Baseball

Abstract

A love carved across my face, a scar above my left eye where the bat split skin from bone. A clean blow, nothing like the jagged map the nurse’s needle made in closing it. I was the only kid at the Topeka Public Library asking for books about the Black Sox Scandal, begging the other kids to grab bats when they preferred football. Like the oversize glasses I wore, I’d been lifted from another era. My family didn’t own a television, so I’d lay awake at night listening to Fred and Denny call the games on the radio. In the dark, I could smell the wet grass, chalk, and dust, see the pitcher framed by floodlights. I loved baseball as I rarely loved anything else, loved baseball even when it did not love me back.