Baseball Stories (15)

 . . . Nothing.

The hitting slump continues.

Walls and boxes and ceilings invade his thinking.

Just waiting.

"And so we shall," echoes the courage of one still lost in a closet.  "Give it a rest," calls out yet another.  Trapped in the middle he considers his options.

"I am with me," he scrawls in the dirt and quickly obscures what was hastily written.  "I have been here before, but had nearly forgotten."  His thoughts slowly fade with the late innings of the game.

"Now, quiet," he whispers so no one can hear him.  Not the players, the coach, or the fans that support them.  Left to this moment they become silent reminders that slip from his warnings to sleep with the flowers.

It will continue without him.

Smile. . . 

Baseball Stories (14)

 . . . her little hands tremble under the weight of the game winning ball as she hands it to him for an autograph.  "It's been a long time since anyone has wanted a piece of my name," he says as he winks at her father and accepts the memento.

Having penned his name just over the scuff mark left by his effortless swing, the one-time hero hands the ball that had brought them together back to his smiling admirer.  Turning to her father he admonishes, "Now, don't be afraid to toss the ball about when she's a bit older.  Baseballs don't belong on a shelf or tucked neatly away in a box full of memories.  They need to be handled often and shared among friends.  They are at home in the sunshine.  They are meant to be played."

With the tip of his hat he is on his way, the evening air grown still except for the echo of their parting footsteps.

Heading home in separate directions each reflect on the setting day.  He with a new appreciation of all he'd become and she of her laughter in the way life was to be . . . 

Baseball Stories (13)

 . . . it was somewhere between the on-deck circle and the batting box that it occurred to him how ordinary life had become lately.  It wasn't boring or dissatisfying, just ordinary.  A kind of graceful coexistence.  There had come to him a simple pleasure in just going through the simplest motions of life.  Suiting up.  Infield practice.  Chatting with the fans.  Showering after the game.  Whistling a favorite tune on his way home.

Even the grass was taking on a new elegance.  He marveled at how perfectly the grass performed its simple act of being.  Standing at attention, ready to serve at a moment's notice.  How the chalk, yes even the chalk for heaven's sake, performed its ordinary function with such grace.  Just peacefully lying there with no pretense, no need to hurry, to create, to justify its existence.  For in being, it was just as it should be.  In rhythm.  Of service.  Perfection personified.

It was after the second called strike that he finally noticed the coach's frantic gestures to return to the task at hand.  Looking toward the mound, the third pitch was already heading toward home plate as he focused on what was his to do.  Without time to think he brought his bat around, smoothly and without hesitation, so as to just meet the ball.   His effortless act sends the ball toward left center, a solid single by anyone's standard.  But on this day a northwest wind whips through an open exit, passes across home plate and chases the ball on its lofty trajectory which ends just over the outstretched glove of the outfielder and the top of the home run fence.

"Now, that's perfect !" shouts the coach as he marks one down for the home team.

A hot dog sells for a dollar.  The phone rings in the front office.  A three year old daughter attending her first game laughs as Dad gives her the game ball . . .

Baseball Stories (12)

. . . it's so very quiet here in the locker room.  He had never paid much attention to the quiet in the silence of the locker room after everybody has gone.  It wasn't as though he had waited around to notice in the past.  In those days if it wasn't a party, it was another game, it was something somewhere.  Somewhere.  But now, it is as if life itself had ended.  The cheering and laughing softly leaving unexpectedly through the cracks in the floor to find him just there.  Alone, with just the softest whisper of quiet to quench his senses.

These are new days.  Unexpected days.  The wealth of this busy day now reduced to a moment in time.

The afternoon breeze whips past the curtain and caresses his cheek.  He slaps at it as one would to send a mosquito on its way.  He is too absorbed in the quiet to notice that she has moved him.  An unattended side door slams shut on her way out.  Startled, he shrugs his shoulders and heads for the car . . .