"Valhalla Has A Baseball Diamond" by Garon E. Whited

Coach Carter watched Tom Daly step up to the plate.  The kid wasn’t the best batter, but even the best batter wasn’t going to dig the team out of this hole.  If Coach Ross wasn’t in the hospital, things might be different, he reflected.  But, on the other hand, putting Jerry in to bat next couldn’t make it any worse, and Coach Ross had gone to a lot of trouble…

                After Daly swatted the ball in a high arc to center field and was caught out, Coach Carter sauntered over to the umpire.  They spoke for a minute, then the umpire beckoned the other coach over.  The three conferred at length for several minutes.  The other coach glanced at the dugout and the scoreboard, then shrugged.

                Coach Carter came back to the dugout and shouted, “Jerry!  You’re up!”

                “Hey!” Larry Brown protested.  “I’m on deck!”

                “Not this time, Larry.”

                “But we’ve got to get a hit!  It’s the last out of the game if we don’t!”

                “Jerry, you get up there.  Larry, you come here.   We’re going to have a little talk.”

                Larry gulped.  “A little talk” never worked out well for the kid.  Jerry, on the other hand, didn’t argue.  He climbed slowly from the dugout, using a bat for a walking stick.  He placed a batting helmet on his hairless head, took a few deep breaths to settle his stomach, and walked slowly onto the suddenly-quiet field to the batter’s box.

                He checked in, kicked dirt, settled his feet and took his stance.

Tim Sutton was the pitcher for the other high school’s baseball team, the best they had, and knew it.  He eyed the batter, a small, sickly teenager who probably couldn’t make the team even when healthy.  He glanced at the scoreboard, shading his eyes from the banks of lights, but he knew the numbers.  The kid could hit a grand slam and still not come close to winning the game, and there wasn’t even a man on base.  Oh, it was possible to blow the game even now, but at fourteen runs to six?  Whoever this new coach was, he wasn’t Coach Ross, that was sure.

So why not just walk the kid and at least let him get on base?

Tim Sutton was nobody’s choice for Mr. Sensitive, but he’d heard about Jerry.  Everybody had heard about Jerry.  Jerry had meta-something cancer eating him alive, and there were a slew of special dispensations from the doctors and the school and the former coach and the parents and God alone knew who else to let him leave the hospital and play, just this once.  Jerry wasn’t just sick, he was dying.  Being on the baseball team was just letting him have one good thing beforehand.

Dying he might be, but Jerry knew what he was here for.  He had the look of eagles in his eyes and an expression that might have scared the ball over the outfield fence.  He wasn’t here to be walked.  He was here to smack a spheroid so hard it burst. 

Sometimes, when a man is down, he refuses a helping hand because it smells of pity.  Walking Jerry, or even handing him a slow, easy meatball of a pitch, would stink of it.

                Tim respected that.  Of all the bad things you could say about him—jock, jerk, or bully—he knew baseball and loved it.  Anyone else who shared that passion with him earned his respect on that basis alone.  He nodded at Jerry and Jerry waggled the bat a trifle over his right shoulder. 

                The pitch streaked across the plate like a frightened comet fleeing the Sun.  Jerry swung and missed.

                “Strike!”

                The ball sizzled across the plate again.

                “Strike two!”

                “Two out, two strikes,” boomed the announcer.  “Jerry Fitsimmons up, with one strike to go.”

                Tim watched the catcher signal, shook his head.  Shook his head again.  Nodded at the third suggestion and straightened up.  A terrible silence wrapped the field.  He eyed the strike zone, eyed the mitt, considered Jerry’s blazing eyes.  This was going to be the tough one.

                Tim wound up, cocked his arm like the hammer on a gun, and fired that baseball over the plate.

                Jerry swung… and missed.

                “Strike three!”

                And that was the ball game.  Fireworks went into the night sky, cheering echoed through the stands, and teams came out onto the field to laugh and to pummel each other in victory or to comfort each other in consolation, and finally to shake hands.  People shuffled down from the wooden bleachers to collect their teenagers or simply stroll off to find their cars.

                After shaking hands with the visiting team, Jerry sat in the dugout, smiling.  It felt good to sit down.  Standing wasn’t so hard, even walking was okay.  The drugs for the pain and the stimulants to offset the narcotics were nothing compared to the chemotherapy.  At least they’d stopped that; he was feeling better than he had in weeks.  But the stress, the energy it took to focus on the ball, the sheer amount of himself that went into every swing, it was exhausting.

                He sat and reveled in simply being part of the team, of having that chance to play, and the rest of the team let him have the dugout.  Because.

                A man stepped down out of the muggy night air and into the cooler space of the dugout.  He was dressed in a baseball uniform.

                “Mind if I warm the bench a minute?”

                “Help yourself,” Jerry said, surprised.  He stared at the man.  His face was familiar.  “I know you.”

                “Maybe.  You like baseball?” he asked, seating himself.

                “You’re Wayne ‘Fireball’ Hugh!  You used to pitch for the Yankees!”

                “Guilty.  They waved too much money at me.  I signed a contract.”

                “But you’re dead!  You died on the mound from a cerebral hemo-thing a week ago!”

                “I’m dead?”  The pitcher looked startled.  “That’s a shocker.”  Then he grinned and dug out a pouch of tobacco.  “Guess the reports of my death might be a little exaggerated.  Think so?”

                “Uh.  Yeah.  I guess.  But isn’t the team supposed to have a game tomorrow night?”

                “Yep.”

                “Then what are you doing here?  The team needs you.  You’ve got the fireball—the fastest fastball in the major leagues!”

                “Yep,” the pitcher replied, complacently.  He leaned back against the wall of the dugout and stretched his legs out.  “I’ve got a flight to catch later tonight.  But I got a date on this diamond tonight, if I can find enough players.”

                Jerry’s mouth dropped open.  “Here?!”

                “Yep.”

                “You got two teams of players who’ll jump at the chance,” Jerry told him.  His voice rang with certainty.

                “Only need one.  Already got a catcher.  Don’t need an umpire—we’re all sportsmen here, ain’t we?  They just get in the way.  All’s I need’s a batter.  Pitching’s just practice if there ain’t a batter.”  Wayne eyed the bat beside Jerry.  “Say… you know how to swing that thing?”

                “Not very well,” Jerry admitted.  “I haven’t really played since… well, for a few years.  I just struck out.”

                “So you struck out.  Babe Ruth struck out, too.  You just got to come back and keep swinging,” Wayne told him.  “Come on.  You can warm my arm up.”

                With that, he rose from the bench, settled his cap a little more comfortably, and walked out onto the field.  Jerry followed him with the air of one who is dreaming and hopes he doesn’t wake up until the dream plays itself out.

                Coach Ross was already behind home plate, which was obviously impossible.   He wore the catcher’s gear and, as he watched the pitcher take the mound, lowered the mask over his face and crouched.  He grinned at Jerry, winked, and gave him a thumbs-up.

                Jerry stepped into the batter’s box, dug in, and raised the bat.

                Whiff-smack!  A fastball like a bullet hit the catcher’s mitt.  Jerry got a grip on himself and loosened his shoulders.  That was no high-school pitch.  That wasn’t make-believe.  That was a cannonball wrapped in leather.  He was going to hit that?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But he was sure going to try.

                Whiff-swish-smack!  The ball tore the air past him, but the timing was just a little off.

                Whiff-swish-smack!  Another fastball, right over the plate, right into the mitt.  Three strikes.  Jerry lowered the bat.

                “What’re you doing?” Wayne demanded.  “ Quitting?  C’mon, I gotta get this arm a workout!  You keep swingin’ at ‘em, I’ll keep chuckin’ ‘em!”

                Yep, Jerry thought, I’m dreaming.  A sense of unreality settled over the diamond.  Anything was possible.  Why, he might even be able to connect with one of those lightning bolts disguised as a baseball.

                The pitches came fast and hard, straight blasts of violent horsehide shoving air out of the way.  Always a fastball, always straight in.  No curves, no sliders, nothing else.  Jerry screwed his feet into the dirt, locked his eyes on the ball like a pair of bombardier’s scopes, and started to get the timing.  The world faded away for him, leaving only the narrow line between the mound and home plate.

                He never noticed the people edging back into the stands.  Professional baseball players don’t just show up out of thin air and start pitching on a high school field.  Especially when they’re supposed to have died in the middle of a game a week ago.  But this one had, and that kind of thing causes talk.  When they realized who was up to bat, there was even more talk.

                Strike after strike, pitch after pitch, the leather spheroid flew from mound to mitt, over and over, until the air itself seemed to give up and just let it glide on by.

                But not Jerry.  Every pitch, every time, the bat beat the air, trying for that one hit, that one solid hit that would somehow make it all worthwhile.  Out of the park, down a baseline, ground ball, foul ball, who cared?  Any kid on either team would be proud to say he just connected with the pale blur that Jerry kept trying to nail.  It wasn’t going to be easy.  The ripping sound as the leather tore a hole in the air told the world that.  But if Jerry could do it, he’d have every chance he could ask for.

You keep swingin’ at ‘em, I’ll keep chuckin’ ‘em!

 Jerry swung.

                Jerry heard his name shouted, over and over, but it didn’t matter.  It was distant, unreal, someone else’s problem from another place and another time.  Right now, there was no Jerry.  Right now, there was only the bat, the ball, and the space between.  Sweat dripped from someone else’s chin, not Jerry’s.  The thundering, fluttering feeling in his heart wasn’t important.  The heat in his lungs, the flush in his skin—all someone else’s problem.  Everything he was, everything he ever hoped to be, everything he could have been was now a man with a bat and a mission.  There was a ball to hit.

                The pitcher took his aim amid the pounding chant of “Jer-ry!  Jer-ry!  Jer-ry!”  If he heard it, he gave no sign.  There was a concentration there like a laser beam.  The catcher’s mitt was the target.  Jerry was defending it.  And that ball was going into the mitt, right past Jerry, if muscle and bone could put it there.  He launched another missile, sending it down across the plate exactly like all the ones before it.

                Well, not exactly.

                This time, Jerry hit the ball.

                It wasn’t an impressive hit.  The bat and ball make a “wok!” noise and the ball went sailing up in a long, high arc.  Every eye watched it, every voice cheered it.  It sailed up, shrinking as it climbed, out of the park lights, and for one fraction of an instant, shone pale against the black backdrop of the sky like a star.

                Jerry never ran the bases.  While the ball headed into the sky, tracked by every eye, chased by all the cheering, Jerry quietly sat down next to the plate and slowly toppled to the dirt.

                And now, the funny thing.

                Jerry was right.  Wayne ‘Fireball’ Hugh was, at the time, buried under six feet of dirt six states away.  Moreover, Coach Ross, who had a heart attack on the field during the practice the day before, finally gave up around the eighth inning and died in the hospital.

                Now, maybe Jerry put so much of himself into that last swing, or so much of himself into every swing, that when he finally connected with the ball it took all that and went off with it, into the sky.  Maybe it’s out there right now, drifting through the depths of space, the ultimate home run that no one will ever catch.  That’s one theory.

                Another theory is something like the old idea of Valhalla.  When a warrior dies on the field of battle, he gets taken off to a grand afterlife where there’s battle all day long, feasting and celebration all night.  Maybe there’s something like that for the field of baseball, and Jerry is there now, stepping into some celestial batter’s box to the sound of cheering from both sides of the stands.

                 But the team—his team—has a superstition.  They have the bat he used, and the school athletic department keeps it under lock and key.  They bring it to every game, and it never, ever leaves the head coach’s hands… unless… unless they’re behind, and the bases are loaded.  Then and only then, whoever is up to bat gets to use the one they call “Jerry’s Bat.”

                The really good batters say that it’s just a superstition, but use the bat because the coach says to.  Everyone else says they can feel something, that they feel more intense, more focused, more alive when they step into the box with that bat.

                But whenever that bat is waved over the plate, a baseball goes missing.  Up, up, and out of the park, gone for good, as though Valhalla has a sudden shortage of baseballs.