Free Say It Ain't So by Josh Berk Page A

said.
    â€œIt’s also not that catchy,” I added. “Hard to print on a T-shirt.”
    â€œMan, let the T-shirt makers figure that out their own selves. The Great Imperial Ashwell has more important things to worry about. Like what the name should be for my new pitch. I’m thinking about calling it the Great Imperial Ashwell’s Destroyer of Worlds.”
    â€œDefinitely pretty catchy,” I said. “Do you really have a new pitch?”
    Hunter laughed. “Yeah, man, I got new pitches every day. I got the Bat Dodger, Midnight Rider, Midnight Creeper, Midnight Streaker, Midnight Weeper. I got the Jump Ball, Trouble Ball, and Bee-Bee Ball. That’s just getting started.”
    Mike rolled his eyes and whispered to me, “He really only has two pitches. Sometimes he throws his fastball extra hard, but I’m not really sure it deserves its own name.”
    â€œThe Great Imperial Ashwell has hundreds ofpitches!” Hunter roared. He cackled like a super-villain.
    Mike and I laughed. Everyone laughed. Well, not Kyle Webb, who was the world’s saddest first baseman. The divorce—or something else—really seemed to be bothering him.
    â€œSettle down,” Coach Zo said. “We got a game to think about. This team is no joke.”
    Highland Middle School actually
was
a joke. Everyone knew that. First of all, there were no highlands around it. It was just flat farm country. So it kind of was a joke. It was like the Pleasant Valley Mall in that regard, which was neither in a valley nor pleasant. It really was a mall, though. Sort of.
    More to the point, Highland’s baseball team wasn’t really great. Everyone knew that too. One year they managed to come in fourth in a three-team league. No one is quite sure how they pulled that off. It was a record of futility sure to stand the test of time. Kind of like my new favorite baseball player I read about in a library book: Bill Bergen. He was a catcher, mostly for the Reds and also the Superbas. That’s right, there was a team called “the Superbas.” They’re now the Dodgers, which is also a weird name if you think about it. Anyway, BillBergen played, like, a hundred years ago. And he got five hundred hits in his career. Which sounds like a lot, except for that he had a really long career. He had three thousand at bats! Five hundred hits over three thousand at bats is pretty bad. His batting average was about .170. Really bad.
    The entire Highland team was basically a bunch of Bill Bergens. Actually, they wished they were Bill Bergen. From where they sat, a batting average of a buck seventy was, like, all-star caliber.
    The energy was high and everyone was in great spirits as we rolled into the parking lot. The team went into the locker room to get dressed for the game and to warm up. I thought about finding the Highland PA announcer to introduce myself and talk about the tools of the trade. But they didn’t even have a PA booth. Losers! I realize that we didn’t have one until a week ago, but still, it made me feel superior to Highland. It also meant that I needed something else to do before the game began. I was all on my lonesome. Other Mike had not been in the least interested in making the trip, and everyone else here went to Highland (duh).
    Then I saw a familiar face trudging up the path toward the field. It was Davis Gannett.

I tried to ignore Davis. I just pretended he wasn’t there. Like, I knew he saw me, and I knew he knew I saw him. I knew he knew that I saw him seeing me. And he knew that I was trying to pretend not to see him just as I knew he was pretending not to see me. It was very complicated. But the basic agreement was that we each pretend the other wasn’t there.
    The warm-ups were over and the team was getting ready for the game. Coach Zo was busy talking to the umpires and the coach for Highland, so there was a bit of a lull. Mike walked over to the bleachers where