Swing and a Miss

Everything terrible in his life had happened at the baseball field. It all started when he was two, and his dad had taken him to a game at the old man’s former high school. The old geezer was, supposedly, taking a nap in his red sports chair, the kind you could set on the bleachers with a back for support. No one saw the ball coming towards Brandon until it was too late, and the ball had smacked his two-year-old self right on the head.

           Brandon’s father had apologized profusely to him for that. It took a week for the purple knot to go down.

           The second time Brandon went to the field, it was for PE class. The gym teacher had told the gaggle of kindergarteners to ‘go crazy’. Brandon had been playing tag with another group of boys when his foot got caught on one of the diamonds. He landed face-first in the dirt, ending up with sand in his eyes and a busted nose. Brandon’s mother had to hold his hand as he sobbed in the emergency room.

           Of course, Brandon’s father saw no difference if his son’s nose was as crooked as a river. To celebrate the boy’s eighth birthday, he took him to a charity event the local firehouse was doing. The school had graciously lent out the baseball field for the firefighters to use, so long as their giant red trucks didn’t tear up the field. Brandon’s memory was spotty when he tried to think back to those days, but he would never forget the moment the firefighter put the hose in his hands. The hose malfunctioned; apparently, some boy had caused the hose to cinch in the middle and had stepped off as soon as Brandon pulled the hose’s trigger. The pressure from the water caused the young boy to be rocketed into the chain-link fence behind him.

           Brandon’s father didn’t let his son go to any more firefighter charity events.

           By the time he had begun 6^th grade, Brandon had learned to have a healthy fear of the baseball field. His mother always packed him a bicycle helmet in the event he ever had to wander too close. He got a special note from a doctor (forged by his mother’s expert handwriting) that got him out of PE. Even Brandon’s father, an alumni always willing to support his former high school, stopped inviting his son to games.

           A year later, Brandon’s friends cornered him in the hall, waving a paper in his face.

           “It’s a form for baseball,” they said, shoving the paper into his hands before he could refuse. “We need a few more people to form a team. Come on, Brandon, don’t be a baby!”

           Brandon showed the paper to his parents, with varying results. His mother, of course, was absolutely against the idea, wringing her towel with enough force to tear it apart. Brandon’s father, ever the optimist, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and said:

           “Come on, honey. I think you’re overreacting just a bit. A bit of physical exercise will do Brandon a world of good. Come here, son. Let me see that paper.”

           As the season began, Brandon thought his baseball field curse had finally lifted. He was too awful at the sport to play, but that was fine by him. While his teammates hit home runs, Brandon sat in the dugout, counting the rocks under his feet. He did this almost every game. He never noticed when one of his teammates ran into the dugout, swinging his bat with a cheer. Brandon caught the back end of the swing, giving him a nasty concussion.

           His mother was quick to spirit him away from the sport, and by proxy, the field. Now a freshman, he was beginning to get tired of the giggles as people saw him walk by with his bike helmet. His old teammates would constantly call him ‘Backswing Brandon’. Even his best friend of five years would egg him on about his fear of a sport’s field.

           Of course, there was one person that made Brandon forget the constant ridicule. Mellissa, or Mel, was the only person who got his mind off his horrendous memories of the field. The only issue was that Mel was an avid fan of the cursed sport that is baseball. Every day she was watching the baseball players practice. She was at every game. Brandon had managed to hear her talking to her friends one day at the lockers.

           “I don’t care if he’s fat or skinny, bright or dumb.” She slammed her locker door shut with a grin, completely missing Brandon standing just to her right. “As long as he’s a pitcher, he’ll meet all my standards.”

           Brandon had inherited his mother’s forging capabilities. He signed the baseball form the next day to join the varsity team.

           There is no way he would have made the team, but lucky for him, many families were packing up and moving away, which thinned the team. And doubly luckily, Mel’s family was staying. Not to say that Brandon was stupid. He knew the many risks of walking out onto that field again. He made sure to wear hefty knee pads and shin splints, as well as a mouthguard and sturdy helmet.

           He was still playing when he turned 16. That year was the farthest he had gone without hurting himself on the field. His boost of confidence made him much more willing to actually practice the sport, and soon he was the best hitter on the team. They went all the way to state that year, and Brandon hit the winning home run. He remembered turning back and seeing Mel, with her messy red hair in a bun, cheering and shouting for him.

           He also remembered jumping onto the home plate in victory and hearing a loud pop from his leg, followed by burning pain moments later. The doctors said he must have landed on his leg wrong. His ACL was torn. His mother forced him to stop playing after that, but Brandon couldn’t find it in his heart to mind. He had Mel’s attention at last.

           Mel asked him to the prom his junior year. She told him they would be holding it at the college across town. There’s more room there, she had told them as they drank a shared milkshake. I hear the theme is Paris this year. There are rumors they’ll have a genuine model of the Eiffel Tower!

            Of course he went with her. How could he not? He picked her up from her house, complementing her coral-colored dress, and plugged the address into his phone. Brandon was a quiet boy. He never bothered much to ask around about where the prom would be at. It was only when he looked at his Maps and saw that they were going to a baseball field that he started to sweat.

           He tried to hide his jitters from Mel the whole night. The refreshments were near the mini-Eiffel Tower. Mel asked for a drink, and of course, he was quick to meet her demands. How was he supposed to know that the Tower wasn’t sturdy? How was he supposed to know that when he touched the tower, that would be enough to cause the whole thing to fall, with one bar pinning his arm?

           No one else was hurt except for Brandon. Go figure.

           18, and he decided he would never go to another baseball field again. Except when it came to Mel. Whenever she wasn’t near him, he knew exactly where she would be. On the day of their anniversary, he bought her chocolates and a giant stuffed bear. She was at the field, sitting in the student section and crying.

           “It’s not you, it’s me.” She continued to sob as she ate the chocolates he had bought her. “This just isn’t working.” Brandon supposed he never had a chance. He had always been a lousy pitcher.

           Brandon leaned over the guard rail, looking over the baseball field. It had been a month since Mel had broken it off with him. Even though his soul had a deep-rooted fear of this field, he couldn’t help but come back one last time. He would be graduating in a few weeks. His mother would proudly ruffle his hair and gift him another bike helmet should he go too close to his college’s baseball field. His father would shed a tear and remark on how proud he was of his son taking the team so far in his favorite sport. Mel…Brandon gripped the metal rails and forced down his anger. He’d rather not think about Mel.

           He took one last look at the field. At the stands, at his dugout, and the diamonds. He couldn’t say he would miss it. Some of the most traumatic events of his life had happened here. He would never be able to go see a game of baseball without carrying a helmet. He prayed that none of his children wanted to give the American sport a try.

           This was going to be the last time Brandon would come here. Everything else had ended rather poorly in his life. Brandon wasn’t going to let that happen again. He stood on the guard rail, leaning over and pointing at the field.

           “I’m not scared of you!” he yelled, unable to hear the groaning of the rail because of his screams. “I. Am not. Scared. Of you!” It was freeing, in a strange way. Almost as freeing as the guard rail that could not hold up under Brandon’s weight. Brandon realized too late that he was going to tip over and fall onto the field. He remembered something his father had said when he was younger. The old man had pulled his son away from the rail, pointing out the rust near the bottom.

            “Be careful, son,” he had said with a grin. “This school doesn’t have the funds to replace those things. All the money goes straight into the game.”

            Later, the janitor would come onto the field to grab the trash from the dugout. He would be met with the sight of a young man laying out on the field, his neck twisted unnaturally, a guard rail lying nearby. The principal would hold an assembly in the gym, telling the students the young man had met an unfortunate end, his neck being snapped in the short but brutal fall. The graduating class, to have some sort of closure, asked the school administration for something simple.

           Later, the principal would unveil the brand-new guard rails, as well as the dedication for the field. A sign was drilled onto the home-side dugout.

            Welcome to the Brandon Sunders Baseball Field.