Sammy Sosa Struck Out

Most would find it funny that a single at-bat in one baseball game could parallel a man’s entire adult life.

Some would not.  Howard Moore would be one of them.

Ball four.  Bases loaded.

Howard woke up with a start; dull noise surrounded him.  Everything looked dark from where he lay: his cheek flat against the bar and the glass of Boston-brewed hefeweizen between his eyes and what should be visible.  Foamy waves of the stuff crashed against the side closest to him, the liquid still reeling from the recent toll gravity took on it.  He tried to look toward the television but he couldn’t see.  Why was everything so dark?

A crash of glass and the hefeweizen was on the other side of the bar.  The noise lessened.  Silence?  In his left hand Howard clutched a piece of paper, a betting slip.  Everything he owned?  He caught a glimpse of himself in the bar mirror as he looked for the television.  The bartender should have cut that man off hours ago, Howard thought. 

Ah, the TV.

The rain poured down outside, and the noise made it hard for him to read the score.  Ninth inning, Red Sox 7, Rangers 6.  Four runners on base?  Howard looked down at the wadded up parchment in his hand.  It hadn’t changed: the Red Sox were still circled.

Sammy Sosa was up for the Rangers.  One hit and it was over.  Everything.  His wife wouldn’t come back and his son would continue to skip his voluntary visits.  His creditors would knock for the last time before his house was taken away.

Strike one.

Loud cheering echoed throughout the bar.  Howard caught another glimpse of the man staring at him in the mirror.  The man was young this time, shaven, and with an identical piece of paper sticking out of his left palm.  A beautiful young girl was at his right arm.  God, she is beautiful.

Ball one, in the dirt.

The nice man at the bar changed.  The hair on his head was part-gone, some of it in his right hand, but the white paper still buried in his left.  The woman on his arm had also aged.  She looked tired somehow, maybe frustrated.  She said something, but to the man in front of her, not the one at her arm.

“It’s over, Howard.  It’s over,” she said.  “Steven needs a father more than he needs a college fund.”
“He needs a father,” she repeated.

Ball two, outside.

Someone inside the room began to boo.  Howard felt unconsciousness creeping close.  But the man in the mirror wouldn’t go away.  He was ugly now.  And older.  A young boy was crying at his left elbow, prying with both hands at the piece of paper in the man’s hand.  The three hands struggled to move and then did.  They hit the bottle, spilling its contents to the unknown below.  Then the boy was gone.

Strike two, swinging.

Howard tried to get up.  He wanted to tell the bartender that there was a man abusing a little boy, that this was a bad man, that this man should be locked behind three feet of concrete and never let out.  But he couldn’t get up; his legs were leaden and his stomach was a pothole.

The television flickered.  The storm was coming close.  The man in the mirror had changed.

It was Howard.  Or rather the Howard that Howard knew: the Howard that Howard wanted to be, and was. 

Was.

This man had on a suit.  His left hand was empty; his eyes shined bright with sober clarity.  Nearby were a teenage boy and his mother.  Were they smiling?

The room flashed with lightning.  One.  Two.  Three one thousand.  Thunder crashed down.  Three miles away.

Howard looked up at the television.  Strike three?

Ball three, full count.

The room erupted with boos and jeers, most directed at the umpire.  A life savings potentially lost on a bad call.  Yet for the first time Howard didn’t care: a first sign of insanity, right?

“No!” he yelled, grasping at the mirror.  Too late.  The face morphed again.  The woman and her child faded away.  What appeared bore a strong resemblance to the man now clutching at the mirror, tears brimming in his eyes.  It was the face of a man long since dead, only holding on to life by the string of a lost hope, the crumpled wad of white material stashed in the palm of a left hand.  The pitcher was in his wind-up, and Howard knew what was coming.  His life would end this night, after this pitch. 

Foul ball, full count.

The mirror remained the same.  Somehow this was more frightening to Howard.  For now he knew what its next image was going to be.  He knew what would appear unless he did what he had to.  So he did.  And as he did it the mirror changed.  The pretty woman’s face flickered in the distance.  Her son was with her.  His son.  The corpse-like figure from earlier had even changed.  Was that him?

Meanwhile the game went on.  The last pitch was thrown. 

Strike three.

He struck out.  Sammy Sosa struck out.

The bar erupted in cheers and another round of drinking began.  Someone even bought a round for the man on the floor, the one with his hand raised up toward the mirror, the man with the betting slip shredded around his feet.  The man family would later have to identify.  The man the coroner would later say died of “shock-induced alcohol poisoning.”  The man better known as Howard Moore.