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Spend enough time in the bleachers this summer and you will hear a story about someone getting hit by a baseball. Either them getting hit at the plate or in the stands, or a tale about watching it happen to someone else.
Last weekend a guy at the bar in Dyersville was talking about getting hit, hard, and in the head. I heard him say he woke up at home plate, missed most of the fall semester. Later that night, standing in front of the Field of Dreams house, a friend told me about her son, a left-handed batter who as a teenager sent one over the short fence along the third base line, and just missing a wandering toddler’s temple.
“It would have killed him,” she said, making sure that I realized how close it was. “It was my most scared mom moment.”
Her son told her recently that he still thinks about it, twenty years on.
I guess this is mine:
It’s a little league night near the Illinois River. Mid-July. Truck beds and grandparents are bunched up against the outfield fence. A piece of gum and a quarter are given for every foul ball returned to the concession stand. The county courthouse glows beyond the third base line. The grain elevator provides the soundtrack, humming a couple of blocks away.
I am keeping vigil as second basemen, my daily bread being Baseball Tonight and All-Star Baseball 2001 for the Nintendo 64.
After every batter, I hold my hand up to let everyone know how many outs there are, and where the next play should be. I know where I am supposed to align myself, my reactions well-rehearsed for whatever is going to happen next.
This turns out to be a short-lived time in my life.
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The pitcher will later become an all-state quarterback, and now he’s built like the concrete foundations he helps his dad pour every summer when the weather is good.
He’s usually behind the plate, but against the tough teams, he pitches.
He has the capacity to buy beer now at age 10, and throws a stone of a baseball.
The batter’s a kid scraping the bottom of the age requirement, he’s hugging the outside of the batter’s box.
Later, it’s rumored that he’s been begged by his father to go out for baseball this summer.
For this at-bat, he’s pinch-hitting.
HBP
High and tight, and fast too. Defying all logic, baseball or otherwise, the kid turns into that goddamn missile. Had he turned away, the pitch still would have shattered his plastic helmet.
On paper, it looks like this:
Hit-By-Pitch: HP, or HBP.
Out on the diamond, it looks like this: the ball breaks the kid’s cheekbone, splinters his nose, and threatens to take his eye.
Our catcher tears his helmet off, looks down at what the pitch has done, and pukes behind the plate.
The batter’s mother comes screaming out of the stands and through the dugout. She threatens to sue the pitcher and his family, and curses at the umpire, our coach, and God above I think.
No one is safe.
The kid wails and moans like a thing much older and suffering. We all stand and seem to understand that we are all in some way to blame for this, the delicate beauty of baseball splintered much like my grandparents’ picture window by just one wild throw.
His mother gathers him up and runs with him in her arms through the outfield and into somebody’s waiting minivan, where we watch her tear down the road to the county hospital.
After, everyone just looks around. I think the coaches talk it over. I’m not sure what to do. At this time, I was doing my best to always look stoic and sure.
This too turned out to be short-lived.
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Our pitcher is devastated, squatting down and picking at the grass behind the mound. We probably pray together, him and I, as that is something we were doing then.
The coach’s son who chalked the lines tonight comes out to rake dirt onto the blood left behind in the batter’s box. It clots into something amorphous which he does his best to drag to the edge of the fence and push into the gravel.
Somebody makes a decision to play on. Someone is always making decisions for us. This goes on to remain a constant, decades beyond baseball.
It’s tough for the opposing coach to convince the on-deck batter to step up to the plate. They send someone else out to take the batter’s place on first base: a pinch runner for a pinch hitter, a subtle reminder that baseball is a timeless game constructed entirely on replacement, abbreviations, and error.
I knew, even then somehow, that the kid in the minivan will never step into a batter’s box again.
His replacement, with one cleat planted hard on first-base, is scared shrunken by the kid who has just become a man on the mound.
Play resumes, and somebody manages to win, but I can’t remember or even imagine who.
Turns out I have written too many poems about baseball in the last few years.
Here are a few:
“Dear Major League Blackout”- The Twin Bill
“2”- The Under Review
“Mercy Rule”- Words & Sports
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I am grateful to be a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Each week, a roundup of our work is gracefully collected by
, and compiled here:
It's been on my list. I read his Garp last year. Couldn't get enough of it, and therefore can't bring myself to watch the movie. Irving does sports-talk better than most for sure. Thanks as always for reading.
Loved this, well-written. Have you read John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany?" by any chance? A tragic baseball incident plays a pivotal and symbolic role in that novel as well - highly recommend.