never mind all the evidence to the contrary.

Hunter also seemed to be having visions of himself as a big-league pitcher. He'd hoot and holler after every strikeout, yelling stuff like “Sit down, sucker!” and “I am the
man
!” If it was physically possible to high-five yourself while wearing a baseball glove, I'm pretty sure he would have done that too. He struck out just about every Griffin to grab a bat. Okay, not
every
batter, but the vast majority of them whiffed big-time. The few that made contact just dribbled grounders or hit weak pop-ups that were easily caught.

The only drama was when Kyle Webb dropped a pop-up, but it was a foul ball, so the batter didn't reach base. The batter had to get back there and swing again, which he did far too early. Palmball, strike three. Kyle's dad seemed really mad about it, though. I could hear him screaming at his son from the bleachers. Kyle looked pretty sad. His dad was such a red-faced maniac. He was angrier than that girl in the Olympics who spent her whole life training for the vault, then fell on her butt on national TV. And that was the Olympics! This was just middle school sports. And a
foul ball
. I had the distinct feeling that there was something wrong with Mr. Webb and I felt really bad for Kyle. But it didn't affect the game.

It was already the fourth inning when I realized that no one on Griffith had reached base. Schwenkfelder had scored a ton. There is a “mercy rule,” which means that the game is called after five innings if one team is winning by ten. It's also known as the “run rule” or, more often and unofficially, the “whoop rule.” As in “Schwenkfelder put the whoop on Griffith.”

I know the big leagues don't have the whoop rule (sorry, Houston Astros!), but it was still pretty amazing that Hunter had a chance at the perfect
game. A perfect game! It's really hard, one of the rarest events in all of baseball. The pitcher has to be, well, perfect. No walks, no runs, no hit batters. Even your fielders have to be perfect because an error can ruin a perfect game. Seems unfair, but that's baseball. That's life. That's why the perfect game is so rare.

Hunter struck out all three guys in the top of the fourth just about as quickly as I could announce their names. Boom, boom, boom. Schwenkfelder came up to bat in the bottom of the inning and tacked on a few more runs. Mike struck out for the third time of the day. Everyone was getting hits except him, so I wondered if he felt bad. But he didn't seem to. He was focused on being a good catcher, and he was doing a great job.

All that remained was the top of the fifth. Just three batters left for the perfecto. You could feel everyone get a little tense. (Well, everyone except for Other Mike, who sat in the booth next to me. I wasn't quite sure he grasped the enormity of the situation, but it was nice having him there.)

The first batter up got ahead in the count after Hunter threw two fastballs very high. You couldn't blame him for pushing a little bit. It was getting exciting. No one mentioned the perfect game to
him, as baseball superstition insists. You just can't mention it. It's considered a jinx. It's like how you can't tell an actor “Good luck.” You have to say “Break a leg.” So no one said anything. It got to a point that no one was talking to Hunter at all. Everyone avoided him like he was carrying a rare and deadly disease. It seemed to shake him up.

Mike walked out to the mound to settle him down, just like a good catcher should. The batter must have thought it meant he was going to throw the slow one because he waited on the next pitch, but it was a heater right down the middle. He couldn't even get his bat off his shoulder. The next pitch
was
the slow one, but all the batter could do was manage a foul tip.

Unfortunately for Mike, the foul tip made the ball hit the plate and bounce right up into his crotch. He shrugged it off. As for me, his good friend and practice crotch-kicker, I felt proud. Despite the rule against in-game commentary, I came up with a funny line I couldn't resist.

“Oooh,” I said. “Right in the newts.”

That evened the count to two balls (ahem) and two strikes. The umpire threw the ball back to Hunter to give Mike a moment to recover. There's a subtle brotherhood between catcher and umpire,
the two masked men behind the plate. Hunter caught the ball, then took a little walk behind the mound. He hitched up his belt. He wiped some sweat off his forehead. He stepped back onto the mound. He wound up and fired strike three: pure smoke.

The next batter was Trebor Fenner. The twins were both little guys with identical everything, including haircuts. Well, the part you could see under their hats was identical. Both hadn't been to Benderson in many years, I knew that. A stream of long, straight black hair shot out of the back of their caps. They both wore identical scowls on their faces as well. These Fenners meant business. You could tell they wanted nothing more than to spoil Hunter's perfect game.

Being amped up isn't really a good frame of mind to enter a batter's box in. Especially against Hunter. Hunter was the master at making the pitch look like it was going to be a million miles an hour but instead having it creep in as slow as a turtle. He threw his turtle ball three times against poor Trebor, and with each pitch Trebor swung earlier and earlier. Strike one, strike two, strike three. It looked like Trebor wanted to bend his aluminum bat in
half, Superman-style, as he walked back to the dugout.

The final batter was the other Fenner twin, Robert. Robert clearly didn't want to repeat Trebor's overanxious hacking. He took a
long
time walking to the plate. He tapped the dirt off his cleats. He spit into his gloves. He spit on the ground. He spit on the bat. He was running out of places to spit. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to psych Hunter out. He was trying to break his rhythm, mess up his concentration. I wanted so bad to yell something rude at him. And believe me, knowing I had a microphone in front of me did not make it easier to resist. But I was good. I said nothing other than “Now batting for Griffith, Robert Fenner.” Okay, I said it about four times, each time with more and more annoyance, but that was all I said. Eventually I was screaming “NOW BATTING FOR GRIFFITH, ROBERT FENNER!”

Finally Robert stepped into the box. Then he held up his hand to call for time. There was a collective groan from the audience. There might have been one from the announcer's booth too. He stepped out of the batter's box and started messing with his gloves. Then the umpire got annoyed and
screamed, “Quit farting around!” This got a good laugh from the crowd. Robert was not amused. Nor was the Griffith coach, who, if I wasn't mistaken, had to be Mr. Fenner. He had the same intense eyes as the twins. And also he kept calling Robert “son.” I'm a really good detective.

Robert narrowed his eyes and dug in at the plate. Mike gave the sign. Hunter went into his windup, and fired a fastball. Robert guessed correctly this time. He was swinging fastball all the way. The ball exploded off the bat, flying high and deep down the left-field line. But he was a fraction of a second too early and hooked it foul and out of play.

“Just a long strike,” I could hear Mike say from behind the plate. “Long strike. Means nothing. We got this.”

He gave the sign again, and again came the fastball. Robert didn't see it coming this time and didn't even get his bat off his shoulder. Right down the middle. Strike two. One out away from the promised land. Hunter had to be so full of adrenaline. Everyone in the stadium felt another fastball coming. Which was why it was the perfect time to call for the slow one. Hunter bore down like he wanted to throw the heater through Mike's glove,
through Mike's body even. Through the umpire and through the backstop. But instead: the slowest slowball that ever slowed. Even time slowed. You could hear Robert blink a few times. And you could hear the air as he swung and missed. A big whiff for strike three! A perfect game! Six strikeouts in a row to end it!

Mike caught the ball, threw his mask off, and charged the mound. It was a move I'd seen on TV many times. Every no-hitter and lots of big wins end with the catcher flipping off his mask and charging the mound. It was a baseball cliché. But still, it was awesome. Every single time. And this time it was Mike getting to be the catcher, holding the ball up like a trophy and charging the mound. He hugged Hunter, then the rest of the team swarmed in, a sea of maroon jerseys swamping the little pitcher.

Everyone was cheering and having a good time. Well, not the guys on Griffith of course. And not one guy in the crowd on the Schwenkfelder side: Davis Gannett.

As for me, I was pumped. I knew I was just supposed to announce the batters as they came up and give the info on new pitchers. But the game was officially over, wasn't it? Couldn't I add my own
thoughts now that the game was over? I figured I could. I couldn't resist anyway. I cleared my throat, grabbed the microphone, and boomed my voice with its most epic sound possible, saying whatever came to mind.

“Star of the game is of course Hunter Ashwell, who pitched very well. That's an understatement. Extremely well. Perfectly well. One for the record books. Perfection is not easy to do. That's why they call it perfection, sports fans. Hunter, you struck out the last six consecutive batters and retired fifteen in a row from first man to last. Not a single player reached base. On the scoreboard in center field here in the city of Schwenk stands nothing but zeroes, like a half dozen eggs on the shelf. What a performance. You wrote your name in capital letters in the record books today, Hunter Ashwell. Yes, you did.”

I didn't add that Hunter only knew how to write in capital letters, never having mastered the intricacies of lowercase, much less cursive. I figured I'd leave that part out. It was a good place to end it. “Lenny Norbeck, signing off,” I said. Had to add that little bit there.

Hunter then ran over to the announcer's booth and climbed inside. I thought he was going to give me a high five, but he wanted the microphone. He
grabbed it out of my hands and turned it on. He started talking about himself in the third person. “I can't say enough about the great job Ashwell did out there,” he said, all out of breath. “I mean, did you
see
him out there, people of Schwenkfelder? He really threw a great game. He just took
over
out there. Hot diggity doggity dig, he did a great job. I mean a
great
job! Who is the greatest pitcher in the world, I ask you? The answer is a no-brainer. It is I, the destroyer of worlds! I just go out, see the glove, and hit it. Boom. Ashwell out.” He dropped the microphone.