6AM.
 

No longer having the excuse of a decrepit dysfunctional aortic valve—I have thus far been unable to exceed modern medical technology's ability to fix me—I recently rode my bicycle for the first time in two years. I am 63 years old, and my Schwinn Varsity isn't far behind, but it's OK: there is not a chance in hell that you'll catch me wearing Spandex. With a tailwind and negative grade I might make double-digit speeds, yet real cyclists have the decency to nod as they scream by, at which moments I fancy I can see the blue shift.

The week, as they say, had been crazy. There was the unpleasantness at the Boston Marathon, a heart attack in the family, and three separate bouts of car trouble. But my old friends claimed the birth of a grandson, my granddaughters returned from a week-long vacation absence, and I saw my first scattering of dandelions. It was fine indeed to be alive, moving, blood stirring, face to the wind, pedaling my ass off for a brief lap in the race we all ultimately lose.

The Schwinn had a worthy predecessor, a 26-inch Columbia, manufactured in my mother's home town, Westfield, Massachusetts. It survived my childhood abuse of it, though partially crippled. One day, in a contest of speed with the cur nipping at my wheels, I hit a sunken storm drain. Flat on my back in the road, I watched my bike soar in a graceful slow spin over my head and crash at my feet. The front wheel, my camera, and I all escaped injury, but even after I replaced the mangled fork the bike exhibited a distracting crab-wise tendency. As I write it occupies a shrine in the cellar of my garage, where I offer it discarded lead wheel-balancing weights to propitiate the capricious gods of the road.

The storm drain debacle failed to keep the clunky uncouth Columbia and me off the road. It continued to serve me reasonably well. Still I envied my friend Cav his Raleigh: charming English accent, slim-tired, hand brakes, and a three-speed hub shifter. My friends and I used our bikes to travel to each others' houses where we did stupid teenager things. During the warm months we spent long idyllic hours just riding bikes, all the while talking stupid teenager talk. The bikes gave us a mechanical advantage that made exploring our town feasible, but still not so fast-paced that the pleasure ran out because we'd finished the job. We developed our own personal mental version of Google Street View, then extended it to surrounding towns. We always tried to increase our radius, and thereby recapture the delicious feeling that we were leaving known territory. Even today there's no thrill like getting temporarily lost when I'm responsible for no one else and not in thrall to a schedule. There may in fact be dragons.

We were unencumbered by helmets and cell phones. I like to think, no doubt wishfully, that being under our own power and masters of our fates built character, but probably the severest trial we faced was dehydration. On one long, hot ride, about nineteen miles out, my brother and I used stupid teenager talk to try to persuade Cav, by virtue of his standing in the Catholic church, to get us some holy water to relieve our thirst. He demurred, having a year's advantage on me in the rudimentary common sense department. Yet we did survive, scraping together our loose change and sharing a popsicle—nothing worse than a popsicle in a parched crisp mouth. Near the end of another humid and gritty ride we got caught in a thunderstorm and welcomed it with hosannas. The petrichor was heady and the relief was priceless; we didn't care how sodden and chilled we got. I still recall these physical sensations with pleasure.

It was in college that I met and fell in love with the Schwinn. At first sight. A goddamn racing bike! I wasn't aware of the fine points of bicycle taxonomy, nor of the bike's renowned tonnage, but it wouldn't have mattered. Ignorant of so much, and with an impulsive “Just Do It” lack of caution, I decided to ride it forty miles home one Friday afternoon after classes. Perhaps recalling Cav's Raleigh hub shifter, my intuition told me there'd be hell to pay if I tried to shift while I was pedaling; but, of course, you have to be pedaling to shift a derailleur. Before I even reached the city limits the rear derailleur cable broke, the revenge of a Columbia scorned. I wedged a twig into the parallelogram to get myself into a reasonable middle gear and limped home.

For the next couple of years I rode a lot, weekends, vacations, and summers, tens of miles at a time. On my best day I did 80 miles, visiting friends at the beach, and it was no big thing. I rode home from school once or twice more. One evening I broke a couple of spokes on a rocky dirt road two towns over, shanties crowding the road, chickens running amok, a little Appalachia now paved and encrusted with McMansions. To attend a Saturday night party, in the vain hope of getting lucky, I once proposed to ride twenty miles in the dark. Mom was horrified, of course, but Dad quietly managed to calm her, acknowledging that I was crazy. Yet he insisted, in such a way as didn't feel backhanded, that I was certainly old enough to make my own choices and live with the consequences. And so I pointed the bike south and rode, holding a flashlight to warn cars and augment the moonlight. I didn't get lucky.

When I graduated, my faithful bicycle companion joined me in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the real world: I would become a bicycle racer. I said it out loud. There are witnesses. As if a degree in math had prepared me for this, as if anything had prepared me for this. As if merely having the equipment guaranteed success. As if this had the slightest connection to reality on any known planet. To this day my monumental, shameless, preposterous mixture of ignorance and cheek makes me shake my head in slack-jawed embarrassment. You might expect even a twenty-two-year-old with only a half-jelled brain to have enough self-awareness to grasp the towering absurdity of that ambition, but you'd be wrong.

The plan to prepare for my glorious racing career was simple and elegant: get on the road as much as possible, or at least as much as I felt like, and that's what happened that summer. Gradually the reality sank in: my riding was really only casual touring. Distance was the thing; I'd never even tried to ride for speed. I never did enter a race, and my plans died with a whimper.

I began to experience the ineluctable acceleration of time, and years flashed by. Even after the real world seduced me, I continued to ride, just nowhere near as much. I learned my crotch was never going to be tough enough for serious riding, though I'd replaced the hard crusty leather saddle with a wimpish Avocet gel number. And I put on a larger freewheel to minimize my effort on hills. Granny gear may be an abject moral failure, an abomination in the eyes of God, yet it's still legal, and these days especially I'm grateful for it. Occasionally I even wear a helmet.

Untold gallons of water go under the bridge in 40 years. Columbia makes school furniture. Schwinn is just a brand name, and I see its multinational parent company has produced a new Varsity 700c, available in Walmart. I have a pretty good idea it's not made in Chicago. Things do in fact change, but the Varsity has outlasted all of my cars and my first marriage. It helped me outgrow for good my quaint juvenile notion that a body was just a machine for moving my brain where it wanted to go. I may have been invincible in youth, but not now, and it's worked out so that the Varsity liberates, at least to a degree, my creaky body—sheer joy. It's good to get reacquainted with an old friend.

A baseball player my age is past his prime. When this piece first appears online, I will have recently turned 37.

If I were a bench-warmer for the St. Louis Cardinals—my favorite team, thank you very much, and did you notice our 11 World Series Championships?—I would be the second-oldest player on the team. Carlos Beltran has defied his age this season, a fact underscored so often during broadcasts, it should become a drinking game. Even still, Beltran is younger than me; he was Rookie of the Year during my first semester of graduate school. When he hits a home run, I yell Carlito, motherfucker to the max! at the TV, a line adapted from one of my favorite movies. He looks older now, though he carries himself with an easy grace that belies his slowly-failing body. If his knees hold up, he should play a few more years.

After that, he'll retire from the game, leaving behind a solid career that, in a certain light, might be worthy of the Hall of Fame. And right around that point, if all goes as planned, my writing career will finally start to take off.

I can't play baseball. This is one reason I write.

As a writer, I’m allowed the luxury of the slow learning curve. It’s fair to say I’m just getting started, even though I’ve consciously worked to improve my writing for more than half my life. I’m proud of my story collection published two years ago, even as I recognize that it’s an incredibly small book—around 150 pages—and not fully representative of my abilities or current interests. I can do better. This is one reason I write.

I knew early on that the culture at large celebrates writers well into their thirties and forties. Every few weeks, it seems, someone posts an article on Facebook about a debut novelist in his or her fifties. I don't want to wait that long to publish my first novel, which means my ass needs to be in the chair. This is one reason I write.

My wife and I took out student loans to attend an MFA program. We bought a house and used credit cards to remake it. Our cars are getting old. Groceries aren't cheap. Neither is gas, or my subscription to MLB.tv so I can watch every Cardinals game. We have two cats and a dog. You guessed it: These are eight reasons I write.

I used to imagine that writers wore black turtlenecks to parties and tried to impress the snooty dipshits drinking wine and eating the cheese I later learned to call brie. This is not a reason I write.

Have you renovated a home? I like seeing what's inside the walls, beneath the floorboards, above the ceiling. I especially like the feeling after the renovation is complete, when everything's pretty on the outside but I can still remember the mess made in getting there. This is one reason I write.

Two more reasons:
1. Characters built entirely out of words seem real to readers, which is a kind of magic.
2. I like pushing words around until they click together.

 

“There he is!” shouted my brother.

I had my shotgun pointed down at the ground and quickly swung it up to my shoulder. I flicked the safety off with the thumb of my right hand, lined up my shot, and pulled the trigger.

As the firing pin struck the primer, there was a flash, explosion and kick. The power of a .410 shotgun, while considered a small gauge, is still impressive. My ears numbed as the shot echoed off the edge of the woods on the far western point of the farm, and the pungent but pleasing aroma of gunpowder blew back in my face. I could feel my heartbeat throbbing in my cheeks and ears, but there was complete silence, save my instinctive “click-clack” ejecting of the green shell casing and the sliding of the safety back on.

It had all happened in two seconds, maybe less. I waited for the smoke to clear to see what I had done.


I got my first gun for Christmas when I was 13 years old. I’ll never forget waking up that morning and finding the long, narrow, plain cardboard box that held my brand new Remington. It was a complete surprise. I had been asking for a gun every Christmas for as long as I could remember, so I could hunt and shoot sheet and generally be manly enough to hang out more with my brother, Bill, who was 10 years older, and quite possibly the coolest guy I knew.

The gun was a work of art, the metal bluing smooth and flawless, and the brand and specs stamped on top near the breach. The wood finish was dark walnut, with lots of visible grain, just like my dad’s rifles and shotguns that he kept locked in his bedroom. Most importantly, my shotgun was pump action, just like my dad’s favorite 12-gauge, the one my brother and I would always argue over when it was time to hunt or target shoot. Daddy’s Sears Ted Williams model semiautomatic was smoother and faster and more accurate, but there was something about a pump action — the racking, the fluidity acquired through practice, and the timing required to realign that made that gun more appealing to shoot.

For the rest of that Christmas break, tin cans, pie pans, clay targets all became casualties of my obsession with practice and accuracy. I had seen Daddy’s medals for marksmanship in Korea, and wondered if that was a trait that could be passed on. I didn’t want to leave it to chance, so I practiced. Santa had provided ammo, but two boxes didn’t last long. I don’t think Mama particularly cared for the constant gunfire going on in the backyard. I don’t know how she controlled her protective urges over her baby, the youngest of five children by a good measure.


When I was around nine, I was allowed to use Bill’s old lever action Daisy alone in the yard. Even though the gun could not propel a BB fast enough to break a tin pie pan at 20 feet, I was certain I would be able to keep crows out of the corn, take down some birds for supper and possibly kill a bear, despite the fact I’d never seen one on the farm. Daddy and Bill had drilled gun safety into me from what seemed like the crib: Every gun is loaded. Never take a gun more powerful than a BB gun out of the rack without an adult present. Always carry a gun with the barrel pointed at the ground. It is acceptable to carry a gun on your shoulder, but not if there is anyone behind you. When climbing a fence or crossing a stream, lay the gun down where you are going, barrel pointed away, first. Anywhere you can’t do this, don’t go. Never look in a barrel. Never swing a gun parallel. Safeties might be off even when they look on. Empty a firearm before entering a house, load outside. Never clean a gun with anyone else in the room. Never shoot without knowing what is behind what you’re shooting at. Never hunt anything you don’t plan to eat, with the exceptions of rodents and pests.

These principles were not exclusive to my family. Guns are an essential part of the home in rural North Carolina. They help put food on the table and provided home protection where the nearest law enforcement help was a half hour away. In high school, many classmates went hunting before class during deer and duck season, and hung their shotguns and rifles in gun racks in the back windows of their locked pickup trucks. The FFA chapter had a skeet shooting team, and they practiced on school grounds, just like the athletic teams. Despite the fact that I think my mom was overprotective, I would not for a minute consider allowing my smart, responsible eight-year-old out of the house with a BB gun alone.


That Thanksgiving of my last squirrel hunt with Bill was one where the sky looked like it does an hour after sunset, all day long. Bill lived with his wife and newborn on the north side of the farm. He came by early for a pre-lunch trek to the woods.

Despite the warmth of my bed, and a rare day to sleep in, I was up quickly. I pulled on old jeans, a flannel shirt, and my hunting vest that had slots for plenty of rounds. It was ironic that in a dozen forays into the woods over the past two seasons, I had fired a total of one time at a squirrel, but had room on my vest for an entire box of shells.

I grabbed a biscuit as we headed out the door, and felt the pinpricks of cold on my face that foretold winter. We hiked just past the soybean field that in less than a decade would become the lot on which my wife and I would move a mobile home, and then later build a house. But that day, the field ended at a two-track path the width of a tractor. We found an opening in the poplar, pines, oaks, black walnuts and maples, and started our walk, careful not to drag feet across dry leaves. We looked for evidence of our prey: cracked acorns, nut shells or scat. We had never hunted there before.

Some hunters stalk squirrels or use dogs. Bill’s method was to find a quiet place with a good field of vision, a spot where the hunter could sit on the ground with his back against a tree. He would drop me off and then move farther along for his own spot, where we’d have safe ranges of fire. Then we sat and waited.

A hunted grey squirrel can sit perfectly still and not make a sound for at least an hour. These animals are not the type you find in parks and on college campuses, a pet-like fur ball that will approach a human within a few feet out of curiosity and desire for a handout. Grey squirrels in the wild are crafty, smart survivors. They are athletic. You rarely see fat squirrels, because fat squirrels are slow, and slow squirrels don’t live long among foxes, coyotes, owls, hawks and other predators.

I was not a natural outdoorsman. Never growing out of childhood impatience or desire for action, I had long ago given up on pond fishing. I just couldn’t handle the sitting and waiting and swatting insects in the heat of summer, nor did I have any desire to dine on catfish, crappie or bream. But hunting was different. Deep in the woods, trying to be still, required concentration and heightened the senses. Once the hunt began, Bill and I didn’t talk until we exited the woods. I sat and listened and thought. I heard leaves rustling, and then nothing. Birds finding their way back to nests. I wondered about the hunters who came before us, how much of the landscape was the same. Some trees were bigger and some had fallen, but essentially the forest floor was unchanged in the last 100 years or so. I thought about history, how soldiers had camped in woods just like these, for shelter and protection from the enemy in the Civil War, and I considered the haunts of a sentry’s imagination when hearing the same rustling I heard. My brother and I were the only armed people in those woods. What sheer terror it must have been to hear footsteps, to be the prey, not the predator, and to know the only defense was a primitive, one-shot musket. I thought about what my future would be like, what I would do, how I would one day return to the same woods with my son and show him the same places I once sat.

Time slipped away quickly that morning. After a couple of hours, Bill walked over to me.

“Seen anything?” he asked.

“Nothing. How about you?”

“Not a thing. Let’s go eat.”

We went back through the opening and had just stepped on the path when my brother shouted. I realize now he passed on the shot for me to take it. I didn’t hesitate and tracked the squirrel across my sights as he jumped from one branch to the other. He seemed as big as a dog. I fired. Before the smoke, I saw him flip downward.

“You got ‘im!” Bill shouted.

We hustled over to the edge of the woods, not wanting to let a wounded animal get away and suffer. That was another rule. “He’s a nice one.” Bill said. “Good shot.”

I didn’t know how the squirrel would taste, but I knew it couldn’t be better than that sounded.


Even in the hands of a skilled knifeman, dressing game is at once violent, graphic, bloody and real. Back at the house, my brother pulled out his hunting knife, and dispatched the head, paws and tail of the squirrel. I presumed he learned this from Daddy. He handed me the tail as a souvenir from the first kill, saying we’d preserve it (which we didn’t) and then proceeded to peel the hide off the squirrel like a doll’s jacket. The squirrel seemed much smaller in this state, and it was obvious that it would take a bagful of them just to be a side dish for a family meal. He washed the carcass under an outdoor spigot and used the knife to remove spent pellets from my .410. I fetched a zipper bag from the kitchen and he tossed the meat into Mama’s freezer with assurances that we cook and eat it soon. We never did.

That was the last time I went squirrel hunting. While I thought my brother and I would hunt together forever, that was one of our last outings in search of small game. We went dove hunting the next two seasons, which was far more challenging and rewarding, and we grilled our success the night of the hunts. But by that point, I had come to realize that hunting was not going to be a long-term interest. The image of that field dressed squirrel has never left me. There is an old saw in sports that says you have to be able to see yourself making the shot, or the catch, first, before you can complete it. I never could see myself pursuing, killing and cleaning. That was what I took away that morning, rather than food for the table.

I preferred competition, whether it be skeet, or handguns, or rifles. This was part of the appeal later when I earned my concealed carry permit — a certain number of shots had to be placed in a specific range in a fixed amount of time to qualify (in addition to safety training, a written test and a background check). Sport.

The following falls, I hunted pickup basketball games, choosing well-placed elbows and turnaround baseline jumpers to do my dirty work, rather than a long, sharp, unsheathed blade.


My boys, eight and six now, frequently ask about fishing and hunting. My wife, whose grandparents lived on the Neuse River, usually takes them fishing. I have suggested we might try fly fishing, something I’ve never done, because it is active, and they were intrigued by “A River Runs Through It.” Hunting is yet to come.

My eight year old asks when I will allow him to have a BB gun. We’ve already talked about gun safety quite a bit, and I’ve made no secret about where the guns are kept — locked — and how they are to be feared, respected and handled. Their time will come soon enough, and I won’t deny them the experience. I want to share it with them, much like we do sports now. I appreciate those moments, because Daddy never played basketball or catch or went hunting with me, and I have kept that promise to myself that Kent and Lowell will never have such a void. We’ll go in those same woods one day, and find our spot and wait. I don’t know if the boys, who are more energetic than I was, will appreciate the quiet time and the concentration required. But I hope they don’t kill anything. I never learned how to field dress a squirrel.

 

Because I have filled my heart with mud to stop it from vaporizing.

Pick it up. My new disappearance. Cast it to the side.

Innocent chil'ren play in sandboxes, boys and girls
Alike. No barriers exist beyond fits and fits of giggles,
Full circle cartwheels. Chil'ren perform the duty of
Mayor in carefully built castles. Adults sit on the
Outskirts, in no hurry to stir trouble. They are too
Relaxed to hiss or hate. The boys play while one girl,
A pre-queen, glides giddy up the stairs, legs free and
Serious, hands flinging out to sea. You'll see her,
Eventually, hopscotching down the boulevard of
Life, needless and free, waiting on Time to heed
What we all know to be true. This sweet, sweet
Life gets on. This sweet, sweet Life gets through.





Patrina C. Jones holds a Ph.D. in English from SUNY Stony Brook University. She is an Essayist and a Poet. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Automatic Out

Girls Track League Finals, spring 1975

Spike to shin equals a scar I still distrust when I shave my legs. I was a runner. On the second to the last lap of the one-mile race, I was disqualified because I wouldn’t allow the girl running behind me to pass. I stepped in front of her, blocked her more than twice, broke her stride. When she finally ran in front of me, one of the spikes of her shoe slashed my leg. It bled into my sock. I finished the race close to last; walked off the track before my parents or coach could talk to me. Three days before League Finals, I had had an abortion. I was seventeen.

At the clinic I recognized a girl in the waiting room—we had been on the same swim team; favored the same stroke. I think she was fifteen. I tried not to make eye contact; we didn’t speak to each other while we waited. She was with a friend, or maybe her mother. I waited alone with my boyfriend’s $100 in my purse to pay for it.


There was a paper gown, my feet in stirrups, and then I was asleep. Afterwards, in recovery, girls got sick into curve-shaped bowls, rested in cots lined up like an assembly line. I wanted to get dressed to go. I had to wait for Denis to pick me up.


I wouldn’t let the girl pass me. Her teammates called me names as I rounded the curve of the track. I didn’t know the rival school she attended. I don’t remember what she looked like.


Afterwards, when Denis drove me home, I didn’t say much—what was there to say about a child we wouldn’t raise? He dropped me off at my front door, drove back to Los Angeles and his college dorm. I told my mother I stayed home from school because of bad menstrual cramps. Maybe she never knew until now.



I Loved Him Most When He Stole Second Base

Denis could beat out a throw: his long lead off the bag, his cleats roughing up the infield dirt, the force of his slide feet first into second. How he’d beat out a tag. How he’d stand, and dust off his white pants like he was meant to be there. I was part of the crowd noise; I was part of it.

I confess—he stole my dorm mate’s stereo (I pretended not to know). At the local grocery store, he’d shove a thick sirloin steak and a frozen bag of corn into his Levi’s. I bought the frozen blueberry cheesecake for dessert. (In high school, I shoplifted a peasant blouse with three-quarter sleeves, wore it once; the blue and red colors bled in the wash.)

It takes commitment to steal a base, to nurse a strawberry—that red skin abrasion on his butt or thigh—the mark of a thief.



College Ball 

       March 1977

Six months before we married, I drove fifty miles to see Denis play intercollegiate ball in Riverside. I borrowed my dad’s new Ford Pinto, orange with black interior; it was the first car I’d driven with a stick shift. At Evans Park, I watched the Busch girl in her hot pants and white, low-cut t-shirt; she was stacked. She posed between Denis and his buddy Dave for the photo-op—two uniformed men and their Beer Girl as breaking news. Denis was a regular Casanova—he owned the full jock package--thick, dark hair, baby-blue eyes, the muscles, and mustache. I didn’t care if they won or lost the game; I wanted my man. After the game, I thought we’d be together. Denis thanked me for coming, told me to go home. Instead, I followed as he and Dave sped away from the stadium. I floored it to keep up. They tried to lose me on a dirt road, a kind of motocross labyrinth of dips and curves—the Pinto caught air—I lost one of dad’s beloved hub cabs. It bounced and spun astray as I raced into the sun’s glare, trying to leave that Busch girl in the dust-up.



Bird Cage 

Slang for the catcher’s face mask, a bird cage is a padded, metal grate. When there was a play at the plate or a runner stealing second or a foul ball, Denis would bail out of his cage. His quick eye looking upwards, he’d flip his mask into the dirt, his skullcap secure on his head. I’d wait for that delicious smack of ball in mitt. And then his throw. I depended on it.


I didn’t wear a bird cage veil made of Russian netting. Or face blusher of lace. For my bridal headpiece, my cousin Claudine sewed a wreath of peach-colored roses and baby’s breath, ivory tulle, and ribbons. The flower girl all grown up. Peace and love. I knew white was for virgin brides.


Afterwards, Denis would scrape off the plate with his foot as if to score it with his scent; then knock his mask against his knee to remove the dirt. With his mitt folded in half under his arm, he’d use one hand to replace the strap over the back of his head, the other to pull the cage over his face. His backed turned, maybe he’d quip a little something to the ump. Before he assumed the catcher’s crouch, he never looked at me sitting in the box seats behind him. I never saw him look for me.



New Flock of Cards

I’ve never been bird watching. During high school, Denis was two-timing, dated Sue, secretly loved me in the school parking lot after hours. My friend Jules told me this: she saw the lovey couple shopping at the local outdoor mall—the best part—a bird shit on Sue’s shirt, and Denis laughed. I invited Sue to our wedding; thanked her for the gift—a burnt orange crock-pot I used for years.

When Denis signed with the St. Louis Cardinals, I thought the mascot would be a bald-headed Friar Tuck, not a robust redbird. (Most birds are monogamous.) Drafted twelfth round, my newlywed husband went to Calgary three months after our daughter was born, received $2500 as a signing bonus. I don’t remember what we did with the money. It was a short-season, rookie ball—I visited once—long enough to see he was swinging a big bat. That was something to chirp about.

As soon as the ball becomes a white streak off the bat

the center fielder puts his hands on his hips,

digs his toes into the warning track

and refuses to look at the ball as it sails over his head.

I wonder what would happen

if the game was tied for hours, days, weeks.

Oh, for the first few days we'll pretend to care,

who wins and loses, booing when the visitors'

But after a few days of sleeping under the stars and watching kids

run zigzags across the outfield in the morning

their socks growing wet with dew

we'll sensibly give up.

In the afternoon we'll lunch on stale popcorn and grilled-hatched hot dogs,

gossiping at the condiments station about who has left, who's arrived

and whether you noticed Becky move sections,

even though her husband of eight years is still in section B

glumly keeping score in a pile of scorebooks growing fast at his feet,

the double switches and pitching changes marked with scrawled arrows.

The announcers will chime in every few hours

cheerfully announcing births, somberly noting deaths

and reminding us one lucky fan will win a Kia if a home run hits the cowboy

who watches from 445 feet away in straightaway center.

The government will try to get us to leave, I bet--

I picture came jeeps outside, puzzled National Guardsmen

sitting on the hood, swapping cigarettes

There will be news trucks there too, their TV arrays skying over the

wall past left field, over the Roto-Rooter ad.

Once, people will swear, they saw Matt Lauer peeking over the wall

during a double steal attempt in the 154 inning

and his haircut, the ladies will say, was perfect.






Trevor Pyle is a sports journalist who lives and works north of Seattle. He has published poetry in Aethlon and The Heron's Nest.

 

Sunday, November 10, 1985
Atlanta Falcons vs. Philadelphia Eagles

Dad leans over me on my bed. I don’t understand why he refuses to let me sleep in my game outfit. He grins as he pries the gray corduroys down my waist. The Kelly green Eagles jersey flails over my head and around my arms like a hockey player who’s losing a fight. After he flings Ron Jaworksi’s number-seven to the ground his wiry black eyebrows furrow and his mouth frowns. He puts his hands on his hips, and sighs as he leaves. You may recognize Jaworski and his nickname Jaws, as one of ESPN’s football analysts. Maybe Mom puts my pajamas on after. Maybe I cry. I’ll be nine in two days. By refusing to let me wear my Eagles gear to bed, Dad violates our code, our unspoken truce about all things Eagles.
     
I watch Jaws on TV as a boy, barking out signals from behind his narrow gray two-bar facemask. The Eagles suffer from a mighty hangover after their loss in New Orleans during Super Bowl XV. In 1981, they win ten games, but lose in the first round of the playoffs. The following season, the NFL strike wipes out eight weeks of football, and after a dismal year, the celebrated head coach Dick Vermeil resigns. In the following three seasons, when I’m ages seven, eight, and nine, the team’s combined record is 18-29-1.
     
Apparently, these dire times are cause for calling upon Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for help. Or, actually, it sounds more like it is their fault, the way Dad pounds his fist on the arm of the chair, and stalks by me, shaking the floorboards where I sit. When he calls upon the holy family, it sounds like “JeeeeeeSUS MaryandJoseph,” a long, overdramatic exhalation for the first syllable, and a breath in for the second. The Virgin Mary and the adopted father of the savior for the Christian religion are expelled in one collapsed grumble.
     
Those “Damn Birds” lose so often, I learn that part of the rules of the house mean toning down the chitchat during dinner after a defeat. If Dad raises an eyebrow at me, it is like a yellow flag on the field, a personal misconduct on my part. The eyebrow is worse than hearing him tell me to go sit in “the chair,” my parents’ 80s talk for taking a timeout. Mom and my sister can speak, and they have to carry the conversation. But if I blabber on it’s a sign of blasphemy. Chirping at the table is disloyal? to “the damn Birds” a little—but it’s more about a bond we are forming over the Eagles. It is clear to me that Jaws is the leader. He gives the commands on the field and holds the ball every play. I learn the rules of the game on the field and in the house. I learn to follow my dad’s signals. 
  
 I am a few months away from making my First Communion. Each Sunday our family goes to nine o’clock Mass. After, my parents go out to breakfast with Grandma and Pop Pop, while my sister and I spend an hour in Confraternity Catholic Doctrine class. Catholic kids who attend public school need to go to what is commonly referred to as CCD. I’m sure we talk about the Eucharist that fall. And at some point my conclusions cross disciplines.
     
During the prayers of the faithful, at Mass, when the priest says, “And now for any intentions that lie in the silence of your hearts,” I bow my head and pray for Jaws, and number eighty-two Mike Quick, possibly the most aptly named wide receiver in the history of the NFL.
     
The Eagles have the power to close any gaps between my father and me, like the tight-spiraled missiles Jaws throws to Quick over the middle of the field. I don’t ever really question why it matters so much, but I accept Dad’s prayerful bursts to the holy family as Eucharist. The team feeds our relationship. It is a subject of immediate and uncontested agreement between us. Touchdowns mean yelling, a shared grin, possibly a high five. An Eagles interception or a shanked field-goal attempt mean calling upon Jesus Christ, or simply groaning incomprehensibly to each other as some constipated people tend to do privately. 
   
I’m still trying to figure out why my father leaves before that game is over. It’s just getting good, for the team and for us. In the first quarter, the team mascot, Birdbrain, approaches our section. I run down to hand my drawing of an Eagles helmet made with green, gray, and white pastel markers on yellow construction paper. I ask him to give it to Mike Quick. Birdbrain stops his frantic gestures for a moment. He points his beak in my dad’s direction, then rubs my head with his wing, and moves along the metal railing waving white wings, knocking over empty clear plastic cups with oversized yellow bird feet.
     
The game is somewhat famous because of how it ends. The Eagles blow a seventeen-to-nothing lead. The Atlanta Falcons tie the game. They are twenty-five yards from the goal line. Nine seconds are left in the fourth quarter. They miss the field goal. In overtime, the red helmets receive the ball and cannot score. They punt it back to the home team. The punt soars in the air for sixty-two yards and dots the Eagles’ five-yard line, bouncing out of bounds inside the one. The field position hushes the remaining sixty-three thousand fans who attend the game. We sit in section 372, row eleven. Maybe he make’s us leave because of all the sloppy drunks, spilling beer and curses as well as the thought of being in a post-game traffic jam with them and his only son. Or maybe it’s that the game is in the opposite end zone. Without any warning, Dad pats both knees and says, “Let’s go.” 
     
I descend concrete steps, and traverse through the concourse. Thousands upon thousands shift through the opening of each section entrance as we hustle past them. Each opening is a glimmer of where we were. The game is not over. And he decides to leave? It is overtime. Dad alters the lead shoulder under his blue jacket as he moves through the crowd. The back of his gray wool cap and the red flannel lining of his hood shift to the right, then the left. He is my lead blocker. The openings offer light, yellow security jackets, and traces of blue sky. The entrances are giant speakers amplifying a chant that is just catching on, or dying out. The public address announcer booms, and the crowd’s thunderous murmur roars on.
     
In the car, Dad turns on the radio. Over the concrete and the steel and up into the blue, all those voices erupt. Merrill Reese’s voice crackles through the static side door speakers. “He’s gonna go! 25-30, 35-40—midfield—45-40, 35-30. Mike Quick. Touchdown. The Eagles win.” Jaws and Quick connect for a record breaking ninety-nine-yard touchdown catch and run, the winning score of the team’s first overtime victory in franchise history. Dad’s car wheels flatten a beer can. In my sideview mirror, I watch the aluminum slide and scrape the parking lot blacktop in the direction of the stadium—the concrete and the steel shrinking, as we drive away.


Sunday, September 17, 2000
Philadelphia Eagles vs. Green Bay Packers

The 3-6 Eagles’ loss is not the quarterback matchup it’s hyped to be, between gun-slinging Brett Favre and the scrambling second year man, Donovan McNabb. It’s a forgettable kicking contest between Ryan Longwell and David Akers, except that Dad visits me in Connecticut, and we watch it together. I stay in Connecticut after college, and sign up for a satellite service and the NFL package, which allows me to see every game, every Sunday. 
     
Dad “cooks” before we leave for church. He cuts open a package of sauerkraut. The pickled cabbage and yellow juices squirt out of the bag and thud into the metal pot Dad has brought with him. He places three pieces of pork on a foundation of sauerkraut. Kielbasa, hot dogs, another bag of kraut and a bottle of beer fill the rest of the pot. Dad places the lid on top, turns the electric burner on low, rubs the palms of his hands together, and says, “Should be ready by kickoff.”
     
The Eagles game is almost over; the pot on the stove is half empty. I shoot the TV with the remote to switch channels from one upcoming four o’clock game to the next. Dad sleeps in the Laz-E-Boy. I sit a few feet away on the futon. The backs of his hands rest against his khaki-covered thighs. The fingers turn in toward the palms. The folds of his white-and-brown windowpane button-down shirt expand with his breath. Black glasses rest in his shirt pocket. Afternoon whiskers poke through his neck, lowered chin, and cheeks. His open mouth is pink. The wrinkles across his forehead cannot relax, even in sleep. Slow-motion replays and commercials shift colored lights between thin wisps of silver hairs on his shiny scalp.
     
I want him to wake up, raise his arms out toward the green players who flash on the screen with wings on their helmets. He should be hooting and hollering first names, in sentences punctuated by the pop of a single clap. I want his voice to bounce off my apartment walls, to grumble with me in disgust, to speak to me before he leaves.


Sunday, January 18, 2008
Philadelphia Eagles vs. Phoenix Cardinals
     
When the crisp air of autumn returns, and maple leaves crunch underfoot, watching football can be as holy for me as praying in church. I manage to bring my Sunday bachelor practice and the NFL satellite package into family life. We lay on top of green pillows, the floor, the couch, and each other. We take turns holding James, who’s almost four months old. He wears the same Kelly green sweatshirt with gray snaps that was once mine. The Eagles’ patch on the chest is separating from the cotton. The gray strings from the hood have frayed. I guess in the midseventies, when the sweatshirt was made, they actually put strings in baby clothing.
     
Lynne ladles her chili into bread bowls before the one o’clock games, by the four o’clock kickoff, she’ll slide a tray of tortilla chips topped with her chili, chopped raw onions, and shredded cheddar cheese out of the top metal rack of the oven. James will nap in his crib, while Lynne sleeps on the couch. It’s our day of rest.
     
Sundays become as dead as my father when the Philadelphia Eagles season ends. The whistles, cheers, replays, and familiar commercials we may have grown to like—it all recedes into a winter snowstorm and hibernates for eight months.
     
I throw the remote across the room that January night. It bounces off the couch. Batteries and plastic pieces clatter across the carpet as midnight green jerseys head for the locker-room and the off season. The wings arched in mid flap on the players’ helmets walk past white and Cardinal red jerseys celebrating their National Football Conference Championship victory and a trip to Tampa, Florida, to face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLIII. A haze of red and white confetti litters the TV screen.
     
Without the relevance, the immediacy of the game, or the promise of the next game, the paraphernalia surrounding me seems lifeless. The Kelly green and the midnight green constitute the colors of my dual self; the son in me who longs for his dad and the young man, who in 1999 (when the uniform changed to midnight green) prepares to graduate college and find a job. Grow up. Midnight green fades through red and white confetti like the faces of people walking outside when the flakes fall and winter gusts blow white everywhere. The team’s fourth NFC Championship game loss in seven years sends me into a fury, an illogical frenzy my wife of two and a half years hasn’t seen yet because I’ve been too embarrassed to unleash myself fully over those Damn Birds. 
     
I have yet to consider ridding myself of this ridiculous obsession, but I do want to tear down the posters, autographed pictures, football cards, the three helmets on the shelf, and the deflated football, cracked and autographed by the entire 1988 team. McNabb and the Damn Birds have brought me too close, too many times. The jus from the au jus roast-beef sandwiches steaming in clouds above the crock-pot nauseates me. My barley-and-hops-soaked head throbs.  
     
What do I expect from a Super Bowl victory? A championship team cannot grant me the transfiguration of my father. It wouldn’t deliver him from the subconscious to a seat on the couch for an introduction to his daughter-in-law and his grandson. It wouldn’t give us the chance to talk again, or exchange a grin. Football cannot resurrect a father. 
     
Most of the players that stare back at me through dusty glass frames are retired. I call out their names next to Dad, as a kid. Some of them aren’t even alive anymore. And when that season ended, when every season ends, the room haunts me until the sting of the playoff loss wears off. The Eagles’ wall clock ticks above the TV. The once-white pennants spanning three decades seem to yellow before my eyes. The 1960 NFL Championship team poster did not belong to me. They have never been my team. They’re stories of a famed past, names from another century: Norm Van Brocklin, Tommy McDonald, and Chuck Bednarik?the players who beat Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers at Franklin Field, they are ghosts of Sunday’s past haunting the present.
     
And why do I hang my childhood poster of football helmets? The NFL consisted of twenty-eight teams then. The images occupied my boyhood mind at night. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I left the Advent candles on in my bedroom. They were single plastic candles, with a bulb for a flame. The lights illuminated the helmets, my parents were in the next room and I was free to wonder: Can I name the state where each team is located? Is it the capital city? If not, what is? Can I name who is in first place in each division? Can I connect the Eagles helmet to the one belonging to their opponent this week in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines? Darn. What about next week? Wait. Who are we playing next Sunday? Maybe I can guess?
     
I shouldn’t expect old faces and variations of green to reconnect me to my dead father. Perhaps I’ve surrounded myself with autographed football cards of Ron Jaworski, Harold Carmichael, Wilbert Montgomery, and Mike Quick, those stars of the early 80s, to hear their names spoken in my father’s voice. That his voice could once again holler at the TV with mine when the game is on and the collective voices of thousands hums through the TV speakers. My grief is not the loss on the field, but the loss of the man, whose absence make off-season Sundays as empty as Veterans Stadium moments before it imploded. 
     
I spread the Eagles blanket out on the floor and put all three helmets in the middle: the midnight green helmet with white wings, the Kelly green one with gray wings, and the mini white helmet with green wings. I wear my father’s gray t-shirt, which he bought at Lehigh University during training camp in 2000. McNabb was a rookie then. I reached out to shake his hand in the autograph tent that morning and shot him an awkward grin when his large hand enveloped mine and his fingers wrapped around my wrist and part of my forearm.
     
I form an X with both arms, grab the bottom and fling the worn cotton of the T-shirt onto the helmets. James sits on the floor and watches me. I unsnap his sweatshirt and pull it off. I hold the blanket together at the corners and head upstairs. I ransack my drawers, and continue to fill the blanket with Eagles apparel.
     
In the attic, I shove it all in the bin of summer clothes. I hammer the plastic lid with my fist, and ask myself “Why should this loss drive me to stand, shirtless, panting alone in the dusty cold attic on a dark winter’s night?” When Dad was alive, as I grew older, I vowed to keep football in perspective, to recover from a loss and engage others at the dinner table. And yet, this is how he would have reacted—stunned into silent anger. Dad shakes his head in my memory, and I shake mine back at him. Get a grip. Dad, I think to myself. But here I am in the attic.
     

Sunday, November 1, 2009
New York Giants vs. Philadelphia Eagles

I know football games are an excuse to melt cheese on tortilla chips, drink a beer in the afternoon, and hang out. At thirteen months old, I teach James to lift his arms up toward the brown wood panels of the ceiling and say, “Touch, touch, touch,” whenever the Eagles cross the goal line. And I know that I’m seducing him by buying him gear and wrapping him up in excessive affection when he raises both arms. I sell it to Lynne as our day of rest. I turn the volume down late in the afternoon while she naps on the couch.

The leaves from the limbs of my neighbor’s birch tree blanket the space in an autumn quilt. The Eagles on the walls in my den hover through memory, awakening my younger self. The team is off to a promising four-win and two-loss start. McNabb has passed the ball well, and speedy, young, skill players LeSean McCoy, DeSean Jackson, and Jeremy Maclin dash across the screen for big plays. But even casual fans know McNabb doesn’t have many good years left in his career. And soon, someone my father and I never watched together will replace him as the next franchise quarterback.

My father eludes me in the commotion of every day. I walk on the 300-level concourse of a stadium that no longer exists. I thought that as I grew older, the fanaticism might wear off, dwindle at least into a controlled following, with a more grounded emotional response to the outcomes of Eagles games. But what has remained, if not intensified, is a feeling: an old hope rises up that the winged helmets can once again close the gap between us. Under the wood-panel ceiling, and between the sage green walls, while I recline in my chair in the reverie of a lazy Sunday, catching my father seems possible, if only he would turn around.















James M. Chesbro's essays appear in The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project.His essay "Night Running,"which appeared in CT Review, was selected as a notable essay for The Best American Essays series, 2012. He is the co-editor of  You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person (Welcome Table Press, 2013). Read more of his work atjamesmchesbro.com. Follow him on Twitter.

 

Boxing is more art than craft.
The sweet science is about movement,
feet and hands choreographed.
A combatant's ballet contained by the ring.

In the dressing room, the fighter wraps his fists,
slips on his gloves, his high top shoes-
soles as worn out as a shopworn fighter.

His cut man hides a packet of fresh blades
and a jar of Vaseline in his pocket.
Next the corner stool is a bucket
with a sponge soaking in water.

He opts to wear his training robe.
Dry sweat stains and a rip down the back
exposes his back side. No need for the
fancy, he says. The sweet science don't care.

Thirteen times he answers the bell,
adapts his choreography, slips punches,
scores points but fails to hurt his opponent.

He comes out for round fourteen.
The sweet science remains on its
stool, leaves the boxer without art or craft.

His opponent pins him against the ropes.
A flurry of blows, like a roofers nail gun
attacks his midsection, snaps his head back
and sends him to the canvas.
Body motionless. Eyes unresponsive.
The sweet science still and quiet. 






Dora Robinson is a poet and a historical fiction writer. Her poetry is featured in the 2014 Texas Poetry Calendar. Her poem, Three Coyotes, co-won the Austin Poetry Society's Poetry on Wheels Contest and is currently displayed on Austin buses for their riders' enjoyment. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her partner Beverly Williams-Hawkins and is an active member of the Austin Poetry Society.

 

My Grampa's old house was the best place to watch baseball, because no matter what room you were in, you could always hear the Yankees game. For a while, the broadcast was narrated by the low bass of Jon Sterling. A few years later, Sterling went to the radio, and the reins were given to Michael Kay and his near-perfect non-regional dialect

"Going back, at the track, the wall, looking up...See ya! A long two run home run by Jorge Posada, and the Yankees lead two-to-on."

Though the announcers might've changed, the crowd never did. Even on TV, I could hear the Bleacher Creatures chanting players' names as the game started. Yankee fans have a sound all to their own they're louder than everybody else.


I liked the game of baseball from the first time I saw a pitch cross a plate. While some kids found its easy pace to be tedious, I found it somehow soothing, more conducive to thought. I became fascinated by the infinite statistics and match-ups. I often tried to guess what pitch was coming next, how the infield would be configured for a particular batter, what the managers might be thinking. If this guy gets on, how will they handle the next hitter? If they strike him out, will their pitcher come back out for the eighth? I had soon come to think of the game as athletic chess.

Every few weeks or so I’d watch a game over at my Grampa’s house. Carl Mueller was a man who had never thought much of himself, despite the fact that he’d lived an extraordinary life. My Grampa fathered two beautiful daughters, served in the Navy during World War II, then returned to the mainland to become the vice-president of a successful insurance company. Whenever my mother tried to compliment him for his accomplishments, he’d simply shrug and say, “Well, I don’t know about that.”

Grampa had a story for everything. There was the time his pants split during a church service, the time my aunt sprayed him with a hose while he was napping, the time he saw Babe Ruth hit three homers in one game. Those were the stories I liked best––the ones about the Yankees.

Grampa told me about Alfonso Soriano and his lethal blend of speed and power. There was Mariano Rivera, at that time already being hailed as the greatest closer in baseball. Veteran first baseman Tino Martinez was one of Grampa’s favorites; always good for a clutch hit, and he had a sure glove at first.

But among all the superstars on the Yankees, Derek Jeter quickly became my favorite. The iconic throw from the hole at short, the near-automatic 200-hit seasons, the leadership, the clutch play––he had it all, and on top of that, he was a nice guy. I’d never seen an athlete who was so successful and simultaneously so humble. He never even got upset when he failed. If he ever made a mistake, it was no big deal. He could just forget about one play and move on to the next, something I could never seem to do. The truth was, I didn’t just love Jeter.

I wanted to be Jeter.



Every morning I’d wake up and head out to the yard with a bat and a bag of baseballs in my hand, a number two Yankees jersey on my back. Any great batter needs a great stance, so I modeled mine after Jeter’s. I would start by holding a hand up to the imaginary umpire, calling time while I dug in. Then I would look out at the imaginary pitcher, trace two circles in the air with my bat and nod, letting everyone know that I was ready.

After mastering my technique, I proceeded to a new exercise: toss a ball up, then take a hack. Most of the time I’d miss, but those rare instances when I made contact were enough to keep me practicing. Soon, I’d gotten pretty good at that, so I tried a new trick: golfballs. I figured that if I could hit a golfball with a bat, I’d be able to hit a baseball with ease. This took a while too, but eventually I got a handle on it, and soon the Titleists were soaring over my backyard fence and into the woods.

But my practice didn’t translate to success on the field. Baseball was and is the most demanding sport I’ve ever played, not so much physically as it is mentally. A sport like basketball is much more instinctual; if you make a mistake, there’s no time to think about it––just run back on defense and make up for it. Baseball is far more cerebral, and at my age it was all too easy for me to get lost in my own thoughts. Make a mistake in baseball, and that’s too bad. You head back to the dugout with your tail between your legs, and you just think and think about it. You’ve got plenty of time to sit on the bench and ponder your failure––plenty of time in the field, too. You might not even get a chance to redeem yourself for another twenty, thirty minutes. And if you fail again? Think about it some more.

In the back of my mind, I began to realize that my love of watching baseball didn’t translate to a love of playing baseball. Maybe it was the pressure of being alone on the field against nine other guys who wanted to get me out, or maybe it was the constant failure so inherent in the game itself. For whatever reason––though I wouldn’t admit it to myself for many years––I wanted only to watch baseball, not play it.



It was a beautiful July night at the ball field down the road from my house. There’s something special about playing beneath the light of two monstrous, thousand watt banks. For those nine innings, you’re a big leaguer. The spotlight is on you, quite literally. I almost wanted the ball to disappear into the lights, just so I could lose it for a second and then track it down, like I’d seen Bernie Williams do on TV.

I was a freshman in high school, right on that awkward line between boyhood and manhood. Physically, I’d say I was more the latter; I was already nearer to six feet than most other guys on the team, and I was making a decent attempt at facial hair. But mentally, I was still an adolescent. Even the slightest mistake would send me into a state of permanent frustration. In a game built on failure, that mindset was dangerous.

The game started off well enough. We took a two-to-nothing lead on a two-run double, and our starter was looking un-hittable. I was playing right field and hitting seventh, and I’d managed to get through the season more or less on the strength of my own reluctance. That is, I rarely swung at any pitch. Despite my constant practice, I really wasn’t much of a hitter, and I had a terrible, terrible fear of striking out. However, I had decent speed and could make infield groundouts at least close, if not pick up a hit. Occasionally, I’d even get lucky enough to draw a walk. But making solid contact was still a rarity.

My first at-bat of the game was short and sweet. I dug in, asked the ump for time, then nodded to the pitcher, just like Derek Jeter. Three pitches, three called strikes, and that was that. I walked back to the dugout in a daze. No big deal, though. I did what Jeter would do, and I forgot about it.

My next at-bat didn’t come until much later. The opposing team had batted around for four runs, and we went quickly in order. The score stayed the same when I finally came up three innings later. I had no idea who the pitcher was, but he seemed to know me quite well. Everything was a strike, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to let me walk. I tried to pick up a hit, but only managed to embarrass myself by hacking at three breaking balls in succession. Time to sit down.

Now I was getting mad. I had never been an angry kid, but the frustration was building. The truth is, I had never lost my temper the way I was about to.

My third at-bat came in the 8th. We were down by two runs with men on second and third, two outs. Needless to say, we could blow the game wide open. It was up to me, in the perfect Jeter situation. Game on the line, my team needed me. I was going to get a hit.

First pitch: ball one. Alright, too low. Stay focused.

Second pitch: low again, ball two. Maybe I’ll get a walk, I thought naively, and it’ll all be up to someone else. Even stronger than my desire to get a hit was my desire not to strikeout––or more accurately, my desire not to fail.

Third pitch: strike, right down the middle. Alright, alright, not your pitch.

Fourth pitch: strike two, same spot. Why aren’t you swinging?

And then it came: the fifth pitch. This time I was ready. I watched it all the way in, swung, and...

...missed.

It was my third strikeout of the game, the kind of hat trick that you never want to get. As I walked off the field, I remember having an odd thought: Don’t do it. What did that mean? Who was I even talking to? Myself, I realized. But it was already too late.

I hoisted my bat and threw it as hard as I could at the backstop. All the frustration, all the anger, all the disappointment I’d been feeling during the game came out in that one moment.

In hind sight, it seems like nothing. Paul O’Neil had done far worse to water coolers in his day. And besides, I wasn’t a robot. Everyone gets angry. I was just a young kid, overcome with failure and embarrassment, and in a moment of weakness I made a mistake.

But right then and there, it wasn’t so easy to brush off. To a guy who wanted to be like Jeter, I’d done one of the most un-Jeterlike things imaginable. My dad was there to see it, and my mom. I knew instantly that I’d let them down, and let myself down. Most of all, I thought of Grampa, and what he would’ve said if he’d seen me throw that bat. Luckily, he wasn’t at the game. But what if he had been? He was the one who had introduced me to the Yankees, and to Derek Jeter. What would he have thought if he’d seen that bat go flying?

I remember walking to the bench with my face all red, tears tickling my eyes. My coach was the first to come out of the dugout, a big tall guy with a keg belly and cannonball biceps. The first thing he said was, “Go apologize to the ump.” I’ll never forget what he said next:

“That’s not you.”

That was the worst part of all. Not only was I not Jeter.

I wasn’t even me.



The lights were back on at the ball park a few weeks later. It was one of the last games of the season before playoffs, and a meaningless one at that; we’d been hovering near the top of our division for the entire season, and even if we lost out, we’d still make the playoffs.

Since my incident a few weeks prior, I’d scarcely touched a baseball bat, except during games. Even then it was with great reluctance, as if the bat might turn into a viper at any second. I continued to look for walks, but I found more strikeouts than anything. I didn’t really care anymore. I just wanted the season to be over.

It was a good game despite its meaninglessness. We traded runs back and forth each inning, made great plays on both sides. I’d even picked up a walk in my second at-bat, probably the first time I’d reached base in weeks.

Then came the ninth inning.

I suppose I should’ve expected that I’d come up in another clutch situation. If you watch enough baseball, you begin to realize that the baseball gods are cruel; they love it when the worst hitter comes up with the game on the line.

The score was knotted at seven, and I was on deck. It was alright, though. I wasn’t worried. Our number eight hitter, Tommy, was up (I’d been moved down to ninth in the order), and he was already three-for-three on the day. Josh was on third, poised to score. No worries. Tommy would get a hit, and none of the pressure would fall to me.

But instead, Tommy walked. Of course he walked. Of course it had to come down to me. I’d never actually believed in those baseball gods, but at that moment, I remember wondering if I was being punished by some higher being. It was all too similar to the game three weeks prior.

Where’s Derek Jeter? I thought. If he was here, he could pinch hit for me, and we would actually win this game.

I stepped into the batter’s box, so nervous that I forgot to get into my Jeter stance. Might as well get it over with quickly, I thought to myself. No reason to prolong the suffering.

With that thought in mind, I decided that I was going to swing at anything. Absolutely anything. I didn’t care how far outside it was, I didn’t care what pitch it was, I didn’t even care if it came at my head. If I was going to let the team down, I was at least going to get a few goddamn swings in while I was at it.

The first pitch was waist-high and slightly outside. Good enough. I swung, and suddenly I had a prophetic vision of the result: an ugly hack for strike one. Maybe some parents in the crowd would laugh. Two more of those and then I’d have to go sit and think about it. Oh well. At least it’ll be over.

But it wasn’t over.

I felt a shock go through the bat. The ball wasn’t in the catcher’s mitt––it was rolling through the infield. It had to be the lousiest little grounder I’d ever seen. It rolled––no, inched––across the infield grass to deep short. I took off, barely concentrating on putting one cleat in front of the other. My head was swiveled around over my left shoulder, my eyes fixed on that little white and red ball making its leisurely way to the dirt between second and third. The shortstop must’ve been playing up the middle, because he was running to his right, trying to make the backhand grab. I had no idea where the third baseman was. I suppose I should’ve been sprinting like mad in case someone got there and threw to first. But I wasn’t. I was mesmerized by that little white and red baseball.

The shortstop finally got his glove down, and I knew it was over. There was no way the baseball gods would allow such blasphemy as that. Me, getting a game winning hit? Impossible. His glove touched the dirt, he turned, and the throw––

There was no throw. The shortstop halted and glanced behind himself, his face all screwed up in disappointment. Did it get stuck in his glove? Then I noticed a little white and red bump in the outfield grass, placed in the perfect spot between the shortstop and left fielder. A baseball, I realized. The one I’d just hit.

It certainly wasn’t a Jeter-esque moment. I didn’t work the count, didn’t wait for my pitch, sure as hell didn’t get a neat liner into right field. My hit was a grounder to left that would’ve been fielded if the shortstop hadn’t been shaded just a few feet toward second.

You might call it the ugliest game winning hit you’ll ever see.



Fast forward a year, and I was playing baseball out on the diamond near my house with a few friends. I was still a Yankees fan––and still am, and always will be––but I no longer wore the Derek Jeter jersey. Jeter was still my favorite––and still is, and always will be––but I haven’t worn his jersey for a long, long time.

My friend John was pitching, and pitching well. I’d been playing with him ever since the early days, back when I was still hacking at golf balls in my backyard. He had a live fastball and a bizarre, twirling delivery that made it difficult to see the ball come out of his hand.

I stepped into the box and did a few half swings, not bothering to ask the imaginary ump for time. I didn’t do the little head nod anymore, either, only stood at the ready with knees partly bent.

John looked in at the imaginary catcher and shook off a few signs, then settled on one, readied up, and pitched. It was a speedy fastball, just like it always was with John.

I swung nice and easy, got the barrel out in front. There was a pleasant crack, and the ball went sailing toward the pink afternoon sun, off and away beyond the tree line that marked the edge of the field.

It was the farthest I’d ever hit a baseball. 



Kyle Massa is an undergraduate student currently residing in Ithaca, New York. He grew up in a small town called East Greenbush, just a short drive from Albany. His favorite literary genre include fantasy, science fiction, and horror, though he's also partial to a little non-fiction now and then.  

I finish my beer. I shake the barkeep's dry hand.
I tear my jersey off my back. I sully a reputation
with a reneged bet. I order a new beer, pay off
the damn bet. I let the jukebox swallow another
dollar. I turn on a Bowie record. I tell a lady
she looks stunning. I am told nice try. I thank
Lidstrom with a round for strangers pooled near
the television, grieving with their own wicked songs.
I let my cell phone die. I call a cab with my hand,
waving. I wake up the next day, scrape off the night,
start my angry car. I go back to work, the engine,
a revved metal titan beneath me, growling.





Ben Alfaro is a writer, organizer, and educator from Detroit, Michigan. He is a writer-in-residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit. His work has appeared recently in Red Cedar review, Acentos Review, on HBO and on Michigan Public Radio. His second collection of poems on sports and masculinity, Home Court, is forthcoming on Red Beard Press.