Competition

I was quite a good baseball player when I was young. I pitched a no-hit game one season and was moved up to a bigger league. The team I got on made it to the championship game that year. It was a no-hit game by both pitchers each of whom went the distance. The final score was 1-0. There was only one man on base in the entire game, and he got there on a walk. On a pop-up out to center field, he got to second. He was able to steal third on the next pitch, and got home on another pop-up out. But it was all my fault. The pop-up to center was hit to me, and before throwing the ball, I pump faked. He did not hold and my throw to second was too late. Had I just thrown the ball, he would have turned back to first. Nobody said anything about it, but I was haunted.

The next year, my game fell apart. I was the best player on the team, but something else was in the mix. I got into a band. My parents bought me a snare drum and a cymbal for Christmas. My friend down the street had gotten an acoustic guitar. Another friend had an electric Fender. And the fourth fellow was someone I'd gone to school with since first grade but never hung around. Paul, however, was the only real musician in the group. He had been taking guitar lessons for a while and could read music and play entire songs. And that was our band.

We played in the school talent show that spring. We were the first act, and our opening song was "House of the Rising Sun." I didn't play the drums on that one, but I stood out front with the acoustic guitar I didn't know how to play and sang. I don't think I knew what the song was about, and I'm not sure the school officials did, either. We played four songs in all, and surely we were awful, but the crowd cheered wildly, and I felt like a star. Next came the kid who played the accordion, and then a quartet of singers, etc. And last was another band--ringers--for the guitar player was older and didn't go to our school. But they were good and they won the talent show.

That was the beginning. Kids started having parties on the weekends and I missed some because I played baseball. But I was miserable. Then one of the kids asked our band to play at her party and I said yes. I had a game that night, but I didn't care. I had found a new and better way to get attention. That night, in my post-performance high, I "made out" with a girl in a closet. This was more than kissing; this was serious kissing for a long, long time. She wouldn't let me stick my tongue in her mouth, but I was still dizzy with the experience. I knew it was dirty.

When I went back to baseball practice that week, my coach suspended me for missing our game. We had lost, and he said I would have to sit out a week. It was miserable sitting in the dugout while my team took another beating the next game, but it was worse that my parents found out. My father looked at me with disappointed eyes, never saying anything about it, but just looking at me. I sat out the beginning of the second game that week, too. We were losing again for the third straight game, and I was making some break. I sat in the corner of the dugout and drew doodles in the dirt no longer interested in any of it. And that, of course, was when the coach decided that he would put me into the game. We were behind but had men on base and my at bat was critical. You'll say I'm lying, but I hit a home run that turn at bat, and as a result, we won the game. It was good and it was healthy. I would be selected to the All-Star Team. My father looked happy and proud. The natural order, it seemed, was restored.

But at school, it was not about that which the kids were talking.