BSC #20: Kristy and the Walking Disaster

Tagline: Guess which one's the walking disaster!

They're lean, mean, they're the pride of Stoneybrook. Who are they? They're Kristy's Krushers!

When Kristy sees how much her little brothers and sister want to play on a softball team, she starts a rag-tag team of her own. Maybe Kristy's Krushers aren't world champions (how could they be, with Jackie Rodowsky, walking disaster, playing for them?), but nobody beats them when it comes to team spirit.

Now Bart's Bashers have challenged the Krushers to a real live game. It's bad enough that the Bashers truly are lean and mean - but what's worse is that Kristy has a crush on the Bashers' coach. A crush with a capital C!

Kristy is watching her younger siblings and their friends, when they all lament that they can't play softball. Some of them are too young for Little League, and all of them are too bad and/or embarrassed to play. Amanda Delaney mentions that Bart Taylor, who lives in the neighbourhood, has a team of his own, and suggests that people could join. So Kristy heads on over to check this guy out.

And check him out she does! Because Bart Taylor is very cute! Kristy is immediately smitten. Through her conversation with Bart, she discovers that Bart doesn't have anymore room on his team for more than a kid or two, which leads to Kristy deciding that she would just start her own team. Kristy decides that she'll take anyone she can, regardless of how old they are or how skilled (or unskilled) they are. She'll even ask Watson for help organizing it all.

Kristy tells the girls about her team, and immediately they start asking around and keeping an eye open for any charges who seem like they might be interested. Soon Kristy has about twenty kids, including (but not limited to) Claire, Margo and Nicky Pike, Matt Braddock, Nina Marshall, Myriah and Gabbie Perkins, Jamie Newton, her own siblings, and of course, Jackie Rodowsky. Overall, she discovers that the average age of her team is 5.8 years old. Feeling overwhelmed, Kristy turns to Watson, who helps her figure out what she's doing. Together they find a place and time to meet, and what the purpose of the team would be and how to structure the practices. The other girls from the Club agree to help Kristy run the practices.

Kristy's first practice is a relative success. Dawn and Mallory help her to keep all the kids corralled and accounted for, and quite a few parents stick around to chill, so Kristy is not left on her own with 20 kids. She holds just a friendly game so she can evaluate what skills everyone has, since she hadn't seen most of them play at that point. The team also decides on a name and a uniform: plain white t-shirts with iron-on letters that spell out "Krushers".

Kristy holds a couple of more practices with her team, and sees that although they really suck, they have a lot of heart. She also starts to see improvement and can pick out which of her players might actually be on to something. Practice gets cut early because Jackie takes off his catcher's mask and finds himself getting beaned in the face with a ball, which knocks one of his teeth loose.

Bolstered by her success, Kristy decides to stop by Bart's again to talk to him. There we learn that Bart's team is mostly older kids (7-9) who just aren't ready for Little League yet. They get to chatting, and Kristy wanting to prove that her team wasn't full of babies, challenges Bart's Bashers to a game in two and a half weeks.

The news of the big game bolsters everyone's enthusiasm, and Kristy starts assigning permanent positions to certain people to get them practicing on certain skills. Haley, Vanessa and Charlotte decide to be cheerleaders (well, Charlotte doesn't want to cheer, she just wants to spend time with her friends). The team also decides to sell refreshments at the game, and to use the proceeds to get them all matching hats. Again, the Krushers are full of spirit, and never give up. The practice is yet again cut short because of Jackie, on this time it's because he hit a homerun and broke the principal's window (they're practicing at Stoneybrook Elementary's field). Kristy is excited for her team.

At the next practice, Bart and some of the Bashers show up. The Bashers essentially act like hoodlums, hassling and heckling the Krushers, all the while having two of them run interference with Bart so that he's too distracted to notice how mean they're being. They essentially make all the kids cry, but it's Jackie being upset that finally leads to Kristy calling short the practice. Kristy, despite her crush on Bart, is angry that he can't control his team and that he couldn't see what they were doing.

The day before the big game, Kristy has one last practice with the team. Here, they play out a full game, trying to get a feel of what tomorrow would be like. Everyone plays great, and Kristy is super proud. Charlotte even considers cheerleading, and Kristy realizes just how much the team means to everyone and how much everyone's confidence has been boosted by it. Bart shows up for the last little bit, and walks Kristy home. Kristy is excited, but also confused, because he's technically her rival coach. She decides to keep things civil and baseball-related, leaving them to have an awkward good-bye.

Finally, it's the big game. Things get off to a rough start. Nicky Pike, their best pitcher, is sick. Then when the Bashers arrive, we find out that they have not only more players than the Krushers and are older, but they're also all boys with matching hats and t-shirts. Plus they have four cheerleaders. They pretty much show-up the Krushers in all aspects. The Krushers started off at bat, and got a bajillion outs (okay, only two, cuz duh), before achieving three homeruns. Kristy is worried that the team will only see the outs and the Bashers jeering, but they instead take strength in their three runs.

The Bashers get 6 runs on their turn, and then it's time for the Krushers again. Jackie, being a disaster, somehow manages to throw a bat into the refreshment stands, killing a cake and half the lemonade. He then strikes out, but not before accidentally launching his bat again. Of course, everyone laughs at him. The next thing Kristy knows, Jackie is pretending to trip and hurt his ankle, telling her that he better now play anymore. Kristy talks him through it though, and convinces him to come back into the game.

Long story short: the Krushers never give up. Even when the Bashers are mean. In the end, they give the Bashers a run for their money and end the game 16-11 for the Bashers. Most importantly, Charlotte starts cheering and everyone's confidence is boosted. When the game is over, Kristy is super proud of them, saying that even though they technically lost, it was a huge win for them, as they surprised the Bashers with how good they could be.

The book ends with Bart walking Kristy home and apologizing for how mean the Bashers have been. He admits that he was worried about the Krushers and that they are a far better team than he gave them credit for. They arrange to have another game in two weeks' time, but in the meantime, he was hoping that Kristy would want to be his friend and maybe go out to ballgame sometime or something. Kristy, of course, says yes.

There was no real subplot in this one. Mostly just about how Jackie is a walking disaster, but almost never gives up, no matter what he does or what happens to him.

Random Thoughts:

• Jessi is mentioned as having a steady job! Yay continuity!
• Bart Taylor is very, very, very cute apparently. He has a "crooked smile", "deep, deep brown eyes", an "even, straight, perfect nose", and "hair that looked like it might have been styled at one of those hair places for guys" haha
• I really really don't like Jackie. He's annoying as fuck. I don't understand how he can break so many things and be allowed to get away with it all with a smile. Even his 4 year old brother Archie is allowed to take lessons and classes! I guess the Rodowskys are putting all of the money from what would be Jackie's classes into repairing and replacing everything he destroys.
• Kristy allows Mary Anne to bring Tigger to a meeting. Kristy of the later books would never allow that. But this is when Kristy was still allowed to be a person, and not a dictator, hence her mild interest in boys and relaxed rules.
• We get a small glimpse of Janine when Tigger gets loose during the Club meeting. This just further reminds me of how much I wish we had the series from Janine's perspective. I should totes do a fanfiction of that. Or find one. I'm sure one exists haha
• What the fuck is the point of Bart's team? Most of them are Little League age, and they don't seem to be horrible at the game. Who have they been playing this whole time? Or have they just been like the Krushers, and played practice games against themselves?
• I actually really like the breakdown of how Kristy runs the Krushers: they meet twice a week, where Kristy will coach and hold a workshop for them for half of the time, then they take a break, then since there's so many of them (and really no one else besides the Bashers to play against), they divide up in half and play practice games against themselves. It actually sounds like a fun and productive way to get kids more interested in baseball. If the kids ever aged, I could see many of them going on to join Little League and being better than their other teammates because of their experience on the Krushers.
• I love Kristy's assessment of guys her age: 50% of them are normal, and 50% of them are jerks. Furthermore, in her neighbourhood, 50% are plain, and then 50% are snobs. So that gives her a 25% chance of getting a plain jerk, a 25% chance of getting a snobby jerk, a 25% chance of getting a normal snob and a 25% chance of getting someone who was normal and plain.
• I think it's really sweet that Kristy immediately thinks of Watson when planning her team. She admits that Watson's not very athletic at all (which goes with all the descriptions/impressions we've seen of him thus far: he's older, balding, a slight paunch, and eventually **SPOILER ALERT** we'll discover that he has a bad heart), but she knows he's a huge baseball fan like she is, and that he's great at organizing things and managing things. 
• I love the Perkins girls, even though they're not realistic at all. They make such a big deal out of Gabbie being two and a half years old. Those extra 6 months must be like a lifetime, because they often include her with the older kids (albeit pointing out that she's the youngest), instead of roping her in with the babies. For instance, in this book they specifically mention Marnie Barrett, who is 2 years old, and Kristy mentions that "When you go places with a two-year-old, you have to bring along an awful lot of equipment - toys, munchies, baby wipes, extra clothes, you name it."
• Again, I can't stand Karen. As if she mispells the name of her team, just because it's not grammatically correct. I mean, I'm all for proper spelling, but in this case, she's the one making the mistake. I bet you she's the kind of person who'd tell a person with an unusual spelling of their own name that their name is spelled wrong.
• I love the continuity of bringing up Charlotte and the pageant again.
• Again, I wish we had had a series about Haley, Charlotte, Vanessa and Becca instead of one about Karen (if we had to have a series aimed at younger girls at all).
• We meet the Kuhns in this one. It's interesting, because I can't think of a time when we've met a family of kids when they weren't being baby-sat by the Club. Here, we meet the Kuhns because they're friends with the Barretts. We learn that Jake is apparently a bit overweight =/
• Ugh, they mentioned brownies in the book, and now I want brownies >_< haha I fail at making brownies. Best case scenario, they're more like cake squares. Worst case scenario, they're dry as fuck. I can never make moist fudgy brownies like I want haha
• Considering the Bashers are 1) older and 2) have been a team far longer, the fact that the Krushers only lost by 5 runs is a pretty big deal.