Guys Read: The Sports Pages (20 page)

But he didn't. Instead, he threw more fastballs, each just on the edge of the strike zone. Jeter fouled off one. He fouled off another. And then, on the third, he hit a towering foul pop-up that started drifting toward our seats. I quickly pulled out my glove. I'd been to several games before, but I'd yet to ever get a ball.

It was so high that I lost it for several seconds. But suddenly I had it again and realized it was coming right at me. I had it. I really did. I don't even know what happened next, honestly, because I had that thing in my sights, I'm telling you. It was all but in my glove.

But as the replay showed again and again and again and again and again, I clearly didn't have it. In fact, what happened was that, right after I nudged Nate out of my way so I could make the catch cleanly, I ended up missing the ball entirely, and it nailed me right in the face.

The blow sent me reeling backward, and my limbs flailed wildly. The chain reaction of events that I started in that one moment is almost too ridiculous to believe. In fact, if it wasn't well documented by numerous TV cameras, I wouldn't believe it had actually happened the way it did at all.

Anyway, first Nate tried to grab me to keep me from tumbling back into the seats behind me. But he wasn't able to stop my momentum, and we both ended up spilling over our seats back into the row behind us. As we fell, I accidently knocked a guy's full tray of nachos up in the air and spilled two full sodas all over two little kids, who promptly started bawling. The nachos landed on the team president's wife's head. (Yeah, about that, what was the team president doing down in the stands and not in a luxury box anyway? I guess he was trying to seem more like a regular fan instead of some big-shot rich executive, which is exactly what he was.)

When the nachos hit her head, the hot cheese sauce caused her to launch her full soda backward, where it splashed all over Sara Hernandez. She got a face and lap full of Coke and ice, likely ruining my chances of ever getting to even speak to her again without her punching me in the temple repeatedly.

Then Sara spilled her soda on an old guy in the aisle next to her. He was holding two sodas at the time himself, both of which proceeded to spill as well. It was like a rousing game of sodinoes (soda + dominoes). One soda ended up in the lap of an old war veteran who started having some sort of war flashback and spilled several more drinks on several other important people while air machine gunning everybody around him before diving across two rows of seats onto an imaginary live grenade. I guess if there's one thing I learned that night besides the fact that Derek Jeter is an even bigger jerk than I'd always thought, it's that the only people who can afford the good seats at Yankee stadium are generally pretty important people. And also that spilling beverages on old war veterans can be hazardous to your health.

Anyway, the second soda landed on the steps where a pretty heavy guy holding a huge tray of food just happened to be walking by. He slipped and went tumbling down the stairs, his food spraying across several rows of players' family members. The tubby guy rolled all of the way down the aisle and somehow somersaulted right over the railing and onto the Red Sox dugout roof. He took out a $65,000 television camera, which shattered into a billion pieces that went raining down onto the field like some sort of cyborgian downpour.

Then the fat guy, the cameraman, and the last few chunks of camera went crashing over the side of the dugout and landed on top of Dustin Pedroia, the Red Sox's star second baseman, breaking his leg in three places and pretty much ending the Sox's play-off hopes.

Needless to say, this clip got tons of airtime on ESPN. They played it at least eight thousand times between all forty-six of their stations within the next twenty-four hours. The video went viral on the internet, getting over three million views faster than any other video in history. The fact that I'd been wearing Red Sox gear made the whole thing even worse.

Basically, I was a laughingstock. Not just of my school, but of the whole
country
. Plus, I got a black eye to remind everyone at school, or in the subway, or anywhere in public, every day for the next several weeks that I was, indeed,
that kid
.

“Hey, hey, aren't you
that kid
?” they'd all say anywhere I went in public before laughing hysterically and mimicking my infamous whiff.

Furthermore, Nate's elbow had basically shattered when he fell trying to hold me back. Which really sucks, because he was the school basketball team's star point guard. And even though the basketball season didn't start for a few months, his elbow wouldn't be fully healed until after the basketball season was over, essentially ending our chances of becoming the first team to ever win three straight regional championships. Mr. Benedict, the basketball coach, was also my Social Studies teacher, which meant I could pretty much kiss my chances at getting an A, or probably even a C, in his class good-bye.

And of course I lost the election for class president by a landslide. A combination of spilling soda on a popular girl, killing our basketball season before it even began, and just generally making a fool of myself while embarrassing the whole school can have that effect. I think the final tally was: me 11 votes, the other candidate 297 votes. I still to this day can't walk down the hall at school without people constantly throwing stuff at me and yelling, “Catch, butterfingers!” and then cracking some joke about me breaking people's limbs.

To make matters worse, another video clip from the game showed Derek Jeter in the dugout watching the replay on the Jumbotron and then smirking and laughing with his teammates. Instead of getting derided for such cruelty (I mean, he hit a little kid in the face with a baseball!), the talking heads on ESPN just laughed right along with him, citing his great sense of humor about it all.

But I haven't even told you the worst part. The worst part was what happened the evening after the game, right before the next game started. Because of the public reaction to what happened, Jeter agreed to do a meet-and-greet with me where he'd present me with a few autographed items and take some photos. I guess it was supposed to be an apology or something. Gatorade sponsored the event, and it got some media attention, but my name was hardly mentioned. Basically, all of the articles just went on and on about how great Derek Jeter was to forgive the poor uncoordinated boy for causing such a scene and what a great person he was. He didn't even apologize to me personally during the entire ten-minute press conference. And I had to endure the angry stares of all the Red Sox fans in the room for wrecking Pedroia's leg. Not to mention the melting glares the cameraman was giving me. Have you ever had to sit in a room with a bunch of grown-ups who all hate your guts? No? Well, let me tell you, it sucks.

And then some reporter guy asked me a question. “What's it like to get to meet Derek Jeter in person?”

I looked at him. And I looked at all the faces of the people around him. And I thought about the election, and Sara Hernandez, and the Red Sox's season, and the way Mr. Benedict looked at me in the hall that day for taking out his star player—the same way the Red Sox manager would probably look at me for taking out his star player, Pedroia. And I opened my mouth to answer. And then—I couldn't help it—I cried. And the room was silent, just the sound of me crying, and then, well … I peed my pants. I wish I was kidding, but you don't know what it was like. Have you ever had to sit in a room being forced to drink glass after glass of Gatorade while billions of cameras and microphones are pointed at you and making you relive the worst moment of your life over and over again in front of millions of viewers across the country? No? Well, okay then, maybe you would have peed yourself too, so shut up.

Of course, once that happened, Derek once again used my embarrassment for his own gain by cracking some joke about fish sticks that didn't even make sense but that everybody laughed at so hard you'd have thought it was the best joke ever told in history. At least they stopped paying attention to me after his joke.

Oh, and to cap it all off, Jeter hit a two-run home run on the very first pitch he saw that night and wound up scoring what would ultimately be the winning run.

And, remember, it had been my birthday.

Clearly, Derek Jeter had to pay.

A few weeks into Jeter's insane hot streak, which was also a few weeks after he was supposed to have been cursed, I decided that the baseball gods weren't going to let me deliver Jeter's comeuppance in the form of poor play on the field for some inexplicable reason. Probably Jeter sold his soul to them in the minors for eternal luck or something. Who knows?

Anyway, I decided I'd have to show everybody just what kind of person Jeter really is in another way. The perfect opportunity presented itself to me a few days later. Most kids were spending their weekends at the beach or something like that, enjoying the last few weeks of nice weather before fall really hit the coast, but I spent all my free time on the computer researching the best way to get back at Jeter. And I came upon something interesting on Saturday afternoon.

Derek Jeter was launching a new line of cologne as a part of some shameless sell-out million-dollar endorsement deal he'd made with Macy's. The cologne was called
Stolen
, probably in reference to the fact that sometimes opposing pitchers let Jeter steal bases out of pity. A more accurate name for it would have been
Hack
or
Overpaid
or
Worthless Jerk Who Everybody Loves for Some Reason Despite Being Nothing Better Than an Old Rusty Useless Puke Bucket
.

Anyway, the point is, I came up with the perfect plan to ruin his big perfume event and probably make him look like an idiot in the process. Shoot, maybe if I got really lucky, he'd slip on a chunk of poop and separate his shoulder or something. Oh, yes, the plan most definitely was going to involve feces. Lots of it, with any luck.

I just needed to convince Nate to help me.

“Why are we doing this again?” Nate asked.

“You know why.”

“No, I mean, destroy Derek Jeter, yeah, I get that. I mean, what does my mom's business have to do with getting back at Derek Jeter?”

“You'll see,” I said.

Nate sighed. “I don't like this.”

“Yeah, well, you should be behind me on this. Derek Jeter is also responsible for your shattered elbow, remember?” I said.

It looked like Nate was going to disagree with me about that for some reason, but then he just sighed and handed me his mom's spare keys. We headed downstairs and then across the street to his mom's kennel. She runs a daycare business for dogs. It's crazy to me that people pay her to watch their dog while they're at work every day. I mean, seriously, can't you just leave your dog at home like most normal people? But I guess I should be happy that there are so many morons in New York City with extra cash and dogs. Because my plan wouldn't have been a plan at all without them.

We went around to the back door. It was lunchtime, which meant all of the dogs were in their little kennels or cages eating separately while Nate's mom was in her little office eating lunch herself and taking a break. Her assistant almost always left to go get lunch somewhere else.

I used the key Nate had given me, and we slipped in the back door. Luckily, the dogs were already crazily howling and barking, like always, so nobody heard us come in. We went into the back kennel area, and I grabbed a handful of leashes and got to work.

Ten minutes later, I had leashed up twenty-eight dogs of various sizes and breeds and was ready to head over to the event. Nate wanted to stay behind, partly because he wouldn't be much help with only one arm and partly because he was whining about how he was already grounded for two weeks and if he got caught doing this it'd probably become two years.

But I made him come with me for moral support. And to try and help control the dogs a little bit until we got there.

I knew twenty-eight dogs at once were going to be a challenge, but I really had no idea. Walking the dogs down Sixth Avenue toward the gigantic Macy's on Thirty-fourth did not actually happen. No, the truth was that they walked me down Sixth Avenue toward the gigantic Macy's on Thirty-fourth.

People screamed and dove out of the way as my herd of dogs barreled down the busy sidewalk. It was probably the mix of big and small, hairy and naked, peeing and pooping that caused the most staring. Also the barking. Oh, and the fact that there were twenty-eight all tethered to one little kid, while his friend with a broken arm in a sling ran behind them desperately shouting about what a terrible idea this was.

One guy in a suit shook his fist at me as we swarmed past him, and I gave him a shrug before being yanked by the force of 112 legs attached to twenty-eight leashes. I half expected my arm to come right out of its socket, leaving me behind in the dust. To prevent that, I just walked, or ran that is, at the dogs' pace.

But it was going to be worth it. I couldn't wait to see Jeter's face once I let this pack of crazed beasts loose onto his little event. There'd be shattered bottles of cologne everywhere, dogs barking, poop marinating in Derek Jeter's new scent. I could just see the headlines:
DEREK JETER'S NEW COLOGNE SMELLS LIKE POOP, LITERALLY
. I was pretty sure that most journalists would kill to get to use the words “poop” and “literally” in the same headline.

And Derek would be so shaken by the whole ordeal that he'd finally go into the deep slump I'd cursed him with last week. People would call it the Canine Curse, probably.

By the time we got to Macy's, the pack of dogs had amassed in their fur and mouths a nice amount of garbage and other junk they'd bowled through along the way. A Boston terrier and some sort of weird-looking naked miniature pinscher near the front of the pack were angrily fighting over a leather glove while a retriever beside them peed on a garbage can. This was going to be great, I could tell already.