Say It Ain't So by Josh Berk Page B

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.
    â€œPitching 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 supposedto 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