THE day before You Suck, Ump! Day was my favorite. Because it was when my dad was so not my dad.
Students were now all more confident than when they had arrived. The ones who could tell they were doing well were strutting a bit. The better students hung out together, and the not-so-good students stayed in their own groups.
Dad and Pop called all the students and staff out onto field one. Dad explained, kind of, what was going to happen over the next two days. But not completely. I never missed this speech. Even though it was one of those gray, heavy-air, humid days, the kind that usually make me move slowly, I ran home from the bus to make sure I was there in time.
“You guys have done a lot of great work out here so far,” Dad said. “But these haven’t been real baseball conditions, have they?”
He paused, but it was just to let them think. He wasn’t waiting for an answer.
“Baseball’s not a quiet game. When you’re in a ballpark, there are people selling beer, there are loud and rowdy fans, there are managers unhappy with the calls you’ve made, there are hecklers screaming at you, there are players grumbling or eyeballing you for a called third strike. It is not a classroom setting.
“Over the next two days, you’re going to get a taste of that. Today you’ll mostly deal with playing-field situations. You’ll see a little later on. And tomorrow, we invite some of our town’s good people to fill these stands and, well, yell at you.”
There was a laugh that sort of rippled through the students.
“Okay, let’s break down into our assigned areas. Groups H and J, you’re in the cages. The rest of you, those who were on field two, can head over there now with Soupcan and Pop.”
Dad walked off the field and I followed. He went into the small office he had off a classroom and called out to Mrs. G., “Is it ready?” I noticed he hadn’t shaved—that was part of the show . . . It helped him feel like a manager for some reason.
She brought in a Braves uniform and smiled. “I feel like this session just got started.”
“Any calls?” Dad asked.
“Yes. There was one from someone with the Phillies about Florida? Something like that.”
Dad sneaked a look at me and then nodded quickly at Mrs. G. He slipped the uniform over his clothes, then slowly walked back out to the field.
Before I could ask her, “What was that about Florida?” the phone rang, and she answered it. I followed Dad to the field.
Bobbybo was calling situations, and students in the plate ump and base ump positions were trying to remember everything they’d learned about what position they were supposed to be in, how to spot and call a balk, the infield fly rule . . . baseball is so complicated. And Dad was about to make it a million times worse for them.
“Ball,” the student called, just like he’d been instructed to do.
“Whatzat?” Dad called out from the dugout in a weird, fake southern accent.
“I said ball,” the student said, not looking at Dad. Just looking out at the mound.
“You called that strike a ball?”
“Quiet now,” the student said. He sounded terrified.
Dad was near home plate now. The student looked a little freaked out. Who wouldn’t, with a deranged-looking not-clean-shaven version of my dad, talking in a crazy southern accent and wearing a Braves uniform instead of his usual umpire blue?
“Listen,” Dad said, “you’re giving all the calls to the other team. I don’t know if you’ve got something going on with them—” Here Dad stopped talking and poked his finger in the student’s chest.
The student should have already thrown Dad out of the game. Instead he said, “I’m sorry. I thought it looked like a ball,” sounding like he was about to cry.
“Whatzat, son?”
“I thought it was a ball.” Seriously, about to cry.
Dad turned around to all the students watching. His body language changed at once. He was no longer a slouching, slow-talking, somewhat-deranged-looking manager. He was Ibbit. Instructor Ibbit. “That, boys and girls, is how not to be an umpire.” He turned to the student and said, “I’m sorry you had to be the first one. It’s hard. But you need to work on conveying authority. And not letting a manager walk all over you. If you think this was hard, wait until the crowds are screaming at you tomorrow.”
And how lucky he was, I thought, that Zeke and Sly and I would be on hand to protect him from having tomatoes hurled at his head.