I’m nine years old on the baseball team. The long season has culminated in this. IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT GAME OF THE YEAR.
Win this one and we go up against the Cardinals for the championship trophy. The teammates are ecstatic, imagining Glory, Immortality; the fabled pizza party.
I don’t care much for the game. As usual I’m thinking about anything but baseball. Dinosaurs, space, the mysteries of death and Pokemon Blue. When my team is in the outfield, they stick me way out. So far into the grass I might be guarding second base in a different zip code.
I’ve even missed inning changes before. Lost in stupid daydreams I’ve stood out there while the enemy team took the field around me. Too shy to ask what the hell is going on, I was shepherded back like a disabled sheep.
This game I make it back to the dugout. And the game is close.
Bottom of the 9th. We’re down by one run. BASES LOADED. One run gets us in. Just ONE kid has to make it home.
ONLY PROBLEM? I’m up to f*ckin bat!!! And I’M THE LAST CHANCE WE HAVE!!!!
A strategic catastrophe on the coach’s part. How did he let this happen? Little League baseball is this man’s entire personality. He has nothing else. He pulls me aside, sweat glistening off his sunburned forehead, eyes flailing wildly.
“Hit the ball with the bat,” he says.
“O” I say, realizing that’s what I was supposed to have been doing this whole season.
I approach the plate like a man walking to the gallows. Everyone knows the odds. My teammates are hoping for divine intervention. They chant. They scream. There’s desperation in the air. The poor fools want to believe I’m hiding some secret talent. They’ve seen their movies. They want an underdog moment.
The pitcher throws the ball and it whizzes past me.
“Strike one!”
A collective groan.
Again the ball flies by.
“Strike two!”
My blood is boiling. The pressure is unbearable. This is it. My last shot. The pitcher winds up. I swing at the blur.
“Strike THREE - you’re out!”
The enemy dugout explodes. Joy, savagery, bloodlust. It’s a Roman coliseum.
I walk back to the dugout in a daze, trying to pretend none of this is happening. Some kids are merciful. They pat me on the back and say, “You did your best.” Others throw their mitts into the dirt and scream their first curse words. (I later found out the coach was terrible to his wife. It’s possible I sparked a domestic violence incident that very night.)
I already know this feeling. Shame. Heavy, slow-moving shame.
But there is relief mixed in.
Baseball season is over.
Epilogue
The coach got home to his frail and terrified wife. “THAT DAMN KID RUINED EVERYTHING.” He was drunk again. And in that darkened house he unleashed a primordial fury few could imagine. Later my schoolmates would recount the dark rumor. I carried the memory close, later writing a Watson Moon song about the situation. “Leave Your Husband.” That’s what I wanted to say to her. I wanted to take her aside after the game, say ANYTHING. But I was just a kid. And I was terrified. We all were.
He died eight years later of pancreatitis. My parents toured his empty home as prospective buyers. But even bereft of furniture they sensed an energy so dark. Evil leaves a trace. Hearing the news at 18 I wept in my room. The world was free of an evil man but it was a drop in the bucket. I knew there was so much more to come. I knew I hadn’t seen nothing yet.