Bit by Bit

Clare was nine or ten the day my elbow popped throwing BP to her; that balanced out the pain in my shoulder, which was different from the pain in the small of my back.  If only I hadn’t slipped on ice in the parking lot of Miami Bowl two days before starting a job that had me carrying 50-pound-plus coils on my back and climbing up racks to reach them.

I’m not complaining, either about the job or the elbow.  The one made me appreciate what my father said about all work being honorable; the other I’d go through again in a heartbeat for what it’s led to.  But a person does seem to accumulate aches and pains along the way.  Oh, well.

The one thing I don’t do but would like to try at my age—let’s just say 65 isn’t a number all that far away—is fast-pitch.  Perhaps you say line ball.  Whichever, it’s what guys did where I grew up.  And I belonged to a group of guys who did it until we were 40.

We chalked a strike zone on a playground wall, and then set about lying whether or not a pitch hit the line.  It was the same for our foul lines—when we were up, that ball was to the left of the tree, but when we in the field, it was definitely foul and to the right of the second oak.  Grounders had to be fielded before the parked Buick, and a throw from the outfield that hit the box on the fly or bounce was a double play.

A lawyer, a doctor, a teacher and a professor—we were all a bunch of overaged kids, swearing and lying and swinging off our front foot.  But at 41 our schedules conspired with our bodies to bring a halt to our games.  I kept up for a while after that pitching to Clare at a nearby school; three or four pitches a minute taught her always to be ready, and me to duck when she lined a rubber ball up the middle.  If there are any grandchildren, maybe I can learn to throw left handed.