Child's Play

She approaches with stealth, quietly as he reads an ancient epic on the recliner.  The sun has made its way to the horizon, and he would like nothing more than to rest, reliving glorious feats of gods and men.  She whispers.  “Papa, we should go outside and play baseball.” How can he resist.

“Guess what, Sydney.  I ordered you a present.  It’s going to come in the mail in a few days.  What do you think it might be?"

He sees that she knows instantly, but she pauses anyhow, pretending to think about.

“Maybe some new wiffleballs?"

She’s right.

They play ball as the last day of summer turns to night.  And she hits many homeruns.

Typically, he jumps rope a few minutes before stretching and then taking his jog. He runs for a set number of minutes, then turns around and retraces his steps along the country roads of Baugo Township. Today’s set number of minutes was twenty; he turned around at a nondescript point in between a corn field and a soy bean field on C.R. 22., and ran home again. That makes a forty minute jog.

Normally he does not rifle stones at the back windshields of passing cars, but the wildly grinning wiseguy showing off for his girlfriend made the mistake of pretending to swerve at him just as he – this minding his own business jogger – happened to be passing a gravel driveway. He saw it coming; made eye contact with the driver, even noticing his goatee. Of course the driver had no intention of actually hitting him, just a hardy-har-har near miss for poops and giggles, hoping to get a flirtatious smack from his girl in the passenger seat.

The jogger was already bent over and grabbing an egg shaped rock as the back bumper of the blazer whizzed past him, missing him by a foot or two. The driver could not have known that he – this shirtless jogger – had pitched in the minors for a couple years and was known for having “a lively arm."

An egg shaped rock traveling at 78 mph (had his arm been warmed up, it might have been more like 90 or 91, had it been warmed up and ten years ago during the middle of baseball season, 95 maybe) thrown at an SUV traveling at 40 mph in the same direction but with a 30 or 40 foot head start doesn’t have the force to smash through the rear window of said vehicle. But it has enough to get the attention of the driver. That is, if the thrower of the rock has an accurate arm.


What might have followed had this former lively arm also had pinpoint control is anybody’s guess. This toss, like far too many others in his too short career, was just a bit outside.



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