Free About the B'nai Bagels by E.L. Konigsburg

the kids loved that, too. We practiced twice a week and after each session you could feel your muscles loosen and your nerves tighten. Our fielding became like some complicated dance number, the timing was so good. Spencer’s having been catcher on his Little League Championship Team helped, too. He remembered how he felt
at first
; that kind of remembering is unusual in older brothers,especially when they are as old as Spencer. But he remembered how heavy the catcher’s equipment felt, and how you wished that you could sight the ball from behind the plate as well as you can when it is coming toward you in the outfield. And he remembered what a nervous-maker it was to have that bat swinging in front of your eyes. Right in front. And how that made the ball even harder to sight. So what Spencer did was to train a catcher for us. He trained Hersch, who took it very well.
    Spencer also made us practice bunting even though it quickly became obvious that Barry was the only kid who could pick a spot to lay down a bunt and beat it out. It should have happened to some nicer guy because Barry resented bunting the way I resent having to wear rubbers when I don’t really believe it will rain and would like to take my chances with shoes. Barry always thought he could get a big hit.
    Spencer’s proclamation that everyone should walk to the playing field cut down on the number of parents who came. Mrs. Polsky came with Mrs. LaRosa, though. Sidney and Louis walked, and their mothers drove alongside in the Polsky’s VW. They had to drive so slowly that the car never got out of first gear and their coming was announced by the erg-erg-erg sound getting louder and louder. Barry’s mother also came to all the practices;she watched her son as if he were Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The whole parade. Did you ever get the feeling about a guy that everything he does is rehearsed? Like the way Barry walked. I got the feeling that he had watched baseball movies and practiced that loose-jointed kind of saunter. Maybe a baseball uniform just makes you look that way. Maybe I even looked that way as I left the field. I wouldn’t mind if I did.
    Long before our first game came along, everyone on our team was in love with my mother. They called her Mother Bagel, and they called Spencer Brother Bagel. They preferred Mother to Brother, which wasn’t exactly one of the Great Decisions of the Western World. But it does show that they had quite forgotten that she is a woman.
    Simon and Sylvester, who are Catholic and who used to cross themselves before each time at bat, began tipping their hats to the Big Light Fixture in the sky. It wasn’t that Mother did anything to convert them, it’s just that kids have a way of imitating people they like. That’s how Si and Syl probably began crossing themselves in the first place; they saw some ball player doing it on TV. Everyone including mother was having great trouble telling which was where on the field. They each had a number: Simon was Number 5, and Sylvesterwas Number 4, but Mother always had to check her list to see which number belonged to which. She finally brought a red handkerchief and made Simon wear it in his back pocket, but it was always falling out, and Mother couldn’t remember whether she had assigned the handkerchief to Simon or to Sylvester. And sometimes for fun Sylvester would pick it up and wear it. Mother ended up addressing either or both of them as Twin. All she knew was that they were terrific.
    Of all the kids who loved my mother, Sidney Polsky loved her best. Mother had been the first to call a spade a spade and fat, fat. Maybe Sidney didn’t know that he was fat because no one had ever told him that before; his mother had banned the word from the entire language. I can see her now, changing all her recipes to “fry the potatoes in Crisco plump.” After Sidney realized that what he was was fat, he began to lose weight, and Mother congratulated him after each pound he lost.