Ray Gonzalez is an award-winning poet, editor and writer. He is the author of ten books of poetry and several collections of essays and short fiction, and also the editor of a dozen anthologies. He specializes in poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction and prose poetry. He teaches in the English and Creative Writing departments at the University of Minnesota. In this compact and literate story he toys with time, history, baseballs and baseball, giving us a collapsed novel’s worth of storytelling.
THE HOME RUN BALL rose over right field and disappeared before it started its downward arc. The right fielder backed to the warning path, but there was no ball to catch. He stood dazed as the roar of the crowd turned to confusion. Thousands of fans were on their feet for the home run. But, where was it? The hitter, a national hero who led the league in home runs, slowed to a hesitant jog as he rounded first base. The first and second basemen stood at their positions, one of them removing his cap from his head as he searched the night sky for the ball. The hitter nodded to the closest umpire, as if asking permission to keep running the bases, though he kept going. Managers, coaches, and players from both benches came out of the dugout. Unable to lower their heads from searching for the ball, some of the players stumbled over each other in front of the dugouts. The manager of the team at bat waved to his batter to keep running. The opposing manager ran toward one of the umpires. There was no ball, just the memory of the loud whack as the player’s bat met the ball and sent it rocketing toward the right field bleachers. The ball’s rapid trajectory was the last thing anyone recalled before it vanished. Thousands of witnesses amplified their stunned silence with a magnetic restlessness. With two men on base, the home run would give the visiting team a 3–2 lead in the first game of the World Series. It was the bottom half of the sixth inning. Where was the ball? As the hitter, his mouth agape, rounded third and headed home, the right fielder ran as fast as he could toward the second base umpire. With his confused manager joining him, both men screamed at the umpire to do something. The right fielder claimed the ball had not been hit hard enough for a home run. He screamed that he was in position to catch it when it vanished. His manager yelled that the three runs should not count because there was no ball hit out of the park. The opposing manager was welcoming his hero at home plate. He was not going to argue with anybody, even though he had no idea what had happened to the ball. In his book, it was a home run and the ball’s speed and height made that obvious to the entire stadium before it disappeared. The beleaguered umpire at second base walked toward the umpire at first. He was surrounded by angry players and one red-faced manager. The first base umpire was coming to his defense when, suddenly, the ball appeared in the night sky. It fell where the right fielder was previously standing and settled in the warning path. Thousands of spectators saw it and both teams saw it. They pointed, screamed, and waved, but it was too late. The bases had been run, the three men had scored, and it would be ruled an inside-the-park home run. The last thing reported in the sports pages of every major newspaper was the right fielder running from the umpire he had been attacking, to the ball in the right field corner. He picked it out of the dirt and stared at it. What was not reported was his surprise at how old and yellow the baseball was. The stitches were coming off, and the ball was slightly warped. Some balls looked like that after a good hit, but this one was different. He threw it to the cut-off man at second, who also noticed how old the ball was. He picked it out of his glove and handed it to the umpire who was recovering from being attacked. When the umpire realized he had not seen this brand of baseball since his dirt lot days in the fifties, he tucked it into his coat pocket. The home plate umpire threw out another ball. When the papers carried the story, the second base umpire was surprised no sports writer asked him about the ball. Maybe it was because the home team won by a score of 5–3, three more runs coming on base hits. After the game, the umpire took his coat off in the umpire’s dressing room and searched the pockets, but couldn’t find the antique ball.