Home Run for the Real Player

     Stickball had provided some of the most enjoyable times of Harry’s youth. He used to step menacingly up to the manhole cover his gang used for home plate with his converted wooden broom handle waiting for Joey or one of his other pals to wind up and let loose the perfect pitch. 

      Then he would get a real piece of it and send the rubber ball flying down the block as he rounded the bases. He’d first touch the front door handle of his dad’s ‘57 Chevy, then the tip of the fire hydrant, then the stop sign at the corner and, finally, the depiction of spaghetti and meatballs on the front of the Italian restaurant.

       The game’s real excitement came from dodging cars speeding down the road because the drivers didn’t realize they had interrupted one of the great sporting events of the late 20th century.

     After more than five decades away from the old neighborhood, today’s scheduled 50th high school reunion game featured a number of out-of-shape Golden Agers trying to recapture their lost youth.  What they lacked in skill and speed they made up for in enthusiasm fueled by a few six packs of Budweiser Light downed at the luncheon at Gepetto’s Restaurante, the former last stop on their rush around the bases.

       Just as he had many decades ago, Harry stepped up, anxiously awaiting Joey’s legendary fireball. 

      He wiffed the first two pitches and then got a decent piece of the Spalding Super tossed half-heartedly by the now balding and arthritis-stricken Joey.

      The ball took off just like it had in the old days, and the rapidly-graying Sammy tried to catch his breath and hike up his sagging pants while trying to track down the high-bouncing Spalding.

       The aging fielder tripped more than a few times and finally lost track of the ball, and a little bit of today’s game.

       In the old days the gang would have easily replaced the ball with a new one from the corner grocery and continued to play. Nowadays it might take an extra 20-minute delay in the game to find a Walmart or another large chain store still stocking that item.      

     Also, instead of bounding down the street and behind one of the buildings it looked like the ball had headed over the nearby condominiums and taken off into the atmosphere.

       To add to the ruination of their game, in just under a minute the heavens opened up and it looked like a hurricane was about to envelop the neighborhood where weather forecasters had predicted a scorching 90-degree summer day.

      When the clouds finished parting the stick ballers stopped in their tracks. Not only did the weather continue moving down hill; space and time also took a quick turn in the same backward direction.

       The partygoers had heard about time travel experiments by those they considered wacky scientists in the far reaches of foreign countries, but none of them really believed the so-called findings. They even scoffed when Jack Everton, one of their fellow classmates, based his just-completed Harvard doctoral thesis in physics on one of these theories.

      Everton, the valedictorian in their high school class, even had the nerve to boast about his experiments during his welcoming remarks at the class dinner the night before.  His fellow classmates could scarcely control their stifled laughter during the address.

      All through high school the undisputed highest achieving academic also had to contend with being known as the biggest dork.

      He thought that, after working two jobs to earn his way through college and earning acclaim in scholastic journals across the country, he finally had put the disdain of his know-nothing classmates behind him.

     They still continued to look down their noses at him, but Jack saw victory within reach over the continued mockery of those he considered far less worthy than himself.

     He had a special surprise planned for his classmates that reunion weekend afternoon and began playing it out as Joey made his third pain-filled pitch to Harry.

      It so happened that, in the intervening decades since their high school graduation, upscale condominiums and thriving nightlife had signaled what many considered the victory of gentrification over stagnation. 

      At the beginning of the game, though, Jack sat silently in his brand new Tesla going over the nasty remarks of those who had mocked him throughout high school and continued to do so, even in the face of his proven superiority.

        He had equipped the premier sound system in his top-of-the-line vehicle with a timing device designed to reverse the progress of time and wind it back to whatever era his little heart desired. 

       As Everton began to rotate what looked like a digital scanner on his dashboard, time fell backward year by year.

      The walls of the area’s recently-completed dwellings began to fall away, replaced again by rundown tenements, and the 2020s-era pickups parked in high-priced garages soon gave way to muscle cars and beach-ready convertibles taking up almost every inch of curbline up and down the large boulevard.

       Small corner grocery stores and fenced-in yards with grassy areas began to spring up again where bulldozers long ago had flattened and smoothed them out to make way for mini-golf parks and entertainment venues with acres of parking lots.

       The near-perfect pavement of the adopted playing era rolled up into the pockmarked asphalt the reunion participants remembered from their youth.

      Jack Everton then stepped up to the plate on the reverted 1970s baseball diamond. As he laughingly sent Harry away in embarrassment, he sent Joey’s next pitch high in the air and straight ahead where it landed about three blocks away.

      You see, in addition to his time traveling invention, the former dork had brought with him a special stick ball bat he had converted from a 1970s-era broom handle. His new Crimson Slugger not only had enough juice to set new records in the neighborhood but it also helped win Jack his long overdue place in his personal hall of fame.