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Devotion: Baseball
Pinetar, a sluice of tobacco, sunflower seeds and juju. Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud, gum, the glues and salves for doing things fairly-one out of three swipes at the ball and a flare to right, a dying quail, a 3– 2 change popped up with a shitfuck , handcuffed, tomahawked the high hard stuff or took a backwards k when made to look ugly as we often were: Humility 3 Arrogance 1 after seven innings. And all America around us in the sentimental vaudeville. So not the claims of greened paradise and diamonds and the beauty of the sacrifice bunt nor the Newtonian symmetries and distances, it was snakes in the outfield and trances interrupted by a hamstring pull, spit and chew, geological time spans between ball one and ball two. The meditative silences likened to prayer were a bus ride where the Latin music blared. We had a dominant eye. We had a thought, well, not quite a thought, a thought fouled off in the direction of a woman who could hold a drink, an oilcan we'd crush like an inside pitch in our dreams. Fast twitch muscle and jock itch. We scratched our names in dirt. We wiped our hands on our shirts. As much as we wanted to look good, we were the bullies of our childhood sliding, cleats up at Juan or Bob with the fury of the psychopath, Ty Cobb (whose mother blew his father's head off with a shotgun, so forever playing dead). I liked best the games no one could see: pepper, shagging flies, bp. Got picked off first and waited for a ticket home. Drafted or matriculated? In a one-run game I missed the cut-off man. Boys my age were dying in Khe Sanh.