Ghost Runner On Second

My brother lied in the hospital bed with his eyes closed a half mile from the river and a long way from home. His wife was there, but she had gone. His kids and grandkids had come and gone, too. I was down for a visit. I never came down much since he moved this way. I guess you wait to be invited, but invitations don't always come so readily. I never really invited him to anything, either, but it's too late to get into all that. There was an assumed invitation, we would both say. Assumed by the potential host but not the presumed guest. 

It is strange, isn't it? The way we all grow apart when we once we're so close. When we were once almost like limbs of the same body, branches of the same tree. Now we are practically strangers. Even as he lies here, I don't entirely recognize him. His hair is thinner. There are more bristles of gray in his goatee than there are that root-beer color of youth. His face looks so tired. I don't know what happened to him after he left home other than he got married, worked some professional job, and had kids and grandkids. I regret that I don't know any more than that. I wouldn't even be qualified to deliver his eulogy, if called upon. The person I knew died 25 years ago. 

This would be the last time I would see him, I knew, so I hoped he would open his eyes and see me. Maybe that was selfish of me, but I had something to say to him. Gratitude to give. Tubes ran to and from him. IVs and monitors. There was a catheter down below under the crisp white sheet which shrouded him, inching up to his chin. Machines beeped and hummed. Nurses came and went. "Visiting hours end at ten," the last one said softly and about as politely as you can say something like that. From 10 to 8, or so, he would be alone in this dimly-lit room. Hanging on to a life he gave up twenty years ago. I wondered where he was. Where a coma takes someone. What kind of room it is. If it is a room. I wondered if he would ever open his eyes again. It was against all probability, a young brusque doctor explained to us earlier. A long, lean pastor, who would more aptly be described as a beanpole than anyone I ever met, stood beside him ready to interpret why God was doing this and what he, or God, could do for us through prayer. 

"It is okay pastor. It ain't God's doing. If it is someone's time, it's someone's time," I replied. He encouraged us to pray. To petition the Lord with prayer.  He would pray too, he vowed. But he spams God and prays for everyone, I thought. It is a little late for praying, I said. He smiled and answered that it is never too late for praying. 

I sat there watching a baseball game on TV. The Angels and A's. Ten past eleven. They hadn't kicked me out, yet I was 70 minutes overdue. It would surprise my brother that I was here being that I never came down  to visit. Again. The explicit versus the implicit invite thing. He would have had to send me a written invitation to come. Had he bothered to buy an invitation and write it out and buy a stamp and take it to the mailbox and send it, I would have come. You don't turn that sort of thing down unless you really don't like someone. It would also surprise him that I brought a gift, as I was a notoriously awful gift-giver. He might also be shocked that I wrapped the gift, being that I had never wrapped a gift before.  

I pretended like he was watching the game with me. I talked to him about a nice hit, or a catch, or a pitcher throwing straight gas. It wasn't the same game that we knew as kids laying in front of a cathode-ray tube cabinet television that was so heavy it left permanent imprints on the brown-and-tan shag carpet that was in practically every house when I was a kid. Before I knew about money, free agency, contracts and endorsement deals and trades, I knew baseball with my brother. Before I ever heard of anyone spitting on a ball, or corking a bat, or betting on the game, or juiced balls and steroids, I knew baseball with my brother. Before I knew 10 dollar beers, and 40 dollar admission tickets, and 20 dollars for parking, and 6 dollar hot dogs, I knew baseball with my brother. I knew our backyard, which was Wrigley Field one day, and Fenway the next. I knew the feel of a yellow wiffle ball bat in my hand, the gooseflesh of the handle I gripped too tightly and the whiz of a wiffle ball brushing me off a plate that was some random and somewhat square piece of plastic. Or a Tupperware plate that mom wouldn't miss. The dish, we called it. I knew wads of Big League Chew and spitting, and batting gloves and the eyeblack boot shine smeared across my face. 

We kept stats for a while. He wrote them down in a spiral notebook, but since we played way too long and way too may innings, we eventually didn't bother to record anything other than wins and losses, loosely, and how many homers we hit that day. Mine were always inflated. Plus two, at least. We had a World Series about twice a month. We had an All-Star Game where we wrote our line-up down and imitated the stances of whoever it was when it was their turn to bat. Over the house was a home run. Foul lines were never straight. Inside the maple tree, which was third base. Along the chain link fence, a pole on which was first. Advantage right handers. I was left. I learned to hit to the opposite field for that reason. But occasionally I'd pull one sharply and it would smack the neighbors upstairs kitchen window and carom wildly on their deck. And depending on how hard it hit, and if they were home or away, we would hop the fence to get it or run and hide until enough time elapsed when I suppose we assumed they'd forget about it. Sometimes they were charitable and our ball would be back in the yard. Sometimes they'd keep it. I imagine the Gosney's had a sack full of wiffle balls we bought for 99 cents a piece at Kmart. 

It would never break anything. It was just a plastic wiffle ball, after all, which weighed next to nothing, although sometimes it was wrapped in duck tape so it had a chance against the wind to soar over the house. I suppose that was our own "juiced ball" era. But we usually only duck-taped balls to mend a crack. Plastic isn't leather, twine and cork. My brother could smash a ball better than anyone I ever knew. I hit a few home runs, but I was 6 or 7 years younger and didn't have the power he did. I became a hell of a spray hitter, though. I liked to run the bases. I liked hitting a triple down the left field foul line and watch him run off the mound - a partially buried 2x4 - to chase it onto the back patio under the chairs and against the privacy fence. I liked to slide into second or third. Grass stains were badges of honor. Popping up from the slide, even when it hurt, and casually acting as though it was no big deal, you did it before and will do it again, brushing yourself off and calling for time from an imaginary umpire. Imagining fans on the rooftops, everywhere there were shingles, or leaves in the tree, waving casually in acknowledgment and gratitude, as though you just tied some long-held record, or you just hit for the cycle. That was me.

I thought differently about it when I was younger. I never knew my brother could have thrown me all curves and struck me out everytime. Or high fastballs I had to learn not to chase. I would have fanned and spun into the grass and been demoralized. I would have struck out everytime I was up because he could throw them for strikes everytime. And the wiffle ball strike zone was much larger than the Major League strike zone. The angry chain-link umpire behind me would have called me out looking and that was the worst - to be called out looking. But he didn't. Whether he was Nolan Ryan, or Doc Gooden, or Phil Niekro, or Fernando Valenzuela, he pitched to me. Not easy. But not hard enough that I couldn't hit. He wanted me to hit. He wanted me to learn to hit to the opposite field. To choke up and make contact on the second strike rather than to strike out. To foul off good but undesirable pitches. To never pop up or hit into a DP. He said the line drive back to the pitcher was the purest hit. Even when it nearly took his head off. He smiled and I smiled as he rubbed the sting out of his hand. Pitchers poison, he said. Meaning if the pitcher got the ball before the hitter got to first base, you were out. That's what you do when you don't have a team behind you. 

It was always a race against each other. He smashed more home runs off me than Maris hit in 60. He might have hit 61 in one month. Who's counting, he would say, biting his lip, sauntering around the bases. I'd have to go get it. Around front and out to the street. I can still hear the gate latch behind me. He used to go see how far it went, but after a while, when he was 15 or so, he just let me get it. Usually, it didn't make it past the maple tree in the front yard. I'd say a prayer that it wasn't in the gutter because we never had a surplus of wiffle balls, and if so, it was game over unless he climbed on the roof to get it. He wouldn't let me. You'll fall and break your arm or something, he'd say. Another souvenir for a fan. Occasionally, he'd belt one across Mulberry Street and into the Graham's yard. "440 feet!" I'd boast as though I had hit it rather than gave it up, running back to tell him. "Tape measure shot!" Or, "Look what just came out of orbit!" It wasn't really 440 feet, of course. But numbers were arbitrary when you're a kid and so are things in orbit. It sounded good. Like something Vin Scully or Marty would say. I'd always change pitchers when he went on a hot streak like it would make a difference. Lee Smith would come in. John Franco. Bruce Sutter. Dan Quisenberry. I would imitate the manager and motion to my left or right arm, though it was always a right-hander because I could only throw right. 

There were no gloves for wiffle ball. We had our hands. I'd peer into the invisible catcher's mitt and shake off signs that weren't given. But he seemed to always know what was coming. He seemed to be able to hit anything I threw. Especially my knuckler that never knuckled. I think he could have hit every single ball I threw over the house if he wanted to. But he didn't. Dave Parker didn't hit all home runs. Nor did Mike Schmidt. Nor did my brother. Sometimes he would pop out or strike out and when he did it was as though I had just slayed Goliath. I never felt better than when I struck him out or when I beat him in the bottom of the ninth. 

I will never forget the feeling of being beamed with the ball trying to stretch a single into a double. Or a double into a triple. Especially when the ball was duck-taped. Especially when I wore spandex bermuda shorts, or whatever the hell they called them. Or those polyester Kmart specials that seemed always to be light blue with the elastic waistband. Right in the ass. He never threw it at my head. But he always had a good laugh when he pegged me and I would fall and roll around on the ground like someone who had been hit by a real baseball. I sometimes cried like a baby until he would tell me mom would come out and tell us to go inside. That's all he had to say and I was better. I never quit because I didn't want the game ever to end. I will never forget hitting a double and calling "ghost runner on second" as I hurried back in to bat again while I was still hot. Strawberry's up. No, wait. Sandberg. And he would rub the ball and think about the imaginary scouting report on Strawberry or Sandberg. And he would look off into the distance like a big league pitcher does sometimes in some packed stadium making a million dollars a year. But he wasn't making nothing. Nothing but memories for his kid brother to think about 35 years later as he lay dying. My mind a Cooperstown of backyard wiffle ball nostalgia. 

We played baseball at the park. Made our own field far apart from the city's humdrum all sand infield diamonds. Our infield had grass and he and his friends mowed it. They tried to make lines, but I could never see them. But it wasn't the baseball games at the park with all our friends that stayed with me, it was those wiffle ball games in the backyard. When it was just me and him and summer. Playing until dark or getting up early to play to get a triple header in before he had pony league ball. I don't know exactly when or why those games came to an end. I don't remember the last one. I wish I did. I certainly didn't know it would be the last one or I might have ambled onto the field and made a Lou Gehrig-like speech. Today, I consider myself to be the luckiest boy on the face of the Earth. To have had a brother who played wiffle ball with me. Who let me hit his dreaded knee-buckling curveball now and then, and who didn't crush everything I threw. I got better playing against him. Somewhere our plaques are in an inconspicuous Hall of Fame that no one goes to but for me, now and then. 

Baseball ain't what it used to be. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either somehow making money off the game or they are traditionalists who are afraid to let it go. They say we have changed, but the game hasn't. That isn't true. The game is still the game in some pioneer league in the sticks, or in the amateurs somewhere in some smalltown. Or in stickball in the ghettos of big city streets. Or in some park, or some backyard where two brothers play all the positions and pitcher's poison. Taping balls that have cracked and hitting moon shots over the house. That is the game. Not what they put on TV. That is exploitation of a pasttime. People settle for what they get and it goes on and on. It gets bigger and fatter every year and I suppose one day it will explode like a pinata. No MLB baseball game or season will ever be like backyard wiffle ball. 

I hadn't seen my brother in years before I heard he was sick. I don't suppose he thinks much of those days like I do. I thought of trying to buy the old house where we grew up and challenging him to a game, but I am broke and I was afraid if I bought it, he wouldn't come. Ghosts of youth don't just come walking out of chain-link fences. They don't live there anymore. They've grown up and lost the ability to keep an all-star line up card in their heads and imitate the batting stances of Will Clark and Eric Davis and Cal Ripken, much less, see a ghost runner on second score on a sharply hit single that ricochets off a bedroom window. How many times was I Roy Hobbs and this at bat would likely kill me, but I crushed a pennant-winning homerun that shattered the lightstack in right and showered the field in electric fireworks? More times than I can ever remember.

I might have argued with him a few times when he said that the ghost runner wouldn't have scored off that hit. I might have acted like Tommy Lasorda and kicked grass onto his shoes and threw down my hat, screaming childlike obscenities like "butt-face" and "fart knocker," throwing the rubber doormat we used for second base across the yard as the leaves and shingles erupted in thunderous applause. Or I might have just whined until he said, "Fine. He scored." Only he probably would have taken the run back the next time he was up with a quick retaliatory homerun. But I don't remember ever arguing. I just remember the game and I remember my brother was the best player I ever saw, even of those we watched on TV. I am sure I never said thank you after a game. Not in words anyway. I suppose like most kids, I just took it for granted that those days would never end. But our youth faded away one summer somewhere and all we got left are memories that are like grainy film of Babe Ruth hitting a homer, or Ty Cobb spiking someone who dared to try to tag him out. It was a long time ago, I suppose. Things get lost. People get old. They die. But because of my brother, I was, in fact, the luckiest kid on the face of the Earth. 

A nurse woke me up. I had drifted to sleep and it was sometime in the morning. It was still dark outside the enormous window I could see through a slight part in the thick drapes. The game on TV was over and a My Pillow infomercial was on and my contacts stuck to my eyes until I massaged them back into place. They didn't make me leave at ten. The machines weren't beeping or humming and there were no tubes or wires going in or out of him. I looked up at him and his head was turned towards me in the chair. His hand was reaching off the bed as though he had just thrown a curve. And his eyes were open, looking at me. There was a slight smile on his face and a familiar look in his eyes. He was saying something. 

"I am sorry," the nurse whispered. "Your brother passed a few minutes ago. He went - peacefully."

I looked up at him. The gift I brought him was wrapped and beside him in the bed where I left it. 

"Is this how he was? When he passed. His eyes open?" I asked. 

The nurse nodded her head. I smiled at her. He had opened his eyes before he left. He had seen me sleeping beside him as he had a thousand times before on that shag carpet in the glow of that enormous TV after a late-night Dodgers-Braves game on TBS. "Dale Murphy hit the game winner," he told me in the morning. I smiled a partially toothless smile at him. "Let's go play," he said. 

"He was a hell of a brother," I said. "Best goddamn wiffle ball player to ever play the game." Then I got up, patted him on the shoulder and left the room. I stopped crying a long time ago. But it couldn't be helped this time. "Ghost runner on second, brother." I sighed, smiled, then left the room. Someone had to call his wife and kids. 

The gift that I laid with him in bed, I will unwrap and lay in his casket. It wasn't that hard to imagine what would be in the oblong package. Contents therein: an official wiffle ball bat and ball for a game to be played later, in another backyard, God willing.