Anyway, I knew that I needed a softball book for this time of year, even though the Krushers are the stupidest thing in the Baby-Sitters Club series.* Seriously, the only thing dumber than the Krushers is the Bashers. The Krushers are kids who are too little or sucky for Little League, right? Including a two year old, because that's a thing that would happen. And they rarely beat the Bashers because the Bashers are older and better, right? Well, then, why the hell aren't the Bashers in Little League? And who did they play before Kristy made her team to face them? And then later when they make the Krashers which is the best players on the Krushers and Bashers and they travel to other towns, why aren't THOSE kids in Little League? But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, I suppose.
This book starts out with Kristy riding home on the school bus thinking about how she's felt a little blah lately. She describes her family, of course. She says that her parents divorced when she was eight years old, which is wrong. She was six.
Chapter two, club meeting, and Claudia is wearing an outfit:
Today she was into big: a big yellow shirt with red X-shaped buttons, enormously baggy white pants, and big red Doc Martens double-laced with black and yellow shoelaces. Her long straight black hair was pulled up on top of her head with more black and yellow shoelaces braided together. Her earrings said "stop" and "go"--"stop" in her left ear and "go" in her right.
It's been a while since I recreated one of these in Neopets form for you, so here you go. I think I got the stop and go backwards though.
Kristy leads the Krushers through a practice and decides that her blah feeling is because she misses actually playing the game. Her friends suggest she try out for the SMS softball team, but Kristy doesn't think she has time. Her life is too busy with school, sitting, and coaching. She doesn't want to disappoint the Krushers by giving up on them. Stacey and Claudia offer to take over the Krushers if Kristy makes the SMS team, so Kristy goes to tryouts.
Kristy's heard that the softball coach is very tough, and she's nervous about trying out, especially when she sees that the other girls trying out are really talented, especially the ones who were on last year's team. She describes one girl catching a ball over her shoulder with her bare left hand, then casually sauntering back to her position at shortstop.
OH MY GOD NO. OK. NO. THERE ARE NO LEFT-HANDED THROWING SHORTSTOPS. THIS IS NOT A THING THAT HAPPENS. WHY DO THESE BOOKS DO THIS TO ME, WHY.
Kristy makes a solid defensive grab and the coach praises her for doing a good job. The tryouts last a long time, and Kristy is exhausted by the end of it. She overhears some of the girls from the previous year's team saying something about an initiation, and she finds it hard to believe that sports teams still do initiations in 1994, when this book was published. That night at dinner, Sam and Charlie also both tease her about having to do an initiation if she makes the team.
Kristy makes the team, one of four new members. The others are named Tonya, Dilys, and Bea. As usual, the names feel a bit anachronistic for 1994. Dilys is the only sixth grader on the team. Bea is in eighth grade and I think Tonya is in seventh. Kristy, Bea, Dilys, and Tonya are approached by two team members named Marcia and Tallie, who tell them they must spray paint graffiti on an old shed as an initiation. Kristy protests, and Marcia and Tallie threaten that they will make the new players look bad in practice if they don't comply.
Kristy and Dilys both say they won't spray paint the shed, but after a few practices where they look bad, they change their mind and decide they will meet up with Tonya and Bea and they will all paint the shed. They do this on a Friday night. After they paint some graffiti, Tonya and Bea smoke cigarettes. Kristy, naturally, scolds them for smoking and stomps off.
The next morning Kristy hears a report on the radio that the shed they vandalized has burned down and a man is in the hospital after a failed attempt at putting out the fire. She panics because she is just certain that the shed burning down is somehow their fault, like, maybe Tonya and Bea's burnt matches ignited the spray paint and they didn't notice. Kristy freaks out and makes the other three come to the mansion for an emergency meeting. Tonya and Bea are like "calm down" but Dilys is pretty freaked out too. Then Tallie calls to say that if they tell, the team will say they are lying and there was no initiation.
The boys' baseball team ends up getting blamed for the fire, and after a bunch of boring angst, Kristy decides she's going to tell that it was really her. But the morning that she was going to go confess, it comes out that some high school kids burned the shed because they wanted to put out the fire and be heroes.
So, since the high schoolers have confessed, Kristy decides not to tell on herself and her teammates for vandalizing the shed, and also decides that she will stay on the softball team. Maybe she'll change it from within, she thinks. Maybe she'll make it so that next year, there's no initiation. Which seems silly, because a.) Kristy still isn't that tight with the other girls on the team, because she's kind of a goody two-shoes and b.) assuming she makes a team, she'll be on the high school team next year, not the middle school team, so how will she stop anything?
Meanwhile, Stacey and Claudia are attempting to coach the Krushers. First, at a meeting, Kristy tries to explain softball to them. First they are talking about throwing strikes and full counts and Kristy says that strategy is too advanced for the Krushers and suggests they do simple drills instead. She starts to describe a drill and Stacey and Claudia are both suddenly stupid and do not understand what a drill is, even though they were using baseball terms three paragraphs prior. At Stacey and Claudia's first practice, Claudia wears the following:
Claudia was wearing a red satin baseball cap, purple sweatpants that were cut off just below the knees, purple high-tops with neon pink laces, red-and-white-striped socks, and a red and pink tie-dyed crop top shirt.That sounds hideous.
Stacey and Claudia tell the kids to do some drills, then have a short practice game. Claudia acts as the umpire and hears "a half dozen bewildering phrases, including 'infield fly rule', 'tagging up', and 'full count.'" This is stupid and makes no sense, because a.) full count is one of the phrases Stacey and Claudia used before Kristy even explained softball to them and b.) if throwing strikes is too advanced of strategy for the Krushers, then what the hell are they doing talking about the rest of this shit? I am just going to go ahead and assume it's Gabbie Perkins the wonder-two-year-old who is explaining the infield fly rule to the others.
Then Claudia and Stacey run one other practice and it goes a bit better, except for Karen Brewer following them around trying to talk about makeup and boyfriends while they coach. The title of this book, Kristy's Copycat, refers to Karen trying to act more grown up and talk to the BSC about boyfriends and makeup, even though that's only like one chapter plus three pages of the book. Still, I suppose Kristy's Copycat is a catchier title than, say, Kristy Might Have Burned Down a Shed.
My score: 4/10.
*except for that stupid book where Karen meets the president of the United States
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