Baseball Jitters
By: Zak Burgess
My name is Timothy Strikeman. I’m a scrawny boy, small people
call me short stack, but I don’t mind because people don’t know who I
really am. People think I’m stupid because I don’t do well on tests but
that’s just because I don’t try on those tests, I think they’re stupid.
People think I’m bad at sports because I bat last on my baseball team
the Braves, but I’m just good at sports that boys call girlie like
gymnastics.
Also, I get pretty crazy on the dance floor with my tap shoes. I
actually won a state tap shoe competition last year.
My dad was there, my mom was not. My parents are divorced
because my mom is rich and my dad is not. I also have five brothers
that are all kept at my mom’s mansion in Manhattan, New York
because they were the ones that were good at sports, not me.
My mom never loved me, but my dad did. We live in a
apartment in Brooklyn, a small one like me.
***
“Play ball!” The umpire yells in a deep voice.
My team the Braves, are the second best team in our Little
League. There are ten teams in the league and four of those make the
playoffs.
My team had already clinched a playoff spot last week when we
beat the worst team in the league, the Royals.
Today we were playing the fifth placed team, the Reds. I hate
the Reds so much because of the annoying kids on their team that
make fun of me.
I did say that I didn’t care about them calling me names like
short stack but I do care when they make fun of me for tap dancing
because it is a “girlie” sport. I hate that.
I’m thinking about this when the coach calls everybody over to
tell us the fielding alignment for the inning.
“Pete R. pitcher, Pete N. 1st base, Pat D. 2nd base, Dan T.
shortstop, Ty S. 3rd base, Manuel T. left field, Tommy C. center field,
Sal B. right field.”
Bench again I say to myself. I usually only get two innings of
outfield play so I shouldn’t be too upset with going bench.
Our pitcher strike’s out the first three batters so we go back to
coach to find out the batting order. Coach goes down the list and I
finally hear my name, last.
Just like always. I feel my face get hot, red, I’m mad, very mad.
The first batter gets a single, and then the next batter also gets a
single. With those two runners on the third batter gets ahold of one
and it goes out of the ballpark.
Everybody jumps up and runs out of the dugout to crowd so
when he comes home they will all jump on him, except me.
I sit in the dugout and watch. The coach asks me why I’m not
going out there with the rest of the team, but I just sit there mad, very
mad until I finally get up to bat in the next inning.
The bases are loaded, two outs, I walk up to the plate. I hear a
sound that I’ve heard all year from team to team.
“Easy out, everybody move in.” says the shortstop from their
team.
It makes me mad that he said that, but it’s the truth I am an easy
out, I haven’t gotten one hit yet this season, but I do have a couple of
walks.
I step into the batter’s box and I look the pitcher dead in the eye,
he does the same back to me. He goes from the stretch. The ball
zooms in but it’s outside.
“Ball one!” The ump yells.
The next pitch looks good so I take a big hack at it, but I miss.
“Stttttt-rike one!” The ump screams.
The third pitch comes in with a curve to it, I want to swing at it
but it dips and is called a ball by the umpire.
“Two balls, one strike.” The ump screams so everybody can hear
him. Before the next pitch is thrown I look down and see the catcher
make a sign that was one finger down then he bumped his thigh
closest to me.
I was thinking about that when the pitcher threw the ball.
***
2 Weeks Later
“Timothy, Timothy!” I hear a voice say faintly.
I open my eyes to find myself with my dad and a few people
wearing blue nurse’s uniforms. They are all girls. They have big smiles
with full white teeth.
“Where am I?” I say to someone, anyone.
“Son, you’re in the ER,” my dad says in a firm voice.
“How? What happened?” I’m thinking of all the things that could
have happened.
“Timothy, that pitcher on the Reds well he threw the ball at your
head and it hit you, and you were in a coma for two weeks.”
“Why would that kid do that? What did I do to him?” When I
start to think about these questions it him me that the catcher was
Ryan Smithson.
Ryan Smithson is the meanest kid in the grade and he hates me,
so when he made that sign for the pitcher it was supposed to hit me
in the head.
Oh yeah, almost forgot about how the bases had been loaded
and I got my first RBI on that pitch.
“Thank you, Mrs. Rhodes, but now I’m going to take my son back
to my apartment,” Dad told one of the nurses (Mrs. Rhodes).
Dad pulled me off the mat, and I stood on my feet for the first
time in two weeks. My legs felt like jelly, and I fell quickly to the
ground.
“Ow!” I yelled as I hit the floor.
“You okay, Timothy?” My dad had always been overprotective
of me. He always told me I was the only thing he had left.
“Fine, Dad,” I told him. I got up on my feet and tried again.
I fell. I got back up. I fell harder.
“Timothy, stop. Let me take you to the car.”
“No, Dad. I got it. I’m fine.”
“Okay, you try once more and then I take you to the car no ifs,
ands, or buts.”
“Alright,” I said gritting my teeth, not wanting to accept his help.
I get up. I hold on to the mattress and slowly take my hands off. I
don’t fall down, and I start to walk.
Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left.
I got to the car, and I was fine. I sat down and strapped on my
seat belt. My dad started to talk, “Timothy, your baseball team won
the semifinal game against the Angels and now you’re playing against
the finals against the Yankees.”
I smiled at the thought of my team in the finals, but then I
cringed when I heard we would be playing against the Yankees. “I’m
playing my brothers’ team?” I asked him.
“Yes, Timothy.”
“Will my mother be there?”
“Yes,” Dad tells me.
I got a knot in my stomach. My brothers were meaner than
Bryan Smithson times three.
***
“Hey, Timothy you feeling better?” My coach is a nice guy and
he always looked out for all of his players even if they were as bad as
me.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you for asking.” I told him.
“Good, very good.” Coach says.
I go up for some batting practice and I catch a glimpse of who’s
warming up on the pitching mound and it’s my least favorite brother
Leo.
I’m looking at his pitching and he’s really fast but wild, good. I
got some swings in and I think I’m going to have a good game since I
only missed half of the pitches that were thrown to me.
Coach calls us down to the dugout and tells us the fielding
alignment for the inning. Coach gets down to the outfield and my
breath gets shorter.
“.......right field, Timothy S.”
“Yes!” I shout.
“Oops, sorry guys.” I tell the people who didn’t get to go out and
play the field.
I run out with my head held high, but then I see them, my
brothers. I see that the first three batters are my brothers and I know
that Leo and Jared bat fourth and fifth, so they will all get up pretty
quickly.
If you didn’t know my brothers’ names are Leo, Jared, Garret,
Johnny and Tom.
“Batter up!” The ump screams.
Up walks Tom. Tom gets walked on four pitches. The next batter
is Garret. Garret is the worse ball player out of the five brothers’ but
he still makes district team every year.
Garret looks at the first pitch and it is called a strike. Garret
takes the second pitch and hits it to center-field. Tom goes from first
to third and Garret takes second base.
After Garret, Johnny comes up and strikes out. I see Johnny walk
back to the dugout mumbling words and kicking the dirt, once he gets
inside the dugout he throws his helmet down in disgust.
Leo comes out to bat. I catch a glimpse of him with that snotty
smile and dirty glance at the pitcher. Leo steps into the left-handed
batter’s box, and at that moment I remembered that Leo always
pulled the ball to right field, and that’s exactly what he was going to
do now.
Our pitcher threw the first pitch way outside.
“Ball one!” The ump yells.
The next two pitches are also balls. Everybody is saying now,
okay he’s not going to swing at this pitch and he will probably get a
walk, but I know Leo is going to try and swing for the fences because if
you had ever seen Leo play baseball he doesn’t go up looking for
walks.
The pitcher throws the next pitch right down the middle and Leo
jacks it deep into right field. I see the ball soar into the air and I back
pedal until I see the ball start to descend.
“I got it, I got it!” I scream so everyone can hear me.
I didn’t get it. The ball bounced off the top of my head and went
over the fence. I saw faces, faces staring, mouths dropped, in aw.
I want to just dig a hole and live there right then and there, but I
can’t. Luckily the pitcher got the next two batters to strike out, and I
got to go and sit in the back of the dugout, away, away from
everybody on the team.
“It’s okay Timothy, it’s just a game.” My coach tells me.
Oh, how much I hate those words, it’s just a game. It’s just a
game.
Those words are like punches to the gut—annoying.
“I know. I know,” I replied.
“Alright, alright. Just think about this the most important play is
the next one,” Coach tells me.
I finally got up to bat in the bottom of the second, and I struck
out swinging to Garret. I also struck out to Garret in the fourth. Both
times swinging. I didn’t play the field anymore in that game, and the
worst thing was we were losing 3-2 going into the bottom of the sixth
and our back of the lineup was coming up.
Then, I see it. Leo walks up to the mound and starts throwing
warmup pitches.
“Yes!” I screamed, just like I did when I was announced to go
play the field in the first inning. Everybody looked at me. “He’s a wild
pitcher. Go up looking for walks,” I tell them.
That’s exactly what they did. The first four batters in the inning
got walked, and now we were tied and on our way to victory.
Then disaster struck. The next two batters struck out, and I was
up. I took a practice swing before walking to the batter’s box. I
stepped into the batter’s box. I moved my foot through the dirt like all
of those baseball players that I wanted to be like, but wasn’t.
Leo threw the first pitch at my head, but I ducked. That pitch
always scared the other players, but it didn’t scare me this time. I was
unfazed. In the zone.
Leo threw the next pitch right down Broadway. “Steee-rike
one!” the ump yelled.
The next two pitches slipped out of Leo’s fingertips and were
called balls. I looked over at my coach who was signaling for me to
watch the next pitch go by.
I don’t. I swung at the pitch looked like it was going to be right
down the plate, but it turned out that it broke and it curved down and
bounced off the plate.
“Steee-rike two!” the ump screamed.
“No, why’d you swing at that!” I heard my teammates yell.
I’m nervous now, I feel sweat dripping from my face. I think
about what pitch he might throw me, and at that point I knew what
pitch he would throw me.
I stepped into the batter’s box and took a practice swing. “I’m
ready,” I thought to myself.
Leo goes from the stretch. I see the ball fly in very fast, near the
inside of the plate just like I thought he would.
Bam! I heard the bat connect with the ball and then I saw it. I
just hit my farthest hit ever. I saw the ball trickle down the 3rd base
line.
I saw Leo and the 3rd baseman collide as they were both trying to
get the ball. I saw the run cross home plate as my foot touched first
base.
“Yes!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
I rethink the moment when I saw my team run and tackle me
down to the ground and dogpile me.
***
Thirty minutes later everybody had left except for two familes:
the Strikemans and the Johnsons.
If you don’t know who the Johnsons are, they are my mom’s
new family. I saw them looking at me.
They started to walk toward me with their heads held high. “Hi,
Timothy,” my mom said in a cold voice.
“H-hi,” I stuttered back.
“Timothy, I saw that walk-off hit you had,” she told me.
“You did?” I replied.
“Yes, and it was very good.”
“Now, I have a question for you Timothy.”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to live with us in Manhattan?”
Thoughts went rushing through my head.
I’m going to be rich! Don’t say that, you have to stay with Dad
after all you are all he has left. No, I can finally be the cool kid in my
school. You don’t need to be cool, you just need a good family and the
Johnsons are not a good family.
“I’m going to have to say no,” I told her.
“What?!” she screamed.
“No,” I repeated as I walked toward my dad’s rusty old car that
would take me back to my small home.