The Fourth Stall Part II Read Online Free PDF

scientifically measured. The quantification of the abstract is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and we expect to explore that further here.
    â€œThe SMARTs are only one small part of a new initiative that I will be working into your school this year in an attempt to clean this place up and make it a suitable institute of American education, suitable for American students. That is all; you are dismissed.”
    That was that. He was a man of few words, I guessed. Another no-nonsense guy, which basically meant that now we had two jerks running this place.
    There were murmurs across the room as kids stood up. Clearly some of them knew who Dr. George was, and they knew his reputation. Some didn’t, but I had a feeling that we all would know him all too well soon enough. Other kids were murmuring about the SMARTs that Dr. George had talked about with so much pride on stage that you’d have thought the test was like his own flesh and blood—which knowing how dry Suits usually were, it was totally possible that Dr. George was made up of paper and documents and statistics as opposed to blood and bone and guts like the rest of us. But anyway, you know how kids are; they always overreact to those two words: “big test.”
    I wondered briefly if some of the “internal areas of concern” that Mr. Dickerson had mentioned were the very same problems that kids had been coming to me for lately. If so, then Dr. George’s arrival was now a problem on two fronts: 1) He was a hawk for troublemakers and funny business, which were basically my bread and butter, how I made a living; and 2) He was potentially going to be working to solve the very same problems that I needed to solve myself to keep making money. Either way you shook it, I didn’t like it. Not at all.
    It was like putting Joe Blanton in the game to pinch-hit in the ninth inning with the bases loaded and down by three, which is to say that it was becoming a no-win situation because, for one, you’d never want a pitcher pinch-hitting, and two, it’s Joe Blanton.
    Ripping on Joe Blanton had become kind of a thing between Vince and me lately. It had all started when I was complaining to Vince that I didn’t get how Joe Blanton could always dominate the Cubs, because he was so terrible. Then Vince made me Google Joe’s stats to show me that he wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought.
    But that was the thing: numbers weren’t everything in baseball, because if they were, then Barry Bonds and Pete Rose would have been no-brainer, first-ballot Hall of Famers, and a guy like Derek Jeter would simply be a really good shortstop and not a modern-day legend. Baseball was more than just numbers; it was also about intangibles and respect. It was about playing the game the right way, which was to play smart and play for the team and not to pad your own personal numbers. To play with grit and get the job done, which meant taking one on the chin and losing a couple teeth if that’s what it takes to get a guy to second base. Or at least that’s what I thought. Vince was much more of a numbers guy. To him the numbers didn’t lie. That’s what he always told me anyway. “Mac, the numbers don’t lie.” He thought he could win any argument with that line.
    Anyways, all of that is beside the point. What mattered was that having a pitcher like Joe Blanton at the plate with the bases loaded was about as miserable a situation as you could put yourself in as a baseball team. He was like 95 percent likely to strike out three times in a single at bat, which of course isn’t possible, but with Joe any dubious feat was possible. And that’s kind of what we were dealing with here with Dr. George now showing up. It felt like he was on our team but would undoubtedly cost us the game.
    Vince and I met up at my locker after school to head over to the gym for baseball tryouts. For the next few weeks it was going