The wrong end of a baseball

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I was never much of an athlete growing up. 

I tried out for the middle school basketball team one year (just because my friends did), but my aim was terrible, so I didn’t make the cut. Who knew it was so hard to throw an orange sphere through a hoop? That probably worked out for the best because I’ve always had a problem with authority. I would have been a coach’s nightmare. My mother warned me against playing football, due to my small stature and frame. I most likely would have been brutally murdered, albeit in a clean tackle, on the 50-yard line. 

Baseball was always out of the question. A 5.95-ounce round, hard rocket headed to my head? No thank you. I was then, and remain, afraid of the ball. I can’t risk getting hit in the face – that’s how I make my money. I was convinced to join a recreation softball league once. Some of the guys apparently thought they had gone pro based on their in-game aggressiveness. I could be found deep in center field, taking cover. After a couple of games, they asked me not to come back. 

I was neither athlete nor scholar, but I managed to get by on my wits, charm and good looks (not to mention humility). Then I discovered running, a solo activity that allows you to set your own pace and challenge level. And the rest, as they say, is history, and a pile of worn-out running shoes. Hanging in my kitchen is a collection of medals – badges of honor from completed marathons, half-marathons and 5Ks. 

My children have inherited my lack of “skills to pay the bills,” but that hasn’t stopped them from trying. Recently I took a drive over to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit my brother. He has a son who is a fledgling baseball star. At 9 years old, my nephew has one season and zero base hits under his belt, but to hear him talk (and I would listen to him all day long) he is Hall of Fame bound. He’s my favorite player to ever hit the diamond. 

This up-and-comer took his cousin to the field with gloves and ball in hand. What started as a late-summer game of catch in the Alabama sunshine ended in a Night of the Living Dead-style sidewalk trail of blood and head goop. After only being gone a few minutes the two returned with the announcement “we have a situation.” 

In child speak “we have a situation” means something, living or material, is broken. What was broken was my son, whose nose and mouth looked like a pile of hamburger meat. A wayward ball caught him right in the face, his father’s worst nightmare. 

He shed not a tear as I helped him clean up, his years of martial arts training and taking roundhouse kicks to head having paid off. A photo of his bloodied money maker was soon sent to all his friends. 

The incident doesn’t seem to bother him, but I think he should take up running.