the no-hitter

When I was young, every summer my parents would enroll me in little league. I was excited about it, if only for the fun of hoping that I would get teamed with my best friends. After a couple years we began to play something more like ‘real baseball,’ but early on in our little league careers we were confined to playing T-ball, an awkward, aberrous version of the sport we thought we were playing. My guess was they didn’t trust a six year old to pitch, so we all hit off of the T. we all wanted to hit pitches; we thought it was stupid that we couldn’t play the game the way it was meant to be played; but most of all we were confused as to why there was a pitcher’s position, manned by someone we called the pitcher, who never got to pitch?
I liked T-ball. I was good enough at it, I could hit well. I didn’t realize at the time that it didn’t count for much – anyone is a good hitter when he hits off of a T. Much, much later I would figure that out – that hitting from a T would make anyone look good, that was a discovery. It was not what I learned when, finally, I was allowed into the real game of baseball. A discovery takes reflection, it pieces together what you’ve learned. What I learned was how terrible I was at baseball. How well the game was played to me back then and even today I still equate with how well one hits. Sure, there were other elements – how fast you could run, how well you could catch a ball – but all of that was secondary: what everyone waited for was the hit of the pitch, and if that never happened, it didn’t matter how good a first, second, or third baseman you were, you had no game. Nothing to run for, nothing to catch. Nothing for our parents to watch. Nothing for your coach to pat you on the back for. I don’t watch baseball, I don’t play it, but I’ll stand by my elementary understanding of it: it is all about hitting. It is all about hitting and when the T fell away and the pitcher finally pitched what I learned was I was a terrible baseball player: no one ever struck out in T-ball. And this was not T-ball.
At first I thought perhaps I could beat the system. I could get walked. I could try to get walked, I could let the pitcher make the mistake, I could wait him out. I feared nothing if it was not getting struck out. It was a shame that T-ball had never taught us. I feared it as some dark purgatory, a wasted swing of my bat that would land no blow – my boyhood, in its closeness to primitivity, connected it with the swing of the sword; and if it did not land, if it was not a killing stroke, then was that not life threatening? I did not understand that I could not hit defensively. They used to tell me not to be afraid of the ball, but I was not afraid the ball. They used to tell me, all of them – all the coaches and all the parents – they used to tell me that Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, struck out more than anyone else. It didn’t matter to me. I dreamed of the hit heroic, the one that would win the game and me my glory. Everytime I stepped to the plate I dreamt of it. Every pitch I thought I would hit. But I could not even flinch. Not even when the pitcher beaned me, I couldn’t flinch. I was frozen, stoic – all potential, all dreaming of the home run, but unable to coordinate my muscles to the dream, gripping tightly a batfull of terror that nearly outmatched my vanity. I could not move, I wanted to, and I’d pray to God to help me, and the two sides of me, the fear and the lust for glory pulled against eachother, opposing, straining, furious, equally, oppositely until nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. I was only conscious of my own shame, and only mildly soothed of it when I was walked to first. But I can’t imagine the shame I should have felt and didn’t, the downpress of all the other parents in the crowd – “HIT IT! SWING!” – the descending avalanche of disappointment from the coaches, until finally, worst of all, they learned to expect nothing of me.
I don’t remember what position I played when I was in T-ball. But when I finally decided to quit little league I was an outfielder. My parents tried to encourage me not to give up – it wasn’t the right attitude to have – but all my friends played the infield, and baseball was boring and besides, couldn’t they see how bad I was? Couldn’t they see the look on my face when I walked up to the plate? Did they not know what that meant? Eventually they stopped putting in the batting line-up. When I did play I had little to do, so far away from the action, so far away from home and the hitters, outside the collusion of the inner diamond. I was too far away, I couldn’t see what was going on. I didn’t care. The sun was hot, the grass was steaming and sun baked. I kicked the heads off of dandelions. If someone hit to the outfield, I only knew because of the clock-ring of the bat and the cheer from the stands. I would turn around, but I could never see the ball against the brightness of the sky. I didn’t care to. I would find it when it fell; I would throw it blindly anyway.