My Last Swing at Redemption

Both of you might recognize this story, but it's gone through some pretty heavy revisions "for publication" and, to quote Mitch Hedberg, "I couldn't [expletive] rob you of this one."

Beth Doke was crying because I’d hit her in the shin with a baseball bat. She was a year older than me and probably six inches taller, and she lived next door. I was running in the opposite direction.

This all started when I fell in love with baseball back in the first grade, and while childhood loves are often short-lived, my passion for the game was still a problem almost a year later. The sweet, earthy smell of the field, the exhilarating crack of the bat, the electricity in the air on opening day—these were all completely foreign concepts to me. But my big brother collected baseball cards, and some of them came with gum, so baseball was a way of life.

That’s why, when the neighborhood kids gathered for a game in the street outside our house, I turned off the Nintendo without even saving and raced to get my glove. In my first at-bat I launched the ball almost past the pitcher and let the bat fly to my left in one sweeping motion, then raced toward the first base cone. My lightning speed was deteriorating as I neared the cone, but no one ran to tag me out. No one even tried to stop the ball for that matter, which was rolling past second and still going deep. Everyone just stood there looking across the street.

I turned around to see Beth’s dad knelt beside his fallen daughter, looking at me with a strange mix of hate, confusion, and fatherly affection, like a dying buck looking into the eyes of a hunter he recognized to be his own son. I’m not really sure how that would happen, but I wasn’t really sure how this had happened either.

“Andrew, don’t throw the bat after you swing,” my brother said. He knew so much about baseball.

“I’m, sorry.” My apology squeezed out awkwardly between labored breaths. Beth looked at me and quit sobbing long enough to gulp down a couple gallons of air, then started up again. “Sorry Beth.” I thought we should maybe take a break and sing the national anthem or something, but baseball isn’t a stop and go ordeal, so we played on. I stayed on first and tried to keep my head in the game while analyzing the last play.

It didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t a baseball expert or anything, but even if there wasn’t a game on TV I always had “Ryne Sandberg Plays Bases Loaded 3” to study on Nintendo. I didn’t know who Ryne Sandberg was exactly, but I figured he must have been Wayne Gretzky, who everyone knows is the greatest ball player of all time. But that was beside the point. The point was no one holds onto the bat while running the bases. It simply isn’t done. So what had I done wrong?

The rest of the inning went smoothly enough; I even managed to scrape up my right leg before it was over—I’d tried to slide like I’d seen Gretzky do so many times before only hadn’t made it all the way to the base, which was evident by the size of the wound. But I didn’t even go inside for a knee band-aid, I just brushed off the gravel, grabbed my glove and trotted to the edge of the block. Satisfied that I was safely in the outfield, Beth wiped away her last few tears and limped around for a better place to sit.

As the sun sank below our rooftop horizon, I buried my left hand snuggly into the warm leather glove, then spread out the fingers of my right hand and let the cool air drift by. My ears drank in the scuffing sounds of tennis shoes on asphalt, the eager hey batter batter, sw-ing batter batter of the players and the steady conversations of a few watchful parents, who broke here and there into shouts of encouragement. Sure, the blood dripping down my leg was attracting mosquito eaters like a porch light, but that was no big deal, this was baseball.

I stood there and watched four or five kids strike out before someone came to borrow my glove and told me it was time to bat. I nodded and jogged confidently to the plate. After thinking about the accident and I’d come to a conclusion: I’d thrown the bat with too little control and in the wrong direction. Now everyone was counting on me to be awesome, and I wasn’t going to let them down.

The first pitch looked high, but apparently I was just short. Strike one. I closed my eyes to concentrate.

Strike two.

“Keep your eyes on the ball,” my brother shouted.

The pitcher gave me a reassuring nod; he obviously meant business. His arm drew down and back and my eyes locked onto the ball in his hand. The bat hung still over my shoulder. My breathing went silent. The mosquito eaters clung frozen to my leg. What happened next will stay with me forever.

The pitch came at me like a sixth grader off a swing set. I swung hard and grounded it past second, but this time I held onto the bat. I brought the bat back in front of me and grasped it in both hands, then carefully tossed it to my right, then watched as the bat quickly closed the gap between where I stood and Beth Doke’s kneecap. Then I said I was sorry, and I went inside.

Beth Doke went inside too.