The Game with my Dad

The Game with my Dad
By Justin Boyd

Dedicated to: My Dad for bringing baseball into my life…

September was always my favorite month. Averse to the humid summer heat, I was able to enjoy the crisp autumn air and the crinkle of crisp leaves beneath my boot-heel. There was no finer way to cleanse my busy mind and rejuvenate my usual rigor than the ephemeral tranquility of fall. It is the moment where your tenacity to make it through harrowing times finally absolves you from your pain; particularly when you have sensitivity to light.

I was born with light red hair and fair skin. I was a “ginger-kid”. The summer sun was a test of resolve every year. I didn’t care for the beaches, nor did I care for the pool. I took solace in my room most summer vacation, for as long as I can remember, doing one thing: Studying baseball.

My father was a simpler man than me; he worked in a Hershey™ factory since he was 24 years old. However, his passion for “Americas Game” was remarkable. He hand an uncanny sense of all things baseball. It was he that brought me to this land of endless opportunity; games on every day, stats, big name players-all culminating to an epic struggle at the end of the season. I remember every one as if it were yesterday.

None of these epic struggles in baseball can compare to the one I saw with my father at the age of eighteen; my very first Yankees game. I was an eager teenager-my father, ruthful that it had taken him this long to show me the beauty of Yankees stadium. I knew that he was looking forward to this moment as much as I was.

As we pushed through crowds I smiled as I looked back and forth, from face to face. Some faces were filled with excitement; they could feel the energy of the big game. Some faces were aged and filled with contempt, I didn’t understand… How could someone be faced with all of this atmosphere and look like they were at a funeral? Their hair was grayed, their faces withered, as if there were something that, among the fun and energy, had snuck in and appropriated the life from their very hearts. I went on unperturbed. Nothing could make me unhappy here; nothing.

***

We rested on the seats directly behind the catcher-my father must have saved for years to get these seats. We sat, and the game began.

***

The game began around seven o’clock, the crowd cheered in unison and booed in unison. They chanted in unison and awed in unison. The ball was thrown, and caught. The bat was swung, and the ball sang past it-or occasionally shot off of it. The ability to hit a ball flying at that speed was almost disturbingly tricky. As players made contact and ran to the base, I envied them. I truly felt a sort of loss with every successful strike.

I was ostensibly happy, or sad, depending on the team with every base hit, and every point scored-but there was a feeling deep in my stomach. “You can not do this, these people are above you, better than you, cooler than you” The thoughts echoed in my seemingly empty skull. I stopped being there, and was someone else. I was somewhere creepy, and I wanted to escape. My body just stood there, clapping, cheering; jeering. My heart felt sad; I looked at my father. He would look down to me, a big grin on his face. What had he done? Why had he taken me here? I felt rage; a deep harrowing rage. I implored it to release me, I begged.

There was a rift opening inside of me, the players were ostentatious… the fans, despicable in their revelry.

“You suck! I fucked your mother” a fan would say.

“Go home you losers! Get out of New York!”

“You throw like a faggot!”

Quarreling beside us, several men stood near a pregnant woman and someone who I gathered was her husband. They taunted him. I deplored their bellicose behaviors-but it wasn’t just them-it was everyone.

***

I looked up to the sky, it was the seventh inning stretch and a full moon shone down. The people around me stalled. I looked to my father, who stared into my eyes. The moon opened and released a cataract of green light. The light filled everyone around me.

The fans began to strip themselves naked, dancing in the light. They began to grope each other, and pull at one another’s skin. I could feel my insides being torn in two; I could feel my mind being torn in two. I knew this couldn’t be happening-I knew this wasn’t me.

On the other hand, I knew it was happening. I knew that this was happening, and that it had just started.

***

The same crowd that was once cheering and booing was now channeling all their darkness through this orgy. Fetid odor took me. I grabbed my glove to cover my face, but it wouldn’t open. It began to speak.

“On the full moon, the seventh inning, September air will unleash the demon”

It was not a very original glove.

I looked to my father, I needed his help, and I needed him to save me.

In the light time appeared to slow, my father standing naked in the moonlight danced. He focused with red, wild eyes, on the moon. His body gyrated as he hopped in slow motion from left foot to right. It resembled a tribal dance, a shamanistic display to appease a god. Amid the forceful flowing terror in my body, I sensed something shockingly worse. My eyes widened as pain ripped through my chest. I focused on breathing, on swallowing, on my beating heart. It seemed that my body was plotting against me, coming to claim me.

I do not know what my expression was, but when the pain gripped me, I surrendered. I leaned on the seats in front of me. I looked to the field; the players had not stripped themselves, they were not dancing. They were stoic as they formed a circle around the mound. Facing inwards they knelt down. Facing inwards they began to transform.

The ardent players were becoming mangled messes. Their skin tore revealing pulsating walls of blood. I could hear bones cracking and twisting, I could see the ardor in their eyes. What changed these… men, was esoteric, their group unholy.

***

A booming sound shocked the mounds of putrid orgies; somewhat abating them.

I viewed the field as the pitcher’s mound exploded, bright lava erupting forth. Out of the lava crept a monster so appalling that my stomach began to heave. He reached a fiery hand into the crowd, tearing men and women and children alike from their sexual hives. He ripped their bodies as their screams resounded. Their screams were echoed by everyone in the crowd…

The mass of people amplified the pain induced shrills as the monster ripped the very pregnant woman that I had seen only an hour before. The huddled men and women shrieked in delight as her blood was splattered over them. They begged for more as a deluge of blood streamed from the sky. Dead baseball players began climbing from the lava…

They pushed into the crowd; they took the places of the mutilated fans. They began a dark hallow psalm.

A bridge of earth tore from the molten field and a player, fat and obviously drunk, stood atop.

“I am Babe Ruth”

His gut protruded… Was this the man who held the home run record?

“Baseball players of the past have united; we have been summoned on this occasion to free our souls from this boring game”

His eyes caught fire. He continued.

“After death we have all been forced to continue our careers in a perpetual and eternal game of baseball… Our innings are not counted, and our achievements not tallied. There is no glory. There is no score. There is no agony of defeat, for there is no winning. The game doesn’t end, it doesn’t start, and we are always on the field. There is only one inning, and there are infinite innings. There are still three outs. The game continues, forever.”

My father was bowing his head, his body trembling.

“Since the first to ever play baseball, to the last baseball player to die, we are all sent into this agonizing game upon death. The game was created in the depths of Lucifer’s kingdom of pain. Exemplifying boredom and tapping our humanistic urge to compete in anything, so long as a rule set exists, the game was forged in an underground field of torment and let loose on America. A curse to all that partake in such a dearth of usefulness, the most purest game traps it’s occupants into a game of perpetual tedium and torturous repetition.”

The monsters had taken to the stands, tearing fans to pieces by the tens, a shower of blood in their wake. They had claimed many lives, but now were slowly retreating to the field; the moon was being obscured by clouds.

“Free us from our torment! Stop watching this game! Get a fucking life!”

The moon vanished beneath the grey clouds. The lava subsided, and the blood was sucked into the seats. Body parts disintegrated before my eyes. My father dressed himself. We walked outside; the crowd was far smaller than it was before.

***

“How’d ya like that, buddy?” My father looked at me with genuine anticipation of good feelings.

“I don’t think I will be playing baseball anymore dad… I quit.”

He looked at me, disappointed, but not overly emotional.

“That’s ok son, you will do well at anything you try your hand at… but, why not baseball?”

“I am thinking tennis might be more my style”