Fastball

"Fastball"

By: Adam Benson


When I was fourteen I stood on a hill of bare earth and looked down over the rest of the world. I stood on this mound framed in lights like those that illuminate paintings in the galleries and people from all around would squint and shade their eyes like staring at the sun. Like a long prophesied messiah, come down and freshly glistening, they watched me, hoping to revive the dormant spring like the first glimpse of green grass through patches of melting snow. Their eyes groped for me in the center of a kaleidoscope of black cast shadows.
Some appeared to be more affected than others. While the women munched on hot-butter popcorn and chatted amongst themselves the fathers and grandfathers all sat still in their bleacher seats. Looking out over the groomed infield dirt and the freshly cut outfield grass made them feel old. They remembered when they were boys and sweat fell from the brim of their caps onto the grass. They remembered pounding their fists into the pockets of their leather mitts and shouting at their friends, “c’mon! Throw it in there, throw it in there!” How long ago that was the dormant spring of boyhood. Now they sat hunched over in the bleachers, elbows resting on their old knees ready to fall into the seat in front of them as if trying to plunge through the chainlink fence back onto the field. Their hands clenched and eyes shifted to the invisible line between the mound and the plate. Each waiting for the moment when I would swing my arm like a workman’s hammer and build a memorial more impressive than any of them had seen before. Some remembered standing up on that mound of bare earth, surrounded by lights under the eyes of their fathers and looking down over the rest of the world.
I pulled the ball out of my mitt and reached far back behind my shoulder. I looked down the invisible rope that led into the catchers mitt. When the ball left my callous fingertips it would glide down that line like the fine fibers of a bow across the strings of a cello— the listener anticipating warm, deep reverberations in their chest. My arm came forward. The multitude leaned forward and sucked in its breath waiting to hear the ball pop into warm leather surrounded by the buzzing of fireflies and humming of trees on a cool June night.