The Spirited Baseball by Charles Sutphin, magical butterfly herbal tea

“I’m going to tell you a story I’ve never told to anyone.”

“Not even grandma.”

The boy tucked his knees under his chin. A sheet angled down the length of his legs and stretched tight to the end of the bed.

“Okay, fine– I’ve never told anyone, except your grandmother.”

The man looked at his grandson and recognized his own eyes staring back. Light blue and wide like almonds, the eyes reflected a shared lineage stretching through the centuries—and beyond. His grandson’s nose tapered long and slender but with a crease at the tip that originated from someone else.

“What about Dad?”

“What about Dad?”

“Has he heard it?

“You don’t seem that sick to me.”

The boy fabricated a sound like a waste disposal grinding a bone. At the age of eleven, the days of a free pass were nearing an end.

            “I am sick, Grandpa! Really I am.”

            “Of course, you are.”

The man scooted across the foot of the mattress until his back leaned against the wall. His long legs splayed off the edge of the bed. Pots clattered in the kitchen downstairs as the boy’s mother prepared dinner. A greasy smell suggestive of burgers or brats wafted through the back hallway.

“I was about your age when it happened,” explained the man in a gravelly voice, “maybe a little older. Standing on the mound, flawless in my delivery, I was pitching a perfect game when the umpire called it off on account of weather.”

The boy expressed incredulity that the old man had ever pitched a baseball, let alone a no-hitter.

“You were a pitcher—no way!?”

“A million years ago, Jack—yes, I was a pitcher, just like you. But the umpire told us to go home. Since my family lived close by, I moped my way through some fields before climbing a hill that sloped down to the backyard.”

“Where your family raised chickens?”

“We raised chickens. Can I finish the story? Are you sure you’re sick? You don’t seem sick to me?”

            The boy made another rattling sound before shaking his head.

            “At the top of the rise was a pasture. Clouds were rolling in my direction like an armada rushing toward the edge of the world . . . as if I were watching the beginning of some cosmic battle.”

            The man laughed and ruffled his grandson’s hair.

            “Answer me this —” he asked, “wouldn’t it be—I don’t know—epic to climb a ladder, stretch your hand into the clouds and feel the mist brush past your fingers? I wanted to reach into those clouds as they were preparing for battle, but that was impossible so I did the next best thing: I tossed a baseball into the air—just so--and watched it skim across the bottom of the storm. Then I threw the ball straight up, it arced, touched the clouds before falling back into my glove. After a few more throws, something happened. . .  ”

From the bottom of the stairs a voice echoed upwards: “You boys hungry? Are you staying for dinner, Dad?”

            “Just a minute,” answered the boy. “Go on, Grandpa, what happened?”

            The old man placed his hands in front of him like a magician at the end of a trick, flung them open and announced: “It vanished!”

            “What vanished?”

            “The baseball.”

            “I don’t understand.”

            “On that final toss, I reached into the bottom of my being and threw that ball with all my might: it floated into the clouds and . . . disappeared.”

            The man looked upward as if tracking an object sailing through the top of the ceiling.

            “It never returned,” he continued. “Not that day at least.”

            “Grandpa, have you been drinking again?”

            Jack placed his head on top of his knees like a pumpkin waiting to be smashed.

            “I mean—” said the man, ignoring the comment, “I threw that baseball into the clouds, waited for it to fall . . . only it didn’t. I waited and waited, mouth open and . . . nothing. It vanished. I searched every inch of that field until the rain turned vertical. I ran home, changed my clothes, came back a few hours later. I’m telling you, Jack, the armies of the wind or spirits of the world, something blessed or infernal, grabbed that ball and there’s nothing more to say . . . except what happened next.”

            With a flat face and sharp chin that resembled her son’s, the woman from downstairs appeared with a tray of food. She asked if Jack was feeling better. The boy acknowledged his symptoms were improving but remained uncertain how he might feel in the morning. After a brief discussion the older man instructed his daughter to take the tray back and explained that he and his grandson would need a few more minutes to finish before joining the family for dinner.

            “All right,” said the woman, “but I don’t want this food going to waste.”

            The man continued elaborating upon the miracle of his life.

“Fifteen years later I’m thinking about marrying your grandmother. We’d survived Elvis and the so-called British Invasion when Mimi insisted that if we weren’t getting married, she’d better things to do than hang around with a scallywag like myself. She put the squeeze on me, Jackie boy, so we got engaged and were set to live happily ever after until the day before the wedding when I got a case of cold feet.”

The man stood up. His knees cracked as he walked to a chair and sat down to finish the tale.

“I was filled with doubt,” he explained. “I walked all over Eagle Creek Park, muttering to myself and resigned to live the life of a celibate when it started to rain.”

“A what?”

“Like a monk—you see, she wanted me to stop drinking, claimed I was making a spectacle of myself and that after the wedding I needed to quit. I was cursing everyone and everything when I wandered into Blakely Field.”

“Next to the abandoned house.”

“That’s right.”

“Where we found those magazines one day.”

“Yes, Mr. Honor Roll, thanks for reminding me. Now do you want to hear the rest of this story—or not?”

The man stood to leave. The boy begged him to finish.

“On one condition,” he said and seized the opportunity, “promise you’ll go to school in the morning.”

“What if I’m sick?”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” the boy whined, “but if anyone gets pneumonia, don’t blame me.”

“So I’m staring at the ground muttering about women when I hear a whizzing sound followed by a thump, like a meteor dislodged from the sky only….”

He stared into a pair of eyes that were also his eyes and wondered if the boy would have a life as blessed as his own had been.

“It wasn’t a meteor; was it?”  said the grandson.

“Buried a few feet in front of me was the baseball from when I was a kid.”

“Come on, Grandpa—you’re making this up!”

“True story,” said the man. “I’ll tell you want I think. When I threw that ball into the air, a current in the universe or some kind of vortex sucked that ball into the sky where it circled the globe as part of the weather until one day it plummeted into the ground as an affirmation that your grandmother was the woman for me.”

Jack waited for his grandfather to crack a smile. He blew snot into a tissue before saying, “That’s not possible, Grandpa.”

“Not possible?” said the man leaning forward to rub his long legs. “From my experience, Jack, much of what a person sees and does every day is not possible. Birds, bees, you and me—a dream of improbability, so that baseball hurtling from the sky to land at my feet while I’m contemplating not marrying your grandmother—one more coincidence in a universe filled with meaning, if you open your eyes and look for it.”

“And it was the same ball?”

“I’m not sure. I won’t embellish and say otherwise. You know that word?”

Jack shook his head.

“It’s a fancy word for lying, but I’m not. It was the same ball because that’s what I believe. Do you understand? I’m not worried about proof. I believe it was the same ball telling me to create a family—to create you. I believe what I choose to believe. At the end of the day, I think we all do.”

“And you still have it?”

“I don’t. I found that ball buried in the mud, some relic from the sky, and I married your grandmother. A few years later when the clouds were thick, abnormally low, and my arm was strong I . . .”

“Don’t . . . ”

“ . . . threw the ball, watched it sail, arc into the clouds and . . .”

The man waited for the youngster to fill in the blank.

“Disappear,” he said dejectedly.

“To swirl around the world and fall again and inspire someone else to contemplate the miracle of a blessed life—maybe even you, Jackie boy, maybe even you.”

 Bio:

Charles Sutphin is a retired professor, attorney, journalist and capitalist. He volunteers at the Northside Food Pantry and serves on several not-for-profit boards. Married for 35 years, he has two children. His writing has appeared in Eclectica, Vita Poetica, Metaworker, Literally Stories, Helix Review, Agape and many other fine publications.