Foul Ball Frame-up at Wrigley Field Read online

  As we watched the fans rumble by and grumble about our friend, I felt sick to my stomach. Sure, Omar was weird, but he wasn’t a bad kid.

  “Well, at least it was just one game,” I managed to say. “They’re still in first place.”

  “It’s not like they could blow a five-game lead with ten games to go,” Kevin said.

  A man in a mustache and a “1908” T-shirt overheard Kevin.

  “What did you say?” the man asked.

  “Huh?” Kevin replied. “I just said that they’re still five games ahead of the Reds, so that should be safe.”

  “Son, you’re so naïve,” the man said with a chuckle. “This is the Cubs we’re talking about!”

  Kevin noticeably gulped. He and I feared the doom that may lie ahead. We didn’t want to say it, but we knew what fans would call it.

  The Curse of Omar.

  Chapter 3

  “Mystery Boy Identified”

  Along with Mr. Ovozi, my fellow Geeks and I sat in the Cluck ‘n’ Pluck, a fast-food chicken restaurant in Paw Paw, Michigan. The Cubs had “released” Omar shortly after the Friday game, and we slept that night at his Uncle Sarvar’s house in Chicago. On Saturday morning, we decided to just drive home. We stopped in Paw Paw for a quick lunch. With our meals, we all got waters. No one had the guts to order a Pepsi, or any other soft drink.

  Omar sat despondently. Normally, he’s happy-go-lucky, rattling off funny one-liners. But during this meal, he couldn’t even eat his drumstick. Like Kevin and me, baseball was his life. He understood the profound nature of a baseball curse. We had, after all, grown up with the Indians.

  Mr. Ovozi rubbed his son’s back.

  “You need to eat something, Omar,” he said.

  I remember staring at Omar’s glum face. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through. He looked back at me.

  “What are you staring at me for?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t . . . ,” I mustered.

  “Don’t stare at me like I’m some sort of freak,” he snapped.

  A chill ran through me. I don’t like to hurt anybody, especially one of my friends.

  “Omar!” his dad scolded.

  “No, I wasn’t thinking . . . ,” I stam-mered.

  “Omar, you need to calm down,” his dad said. “Joe is your friend. He is on your side. Right, Joe?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  “We’re all on your side, dude,” Kevin told him.

  Omar nodded and buried his face in his hands. Sadly, his troubles were about to get a whole lot worse. Up on the television, a picture of Andres Cabrera appeared on ESPN next to the words “BREAKING NEWS.” We turned and watched.

  Male news anchor: Just minutes ago, Major League Baseball announced that Cabrera will be suspended for the rest of the regular season, although he will be eligible for the playoffs should the Cubs make it. Though they lead Cincinnati by five games in the NL Central Division, the Cubs will sorely miss Cabrera’s big stick. He has carried this offense all year, hitting .332 with 38 homers and 130 RBI.

  At that point, they cut to Omar dropping the Pepsi on Cabrera’s head.

  Male news anchor: Chicago fans are pointing the finger of blame on this boy. His slippery fingers not only cost the game for the Cubs, but they also led to Cabrera’s suspension and, some fear, another infamous Cubs collapse. For the boy’s safety, the team will not reveal his identity. In other baseball news . . .

  The story was so unsettling. If the Cubs kept losing, they would show that clip over and over—and Chicago fans would get angrier and angrier.

  “At least they don’t know who you are,” Kevin told Omar. “Nobody in Chicago knows you except your uncle.”

  “He won’t say anything,” Mr. Ovozi said.

  “But they know me in Cleveland,” Omar said, nervously wringing his hands.

  “Yeah, but the video of you is dark,” his dad said. “No one can get a good look at your face.”

  “But,” Omar fretted, “there are kids at school who know we went to the game. They’ll start telling everyone.”

  Omar was right. We told everyone at our lunch table that we were going to the Cubs game. Rorie Heffernan, for one, would definitely blab about it.

  Omar dropped his head and folded his arms tightly, as if hugging himself. He wouldn’t eat another bite of chicken. At this point, none of us were hungry. It was a long drive back to Cleveland, and we had to drive past Detroit to get there.

  “Remember that ‘Cleveland’ video on YouTube?” Kevin asked, trying to cheer Omar up. Kevin started singing the tune on the video:

  “See a river that catches on fire. . . . We see the sun almost three times a year. . . . It could be worse, though: At least we’re not . . . Detroit! We’re not Detroit!”

  Normally, Omar would crack up at that. But he didn’t even crack a smile. My gosh, I said to myself. This is gonna be a nightmare.

  On Monday morning, Kevin and I arrived at Garfield Heights Middle School. We had to pretend like every-thing was normal and hope that no kids would ask us about the game. While we waited on the blacktop prior to the first bell, we saw Mr. Ovozi’s Aztek pulling into a parking space. Omar exited the car with both his mom and dad.

  “Crap,” Kevin said. “I think they’re drawing attention to themselves.”

  The Ovozis entered the school, obviously to talk to a teacher or the principal. But any hope that Omar’s trip to Wrigley would be hushed soon went up in flames.

  “Hey, Kernacki!” Rorie Heffernan bellowed to Kevin as he leapt out of his mom’s car. A hefty kid with spiked hair, Rorie had a proud-of-myself grin on his face. “Was that Omar who dropped the soda on Cabrera’s head?”

  Kevin banged his brow and shook his head.

  “Can you lower your voice, please?” I told Rorie.

  “Lower my voice?” he replied. “Okay.”

  He then spoke in an exaggeratedly deep voice—but very loudly.

  “Was that Omar Ovozi who dropped the Pepsi on Andres Cabrera’s head?”

  “Shut your stinkin’ mouth!” Kevin yelled, but to no avail.

  Half the kids on the playground heard Rorie’s pronouncement. That was it. The cat was out of the bag. These kids would tell other kids. Before the afternoon was over, it would be all over Twitter—and then all over the Internet.

  My mom normally works the 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. shift at the Vega-Vita health food store. But on Monday, she left early. Like me, my mom is on the smaller side. She has light skin and long, curly brown hair. She has been getting lines around her eyes. I don’t know if they’re from age or stress.

  Mom, my brother Dan, and I live in a wood-framed, lime-green house in the Cleveland suburb of Garfield Heights. My dad lives—temporarily, we hope—two hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio. That’s the only place he could find work. At six o’clock, Mom and I were watching ESPN. C-Pup, my trusty stuffed cocker spaniel, joined us on the couch.

  My mom gasped. Flashing across the screen was not just the familiar video of Omar dropping the Pepsi, but the following words: “Mystery boy identified as Omar Ovozi of Garfield Heights, Ohio.” My mom jumped to her feet, irate.

  “Why are they broadcasting his name?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The whole nation knows already.”

  Even my brother, who wandered into the living room, seemed troubled. Normally, Dan, who was fourteen, was only interested in his electric guitar and heavy metal. But now he stood there, in his fuzzy goatee and Iron Maiden T-shirt, with a rare look of concern.

  “Is Omar going to have to flee the country?” he asked.

  “No, Danny,” Mom said with a sigh.

  “Maybe he has family in Uzbekistan,” he said.

  Mom turned off the TV and sat back on the couch, looking helpless.

  “I can’t believe
this,” she said. “Last weekend, he and Kevin slept over our house. I made you guys the sugar cookies that looked like baseballs. Remember? With the red icing for the stitches?”

  I nodded.

  “Now,” Dan quipped, “the last thing Omar wants to see is a baseball. Right, Super Joe?”

  “Shut up!” I snapped.

  “Joey!” Mom scolded.

  “He’s always trying to get me aggravated!” I said. “Even in a moment like this.”

  Dan laughed to himself. Maybe it was nervous laughter . . . or maybe he was just a jerk.

  “Danny, just go to your room right now, please,” Mom said.

  “Fine,” he replied as he left. “All my stuff’s in there.”

  “Come on, Joey,” Mom said to me while grabbing her purse. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  Mom and I walked the two blocks to the Ovozis’ home. Omar lived in a simple red-brick ranch house on a street thick with maple trees. On this cloudy, windy day, the leaves rustled loudly. It was usually a pleasant, peaceful street, but not on this day. A swarm of news trucks and more than a dozen reporters had set up in front of the Ovozis’ house. Police set up barricades, preventing cars from driving by.

  “This is so wrong,” Mom said.

  My mom took my hand and walked right past the barricades, toward the front door. She told the officer on the porch that we were friends, and Mrs. Ovozi invited us in. Omar’s mom is a tall, slender African-American woman with long cornrows. Her mascara was smudged under her cheeks. She obviously had been crying. My mom gave her a long hug.

  What I most remember is Mr. Ovozi yelling at a young police officer who sat at the dining room table.

  “What are we supposed to do?!” Mr. Ovozi shouted. “Live like this for the rest of our lives?”

  “No, sir,” the officer replied.

  “All these trucks, these media, these paparazzi, get ’em off our street! Right now—just get ’em out of here!”

  “Sir, if you would just listen, I’ve tried to tell you about the laws for freedom of the press, and how—”

  “Freedom of the press! What about my freedom? Huh? When I grew up, Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union. Communist. I came to United States so I could have my freedom. And now you tell me that in the USA—in ‘land of the free’—we have to be prisoners in our own house? And for what? Because my son drops his soda at a baseball game?”

  Amid the rant, I asked Mrs. Ovozi if I could see Omar. She thought that was a good idea, so I went to his room. I was a little nervous. His door was open, and I popped my head in. I’ll never forget what I saw.

  Omar’s room had always been filled with baseball stuff. He once had posters on the wall of Indians mascot Chief Wahoo and the 1948 Indians, the last Cleveland team to win a World Series. But those posters had been torn down. All of his baseball stuff had vanished. His Grady Sizemore bobblehead, his Baltimore Orioles desk lamp, his cap collection of nearly every American League team, which once lined his shelves—all gone.

  Omar sat curled up on the floor, against the wall, between his bed and dresser. He lifted up his head and revealed a devastated expression. His eyes were red. His cheeks glistened with tears.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He nodded. I walked in slowly and sat on the bed. I had no idea what to say. But Omar had been my friend since kindergarten. He was the first kid to ever hang around with me at recess. We had played on the same Little League team every summer. When I cried after striking out to end a game, he put his arm around me and said we should go out for ice cream. Omar was a stand-up guy. A true friend. It felt right just to be there with him.

  “What’s going to happen to me, Joe?” he asked softly.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “With Bartman, the TV trucks surrounded his house just like mine,” he said. “And he got death threats. He had to leave the state.”

  “Well, this is different,” I said. “A, you’ve already left Illinois. B, you’re a kid; nobody’s gonna send death threats to a kid. And C, the Bartman thing knocked the Cubs out of the playoffs. This year—I mean, even without Cabrera—the Cubs are going to hang on and make it.”

  Omar looked in my eyes and shook his head.

  “Look at the phone, Joe,” Omar said. On the dresser lay his dad’s iPhone. “Look at it.”

  I picked it up. Omar had been following the current Cubs game. I saw the score.

  “It’s still 8–0 Pittsburgh, isn’t it?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “No, it’s, uh . . . 8–1. . . . Final.”

  The Cubs’ lead over the Reds had shrunk to four games. Omar buried his head and clutched his body. He started to tremble. Then he started to shake. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Can you get my mom?” he asked, weakly.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The next afternoon, Kevin and I hung out in his backyard. It was a tiny yard, with a vegetable garden and a chain-link fence. His grandma owned the little white-brick house, and Kevin and his dad lived with her.

  Kevin and I had tried to play catch, but we soon lost interest. We plopped on the lawn and fiddled with grass and twigs.

  “You should have seen him, Kev,” I said. “He looked like he should be in a mental hospital.”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “I was looking at the Cubs’ Facebook page,” he said. “They’re all about the Curse of Omar. And if the Cubs keep losing, it’s gonna get a whole lot worse.”

  We were silent for a long time. But as I sat there, wondering what we could do for our friend, it dawned on me. My phone. I had taken a photo during the fly ball. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and flipped it open. It’s a crummy flip phone, and it takes grainy pictures. But when I looked at the photograph, for the very first time, I was startled by what I saw on the screen.

  “What is it?” Kevin asked.

  Squinting at the small image on the phone, I could see the fans crowded together. They were looking up at the fly ball that was coming toward them. But sneaking up behind the fans was one of those obnoxious Reds fans—the one with the Joey Votto jersey. He had left his seat but not the ballpark.

  “That’s one of those dudes who was sitting behind us!” Kevin said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and look what he’s doing.”

  Kevin peered at the photo. The Votto guy was crouched low, so he wouldn’t be noticed, and his hand was on Omar’s drink.

  “Omar didn’t drop his Pepsi,” I said. “This guy pushed it out of his hand—on purpose!”

  “What a jerk!” Kevin cried.

  “He knew it would make Cabrera drop the ball,” I said.

  “And then he ran away and made Omar—an eleven-year-old kid—take the fall for it!” Kevin said.

  We were both angry yet excited. This was photographic evidence that could clear our friend’s name.

  “Let’s go!” Kevin said, and we ran to our bikes. We couldn’t wait to tell Omar the big news.

  Chapter 4

  The Search for Blake Utley

  Kevin and I sped the four blocks to Omar’s house, expecting to see the “media circus.” But all the TV trucks were gone. Mr. Ovozi’s Pontiac Aztek wasn’t even in the driveway. We rode up to a police car, where a young, clean-cut officer sat sleepily in the driver’s seat.

  “What’s up, guys?” he said.

  Kevin, whose heart was racing, took the lead.

  “We’re here to see Omar,” he said.

  “Sorry,” the officer replied. “The family left this morning.”.

  “Where’d they go?” I asked.

  “Can’t tell ya,” he said. “They’re trying to find some privacy.”

  Kevin bit his lip, trying to think of the next step.

  “Joe, show him your picture,” he said.

  I opened
the photo on the phone and handed it to the officer. We explained everything to him, but he wasn’t impressed.

  “This could be any game,” he said, handing the phone back to me. “And it’s so small and grainy, you can’t make out anything.”

  We argued our point for a while, but the officer couldn’t have cared less. We rode off on our bikes before Kevin pulled to a stop.

  “We’ve got to go to the press with this,” he said.

  “What do you mean, the press?” I asked. “The Cleveland Plain Dealer?”

  That newspaper was downtown. We couldn’t get there on our bikes. But the Garfield Heights paper was within biking distance, at a local strip mall. That’s where we headed.

  “We’re looking for the sports editor,” Kevin said as we walked into the one-room storefront. A burly man with long, white sideburns got up from his desk.

  “I’m the news editor, sports editor, lifestyle editor—all in one,” he chuckled. “What can I do for you?”

  We showed him the photo on the phone. We thought it was the story of the year, but he wouldn’t run it.

  “I’m not saying you’re not friends with that Omar kid,” he said. “But you can’t see his face in this photo. All I see is a bunch of bodies from the rear. This could be any game, any place, any time.”

  Kevin and I were frustrated, but we were determined to prove the innocence of Omar—wherever he was. On Wednesday, for the third straight day, he failed to show up for school. Mrs. Reddick, our teacher, said he was doing his work from home, even though he wasn’t at home home.

  Meanwhile, the curse was getting worse. With a loss that afternoon at St. Louis, the Cubs saw their lead shrivel to 3 ½ games. With Cabrera out of the lineup, the Cubs were struggling to put runs on the board. On ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, Omar was the source of a heated debate.

  Host 1: They’re calling this the Curse of Omar. Is that fair or no?

  Host 2: First of all, it has not yet reached curse status. If they fail to win the division, it will become a curse.

  Host 1: The Curse of Omar?