Read Screaming at the Ump for Free Online Page B

command of the game. Even those of you not selected to go to Cocoa will leave here better umpires. Okay, let’s hustle out to the gym.”
    Dad stood there, rolling back on his heels.
    I watched as the class stood. It was an every-man-and-June-by-and-for-him/herself kind of scene. As the days went on, they’d break up into groups and cliques. Right now they seemed a little nervous, a little like, say, middle-school students. Within days, they’d learn how much Dad and Pop liked to see hustle. They’d be jogging between stations, standing straight, looking their instructors in the eye when they talked to them. Everyone wanted that shot at being a professional umpire.
    Mrs. Bob the Baker always complained that everything at BTP seemed so
military
. She said that word as though it were something negative.
    But that was one of the things I’d always loved best about BTP. The order. By late tomorrow, students would know how to stand in formation on the field, Group A two feet off the right-field foul line, and all the groups back from there, spread out at exact and even intervals. They’d learn the basic mechanics of calling balls and strikes, safe and out, foul balls and balks. They’d run through the drills, doing the exact same moves at the exact same time, like they were one person.
    But not yet. Now they were this big globby mob, all trying to fit through one narrow doorway at once.
    Zeke was still sitting there, grinning like some kind of learning-impaired monkey.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDid you hear what he said?”
    I knew Zeke was talking about the videos, but I couldn’t resist. “Oh, don’t worry.
You
don’t need to wear a cup. He meant the students. It’s in case they get hit. With a ball. In that spot. Where it hurts.”
    He slapped my head the same way Pop sometimes did.
    â€œI’m really doing the filming.”

Televised Game
    Z EKE spent two hours filming. I worked as his assistant, organizing and labeling, running students through the different calls, making careful notes about the order, so that the before videos would match the afters.
    Once we got through Groups A and B, Zeke went home.
    Sometimes the first day ran really long. Most BTP school days were eight to five thirty, followed by dinner in the cafeteria. Dad and Pop had dinner with me most nights, but on the first day of school, they liked to be available to students, because they were usually falling all over each other with questions.
    I finished my homework and turned on the game. Jackson Alter was trying to extend a twenty-four-game hitting streak, and there was no way I was going to miss that. If anyone was ever going to beat DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game streak, he was the one my money was on. I watched, scribbling in my notebook.
    Dad and Pop watched games on TV like umpires. They saw which crew was calling the game and said things like “Oh, at least it’ll be a quick one” or “You know a manager’s going to be thrown out tonight.” It made sense: Both Dad and Pop had worked as umpires. Dad made it to the minor leagues before he and Pop opened up BTP.
    For me, though, it wasn’t about the umpires. There was time within a baseball game—lots of time—but unlike most other sports, no clock. The game had a rhythm, a slow one, familiar. It was the kind of sport that let your brain drift a little, almost, to find the connections, the surprises, the stories.
    I didn’t even have a favorite team, unless it was whatever team Jackson Alter was playing for. He started as a backup utility infielder for the Yankees. And then, even though he was an amazing shortstop, he got traded a lot. He went from the Yankees to the Cubs to the Phillies to the Cardinals, and for the past year, he’d been on the Orioles. Wherever he was, I loved watching him play. He was fast and crisp, and he seemed like a really good guy.
    I loved the way Jackson tried to make