Thomas William Brewer: THE BALLPARK • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Thomas William Brewer
THE BALLPARK

The ballpark rumbles under the steps of the spectators, zealots eagerly streaming into a cathedral of dirt and grass. A boy squeezes his father’s hand as they weave through the congregants and walk to their seats in left field. The boy wears a white jersey like the slugger’s, with the number 27 on the back. The shirt is creased and new, a gift Father gave the boy when he collected him from Mother’s.

The slugger studies the scouting report in the bowels of the ballpark, silently committing his opponents’ tendencies to memory. Any detail may be the difference between winning and losing. Glory and humiliation. Life and death.

The game begins. The slugger stands in left field, territory he’s claimed since youth. The boy cups his hands around his mouth and calls to his hero. The slugger hears him not.

Three men bull into the row of bleachers behind them. They are bigger than Father and use words that slither and coil through the boy’s insides. Stomach tingling, he pretends he can’t hear them.

The slugger strides to the plate in the home half of the inning. The boy stands, ignoring Father’s offering of popcorn, and raises his glove in the air. The slugger watches the first pitch go by. Strike. The men toxify the air with forbidden words. Pitch number two. Ball. The count is even. Neither the slugger nor his opponent has the advantage. The men are silent. Father answers a phone call.

The slugger swings his mighty stick and thunders the third pitch into the centerfield seats. The spectators roar. The boy whoops and claps his glove. Father applauds. The men shout the same forbidden words, yet they ring softer in the boy’s ears.

Top of the sixth. Tie game. The slugger’s muscular body is loose and alert as he stands in the field. An opponent on second base sprints to third as the ace delivers a pitch. The batter slaps a screamer to left. The slugger bounds forward. He lowers his glove. The ball caroms awkwardly off the outfield grass. The boy watches, his face frozen as the ball trickles beyond the slugger’s reach.

The spectators shame and admonish the slugger. The men snarl about his age and his attitude and his earnings. The boy looks at Father. He catches him shaking his head with his lips clamped shut, an expression he recognizes from when Mother and Father lived in the same house.

Top of the ninth. Two outs. The home team trails by a single run, the shortest distance between winning and losing. The batter catapults the ball into the starlit sky. The spectators gasp. The boy covers his mouth with his mitt.

The slugger looks over his shoulder as he glides toward the warning track. He braces his right arm against the green outfield wall. He bends his knees, springs upward, floats on air. The slugger stretches his left arm over his head. The ball drops into his glove.

The ballpark roars and swells with celebration. The boy jumps from his seat and hoots. Father grabs him by the shoulders, his mouth spread wide and his blue eyes gleaming with a joy the boy thought had been lost forever. The men clap and scream and cheer the slugger’s name.

The home half of the ninth. A single puts a pinch-hitter on base; a bunt, a sacrifice for the greater good, moves him to second. The runner advances to third on a fly out.

The slugger walks deliberately to the batter’s box. Imagining himself at the plate, the magnitude of the moment weighs heavy on the boy’s narrow shoulders. The spectators rise as one and clap, willing the slugger to brilliance.

He makes contact with the first pitch, but his swing is late by half a blink, and the ball flies foul. The boy watches another, his age, catch it. Envy, chalky and bitter and primal, coats the boy’s mouth.

Two consecutive balls put the slugger ahead in the count. The next pitch comes in high. The spectators howl. The pitcher shakes off a sign and throws. The slugger leaves his bat on his shoulder. The umpire calls a strike, and the spectators, indignant partisans, viciously boo the man assigned to uphold the law.

Full count. The slugger steps out of the box. He taps dirt off his cleats and exhales. The umpire catches his eye. The slugger steps one cleat into the batter’s box, then the other.

The boy sways with nervous energy. “He’s going to hit a homer, Dad,” he says.

“Think so?” Father smiles.

“I know it.”

The pitcher winds up and throws. The slugger swings. Strike three. Game over.

The boy sighs. His shoulders slump. Father takes him by the hand.

“We’ll get ‘em next time,” he says.

“Yeah,” the boy says, his eyes down. The men growl and spit and rant about the slugger. The boy nods as he walks past them.

Reporters surround the slugger and demand atonement for his failures, their microphones thrust at his throat.

“What happened in the sixth?” one asks.

“I was in the right position. The ball just took a weird hop is all,” the slugger says as he sits in his locker with his forearms on his thighs. Clear plastic wrap straps a bag of ice to his right shoulder. “Can’t do anything about that.”

“What about the last at-bat?”

The slugger looks at his accuser with hard, narrow eyes. He shakes his head. “The book on him is he likes to go fastball inside. He threw me one earlier and I got a piece of it. I thought he’d throw me another, but I guessed wrong. That’s baseball.”

The ballpark lights darken. In the bed he sleeps in at Father’s house, the boy tucks his comforter under his chin and weeps. The game goes on.

Thomas William Brewer is a Rust Belt transplant living in the American South. His work has appeared in The Daily Drunk, From Parts Unknown: A Pro Wrestling Anthology, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, The Morgue, and Synthetic Reality Magazine (defunct).