“We could sell lemonade,” suggested Suzi Barrett.
I thought for a moment. Refreshments sounded like a lot of fun — and a lot of work. “Who’s going to sell the refreshments?” I asked. “We’ll all be busy playing or cheering or coaching.”
“Our brothers and sisters,” said Max Delaney. “I bet Amanda would help.”
I doubted that, but Charlie and Sam might help. The Pike triplets might, too. “Well, okay. But what are we going to do with the money we earn?” I asked. “Remember, it will be team money.”
“Buy team hats,” Jackie replied immediately. “We really need them. Only some of us have hats, and they don’t match.”
So that was all settled.
“Great,” I said. “But now we better do the most important thing of all — practice.”
I got the kids all worked up again, then divided them into two sides for a game. They really needed to improve their teamwork.
“Nicky,” I said, pulling Nicky Pike aside, “I think you’re the best pitcher we’ve got, so from now on I want you and David Michael to pitch at all our practices. But you’ll pitch in the game against the Bashers.”
Nicky looked awed and proud.
The game got underway.
Vanessa and Haley stood on the sidelines shouting, “Bash those Bashers!” and stuff like that. Watson cheered loudly for Karen, Andrew, David Michael — and the rest of the team.
But not too long into the game, I caught Suzi Barrett turning somersaults in the outfield and Linny Papadakis, an imaginary microphone in his hand, pretending to be a sportscaster, when he was supposed to be playing shortstop. And Claire’s batting average was still zero.
I shook my head.
Claire struck out and Jackie stepped up to home plate. Nicky pitched the ball, Jackie swung the bat, and CRACK! He slammed the ball so hard that everyone knew he’d gotten a home run. Grinning, Jackie set off for first base. But before he reached it, we heard another sound.
CRASH!
The ball has gone right through a window of Stoneybrook Elementary. And not just any window, the window of the principal’s office. Thank goodness it was a Saturday. No one would be —
A face appeared in the window. It was the principal’s secretary. He was out the side door of the school in three seconds flat. (Maybe he’d want to play on our team.)
“Who threw that ball?” he shouted.
Poor Jackie stepped forward. “Me,” he said. “I mean, I hit it. It was a home run,” he added hopefully.
The man smiled. But he still told Jackie that the Rodowskys would have to pay for a new pane of glass.
When he went back inside, I announced that practice was over. The kids would never be able to concentrate now. I was sure of that.
Even so — despite the accident and sending the kids home early — Jessi told me later that Buddy and Suzi were absolutely jubilant as they walked back to the Bar:retts’ that afternoon. And Watson was so excited about the upcoming game that he made David Michael, Andrew, and Karen excited, too.
T-shirts, cheerleaders, refreshments, a real game coming up. It had been one of the biggest days in Krusher history.
Tuesday
Whoa! Something is going on. And, Kristy, it has to do with you and that other team, the Blasters or whoever they are. It doesn’t really have anything to do with baby-sitting, except that I saw the incident while I was sitting. See, Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Newton asked me to take Myriah, Gabbie, and Jamie to the Tuesday Krushers practice. I was in the stands watching the game when the Blasters came by, and Kristy, you kind of got mad a their coach. But before you got mad, you got, oh … I better stop before I get myself in trouble. Just one more thing. The Perkins girls and Jamie were upset when we walked home this afternoon. They were really annoyed with what the Blasters did, and embarrassed about it, too, I think….
Talk about Whoa! Dawn doesn’t miss a thing. Her notebook entry was pretty meaty, if you know what I mean. The only thing she got wrong was the Blasters. She meant the Bashers, of course. I wished she hadn’t noticed quite so much about me and Bart. And I really wished she hadn’t written about us in the notebook. I’d have to talk to her about that.
The thing is, I hadn’t mentioned Bart to any of my friends, even Mary Anne. I mean, I haven’t mentioned how I feel about him. The club members know that the Krushers are playing a rival team soon, and some of them know that the coach of that team is named Bart, but none of them knows about my Gigantic Crush on him. Usually, that’s the sort of thing us club members share, but for some reason, I wanted to keep Bart private. And after what happened at the practice, I was glad I’d been doing just that.
The practice got off to a pretty normal start. The kids arrived on time (Dawn got her kids to the playground early — she is so organized), and they were all wearing their T-shirts again. It was a much warmer day, so they didn’t have to wear them over other clothes. I looked at my team. Smiling faces, new Kristy’s Krushers T-shirts, running shoes with the laces tied or the Velcro straps fastened, neat blue jeans — all twenty kids … No, nineteen of them. Nineteen tidy team members and one mess, our walking disaster. Jackie’s jeans were muddy, his shoes were untied, and his shirt was on backward and already had a hole in it. Even his hair was a mess. Oh, well.
“All right, Krushers!” I called.
To my surprise, I heard a shout: “Krush those Bashers! Crash those Bashers! Bash those Bashers out of sight!”
Our cheerleaders were on hand.
Then I heard another sound. It was a laugh. I turned away from my team members, who were lined up, ready to count off by twos, and saw — Bart and about ten of his Bashers. Bart was sitting in the stands, gazing intently at our team, but his Bashers were hanging around behind the catcher’s cage. I guessed they were his Bashers, anyway. They were sturdy-looking boys wearing matching red baseball caps. But Bart wasn’t paying much attention to them.
“Bart!” I cried. I’m sure I blushed. My knees turned to water, but I managed to run over to him. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Just checking up on our competition,” he replied coolly. “That’s legal.”
“Oh.” I said. I felt something like a rock settle in the pit of my stomach. “We — we haven’t checked you guys out.”
“Come on and check us out, then. It’s a free country.”
Bart tried to smile, but I frowned. This didn’t seem like the boy I’d talked to under the street-light. Was this a side of him I didn’t know yet? Or was he only like this on the ball field? (Like Claire and her baseball tantrums?) I mean, I would do anything for my Krushers. Maybe Bart felt the same way about his Bashers.
I didn’t know what to say to Bart, so I just walked back to my team. I felt crushed. (Krushed.)
As I passed the Bashers I heard a few snickers from them. And some whispered comments which I now Bart couldn’t hear.
“Look at that messy kid. He looks just like Pig-Pen from Peanuts!” (Jackie.)
“Look at that baby-baby with the wiffle ball! I don’t believe it — a wiffle ball!” (That was Gabbie, her T-shirt covering her round two-and-a-half-year-old tummy. The only ball I’d allow her to hit was a wiffle ball. And in order to throw it, the pitcher had to stand about five feet away from her. How would I handle that in the game against the Bashers? I hadn’t even thought about that, but I was determined to put every one of my kids in the game, even Gabbie and Claire, and even if it was only for a few minutes. Watson and I had decided that was important.)
More comments:
“Look at fatso!” (Okay, so Jake Kuhn was a little overweight.)
“But that kid looks like a good pitcher.” (Nicky. I was relieved to see that the Bashers appeared worried.)
In the stands, Dawn was watching us. She was taking everything in. She’d seen me have my talk with Bart, and she’d seen Bart’s kids snicker at the Krushers. She’d figured out that they were Bashers (or Blasters), and she was surprised. She was surprised because she knew Bart’s
team was from my neighborhood, which is pretty far away. The Blasters must be awfully curious, thought Dawn, to come all the way across town just to watch a Krushers practice. Either that, or they were nervous.
I decided to ignore Bart and his stupid Bashers. I pretended they weren’t even there. At least I tried to. It wasn’t easy. I could almost feel Bart’s eyes on me.
“Okay, Krushers!” I shouted. “Practice game! Practice game! Count off by twos! Let’s get rolling!”
The Krushers divided up. David Michael and Nicky were the pitchers, and Nicky’s side was at bat first.
David Michael pitched to Margo Pike. She hit a pop fly. One out.
It’s too bad I have such good hearing because I heard one of the Bashers say, “What can you expect from a girl?”
From a girl? Weren’t there any girl Bashers? Even though I had decided to ignore our audience, I turned around to look at Bart. He was still sitting in the stands, watching the game.
Myriah Perkins was up next. She hit the ball and ran to second base. She really should only have made it to first, but Jackie was in the outfield and had so much trouble getting hold of the ball, you’d have thought there was margarine on his hands.
I heard a couple of hoots from behind me. “Pig-Pen sure can’t catch,” somebody shouted.
I whirled around to see Bart’s reaction to his Basher’s behavior, but two of the other Bashers were talking to him. For just a moment, I wondered if they were actually distracting him so he couldn’t hear…. Nah.
Matt Braddock was up next. Good, I thought. Now we’ll show those Bashers our stuff. If only Jackie weren’t in the outfield …
Matt got two strikes, but whacked the ball hard on the third try. He let out an animal-sounding yell, which he sometimes does when he’s excited (of course, he has no idea how he sounds), and he took off. When he reached second base, he paused, seeing that Myriah had stopped at third. She signed to Matt to stay put.
At that, the laughter behind me was so loud that the only thing I could be glad of was that Matt wasn’t able to hear it. The Krushers looked over at the Bashers. I could see the same thing registering on all their faces at the same time: They knew their competition was watching, and they knew they ought to start playing well.
But just then, one kid said loudly, “A dummy! They’ve even got a dummy on their team!”
Bart, why don’t you make your kids shut up? I wondered. But I could see that one of his players had asked him for pitching tips, which Bart was giving out grudgingly. (He wanted to watch our team.) Now why would a kid need pitching tips in the middle of a scouting-out-the-other-team venture? Bart’s Bashers were distracting him. I felt very angry. Why wasn’t Bart picking up on what his team was doing?
Haley charged over to the Basher who had just insulted her brother. She stood inside the catcher’s cage, nose-to-nose with the boy on the other side of the wire fence.
“That ‘dummy,’” she said with clenched teeth, “is my brother, and if you call him a dummy one more time, I will personally rearrange your face.”
The kid just stared at Haley, but she stared back until she had stared him down.
The Bashers grew silent. They watched Haley walk back to Vanessa and Charlotte, where the three girls held a hurried conference. Then Charlotte returned to the stands, and Vanessa and Haley began jumping around, shouting, “Krushers crush, Bashers bash, but we’ll get you Bashers in a flash!”
After Haley’s outburst, the Bashers were quiet for two whole innings. They were still hanging around the catcher’s cage (actually, four of them were hanging on it, several feet off the ground), but they were quiet. They were quiet until Jackie, running home, somehow couldn’t stop in time and ran right into the catcher’s cage.
Two of the Bashers were knocked to the ground, like flies flicked off a screen door.
“Way to go, Pig-Pen!” yelled one Basher, and I shot a killer look at Bart, but he was now bending over, trying to unknot his sneakers, which I could see had been tied together, undoubtedly by his stupid Bashers.
If Bart couldn’t control his team, I thought, then he really shouldn’t be coaching.
Jackie looked at me with tear-filled eyes, and I couldn’t blame him. I called an end to the practice.
Dawn told me later that as she walked Myriah, Gabbie, and Jamie home that afternoon, Jamie sulked, Gabbie cried, and Myriah held her sister’s had protectively.
“Those boys were mean,” Gabbie commented, and then hiccupped.
“They were,” Myriah agreed, “but we won’t be mean back, will we? … Will we?” she said again when no one answered her.
“No,” agreed Gabbie and Jamie at last.
And I knew that was true. My Krushers would not be mean.
I couldn’t believe it! How did it get to be Friday already?
It was the day before the Krushers’ game against the Bashers. We were holding a special final practice. Us Baby-sitters Club members were even giving up on our meeting so we could cheer the Krushers on.
The day was very important. It was my last chance to work with the Krushers. I knew the practice might be a tough one, though. The kids were pretty wound up. But they needed to practice if they wanted to win — and they all wanted to win.
I wanted them to win, too. Not just because I’m competitive, but because I wanted Kristy’s Krushers to know what it felt like to be winners — instead of kids who were afraid to be part of Little League, who were afraid of Bart’s Bashers, who had zero batting averages, who were called “Pig-Pen” and “dummy,” and who broke windows and ran into catcher’s cages.
And by the end of our practice, I truly thought the Krushers had a shot at winning, even though I had never seen the Bashers play. I hadn’t done what Bart had done — check out the competition. I was scared to. I was also scared to admit that, even to myself. So I tried not to think about it.
At most of our practices, a few people would be sitting in the stands watching: club members who had brought kids over to play, maybe a couple of interested parents or a brother or sister, and the cheerleaders. But that Friday, twenty people were in the stands!
The Krushers were awed.
I was awed.
Jessi, Mal, Claud, Dawn, and Mary Anne were there, of course. So were Mrs. Newton and Lucy, Mrs. Perkins and Laura, Watson (taking the afternoon off from work), the triplets, and a few other people. There was no sign of the Bashers, and I breathed sign of relief.
Then, just as I was about to start our game, the cheerleaders showed up. Right away, I noticed two things. One, they’d put together outfits for themselves — Kristy’s Krushers T-shirts, matching flared blue-jean skirts, white knee socks, and sneakers. Two, Charlotte was wearing one of the outfits!
I ran over to the girls. “You look great!” I exclaimed. “The Krushers really appreciate your cheering…. And, Char, you’re wearing an outfit, too. Does this mean you’re going to cheer tomorrow? We’d really like that, but you don’t have to, you know.”
“I know,” Charlotte replied, “and right now it just means I’m the head cheerleader because I made up all the cheers. But I might cheer tomorrow.”
“She’s thinking about it,” Haley added.
Wow. I knew the Krushers meant a lot to their families and friends, but if they could inspire Charlotte to think about coming out of her shell, they must really be something. More and more, I was feeling that we just might, as Charlotte would say, bash those Bashers the next day!
I walked back to my team. I stood in front of them, ready to give them a pep talk, but for some reason I glanced into the stands first. My eyes met Watson’s and he gave me the thumbs-up sign.
I grinned and gave him the sign back.
Then I faced my team. There they were — nineteen Krushers and Jackie. Oh, Jackie was a Krusher, too, all right. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that he, well, he did look a little like Pig-Pen. He was still the only kid with a hole in his T-shirt. He was the only kid whose shoes were untied. Even the littl
est kids were neat and tidy. Jackie was our walking disaster. Although he had been playing better lately. His hitting had really improved. It was just that he had so many accidents.
“Okay, Krushers,” I began, “you all know what tomorrow is.”
“A game,” replied Jackie.
“Well, our big game,” I said. “Against the …”
“Bashers!” shouted the Krushers.
“And what are we going to do?” I cried.
“Beat them!”
“What?”
“Beat them!”
“Louder!”
“BEAT THEM!”
“And how are we going to do that?” I asked.
Silence.
“By playing our …” I prompted my team.
“Best!”
“Right. That’s all I can ask of you,” I told the Krushers. “That’s all you can ask of yourselves.”
This was something Watson had told me many times. In fact, it was something he had told Karen and Andrew and my brothers and me many times, and not just about playing ball. About anything. Once, I was giving him the news that I’d gotten a C-plus on a math test. Now, a C-plus is not a bad grade, but I usually get mostly As and a few Bs. Watson looked thoughtful and asked, “Did you study for this test? Did you do your best?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Honest. It’s just that we’re doing pre-algebra now and it’s really hard.”
“Your best is all you can expect,” said Watson. “If you want, I’ll give you some extra help, but since you did your best, I’m not disappointed. I’m proud of you.”
“I would like some help,” I’d told him.
Now, standing before the Krushers, I said to them again, “Just do your best.” And without even looking into the stands, I knew that Watson was smiling at me.
I divided the Krushers into teams, and our last practice game got underway. Gabbie was up at bat first, so David Michael, who was pitching, had to move in pretty close to her. He tossed the wiffle ball. Gabbie missed. He tossed it again. Gabbie missed. He tossed it a third time, and Gabbie swung and hit it. She ran as fast as she could go (which wasn’t nearly as fast as the rest of the kids), and she reached first base.