The Perfect Pitch

Graham Mauet stood on the mound and scraped his cleat through the ochre gravel. He kicked at the rubber that had started innocent but now, seven innings later, was abused and bruised from the hundreds of cleated stomps piercing it. Graham squinted up into the crowd who lay in shadows outside the bright glare of the stadium lights that chased away the night and rendered the whole field in artificial daylight. 

Before the game a veteran had told Graham: “Don’t look up.” Graham had done exactly that though when he walked onto the field for his first game at the big league level. Vertigo had washed over him as he took in the three tiers of seats nearly a mile high filled to capacity with fans here to see his debut.

With his first pitch to start the game, Graham forgot the people watching and slipped into an unconscious flow where his mind left the stadium and he was nothing but a bundle of sensations: the callus on his middle finger from where he gripped the seam, the stretch across his chest as he arched his arm straight back and squeezed his shoulder blades together, and the snap in his elbow when all the potential energy stored in his body leaped to the baseball. The ball jumped from his fingers and spun tightly to its waiting prey, unleashing all its stored energy just in front of the plate causing the ball to drop from the batter’s shoulder to his knee in a split second. 

His body had hummed in tune, everything working in sync, until the 7th inning. His team, the Cougars, had given him a 4-run cushion, an impressive feat against the Dragons starting ace. Graham had pitched six shutout innings, but was now in trouble after giving up two solo home runs and walking two more runners who were now taking huge leads from first and second base. Worse yet, his mind was back, fighting to take control of his body, watching over his shoulder, and analyzing every movement. 

Graham looked to the dugout where the Cougars manager leaned against the railing that separated field from dugout, guarding the threshold like a troll guards a bridge. Graham had always liked Coach Fellin, a manager with no first name who was known as a player’s coach. When Fellin had pulled Graham into his office to give him the news that he had made the team in the starting rotation, Graham found himself overwhelmed with emotion, tears threatening to embarrass him. Graham couldn’t leave for the locker room and let the guys see him like this, so he stayed lost in limbo trying to get his emotions under wraps and hidden away. Fellin had taken pity, told him to grab a seat on the couch, and had handed him a beer from the mini-fridge behind his desk. They had celebrated in his office, just the two of them, an unspoken appreciation between them of the required sacrifice to make the bigs.

That manager was gone, replaced by a stoic monument who met Graham’s eyes and gave him nothing. Fellin’s face showed no emotion and his body did not move from its pose - not to check the lineup card, not to talk to the pitching coach, and certainly not to pick up the phone to call the bullpen. Graham turned his back to home plate and looked out to left field. The bullpen was like a church on a Monday afternoon, hushed and vacant. The infielders wouldn’t meet his eye. Graham wordlessly begged for a quick meeting at the mound, but the catcher summarily rejected his request.

Graham stepped back onto the rubber and took the sign from the catcher. He surveyed the field while he tried to quiet his mind that was chanting a litany of contradictory commands, fears, and failures. Graham came set and let out a quick huff. He coiled back the way he had ever since he was 12 years old pitching little league. He released the ball like a rubber band snapping loose after being pulled to its breaking point. Graham knew before the ball even crossed the plate. The ball’s rotation was all wrong; it was too perfectly aligned. It did not drop; it did not move. Gravity weighed heavier and heavier on Graham as the ball traveled on a straight path that was the envy of any archer right into the barrel of a bat coming through the strike zone. The ball met bat with full contact, like two teenagers trying to press their bodies together for maximum surface contact. A loud crack and the ball escaped the stadium seemingly on an interplanetary journey. 

As the Dragons players rounded the bases to take the lead, every light in the stadium started powering down with large successive thunks as if a giant had thrown a breaker switch for the whole city. The field plunged into darkness. Darkness wrapped around Graham like a blanket protecting his exposed skin. The team jogged into the dugout, with Graham trickling in behind the outfielders. Darkness invaded the dugout as the cement walls blocked the ambient light of the night. Graham sat at the end of the bench, alone, with the darkness cocooned around him. 

Players buzzed around the dugout checking their phones and passing along gossip on what had happened and how long the blackout would last. After a few minutes, the facilities guy walked up to Fellin and gave an update comprised of short factual bullets of information: the whole city block was down; power would be back up in 5 or 10 minutes. After getting the news, Fellin walked down and stood in front of Graham.

“You’re going back in.”

“I got nothing left.”

“You’re going back in or you’re getting sent down.”

Graham looked up and tried to find Fellin’s eyes, but he couldn’t make out any of his features in the dark night. His face was a black smudge like the artist had just given up on the facial details to save time. Graham looked for his coach - the one that had given him a beer when he almost cried and who remembered what it was like to be a player.

“Coach?”

“Go back in there and finish this.”

Fellin turned and was gone. Graham felt radioactive with the ten foot buffer between him and everyone else. Everyone else had congregated down at the other end leaving Graham alone in the dark. He leaned his elbows on his knees and cycled through all his options like a sick game of wheel of fortune - pitch, not pitch, give up, claim injury, go back to the minors, go back in and get lit up. 

He remembered little league games and high school championships. He had some losses and some bad games, but he had never been through anything like this. He had always had a team behind him, a coach to fall back on. He had never been alone like this, sitting in the dark like a failure. He had been naturally athletic and so in love with baseball that the work had been easy. He had to go back in or risk losing his chance at the majors forever. He tried to put himself in Fellin’s shoes and wondered whether there was some grand lesson he was supposed to be learning. 

His mind raced round and round like a frightened bunny dodging traffic as he searched for an answer. The darkness wrapped around him like an anaconda, pulling him down, deeper and deeper into the underneath. Graham knew he should fight back, but it was easier here, in the dark where nothing was his fault. It was easier here, in the dark, away from the spotlights on the field highlighting his every flaw.

And then his phone lit up, its small electric glow visible through the top of his duffle bag, a beacon piercing the darkness. A text message from his only other love - a love that couldn’t compete with baseball, but a love nonetheless. The blue glow cast artificial shadows on Graham’s face. The sender’s name was displayed only as “Steph.” The text message read: “I love all of you. The good. The bad. The light. And the dark. ” 

Graham had little experience with unconditional love, but he knew that when he was at his worst - like now when he blew a 3-run lead in the 7th because his curve no longer dipped and danced - both Steph and baseball still loved him. He could stand stripped bare in front of either, ashamed and trying to hide his worst faults and his darkest secrets and still they would accept him. Steph still loved him, even though Graham treated him like a dirty secret, the equivalent of a gambling addiction or an STD. Steph was a deeply held secret like kissing boys in the back of your car in the darkest part of the night and liking it. 

The phone screen went dark at the same time as the stadium lights started firing back on one by one. Graham stood up and soaked in everything shown in the daylight bright stadium: the broken seed shells forming a crunchy carpet, the buckets of bubblegum, the fans on their feet cheering louder for the light than they ever had for any player. Graham climbed out of the shadowed dugout and walked onto the lighted field that felt like home again. Fellin mawed gum from his post, the bullpen was funereal, the infield blurred into the background, and the catcher threw down a sign with a frigid blast, but still Graham felt at home on the rubber. He would always come back to baseball, his first unconditional love. 

He shook off the first sign: a fastball. He waited for the sign he wanted: a curve. He came set, feeling every part of his body aligned and vibrating in one unison frequency. He coiled his body and released a perfect pitch knowing without having to watch that the ball would dive deep right before the bat swung over the top of the ball with a clean whiff.