My Last At Bat

by sermonauthor

I still recall my final class in high school

nervous hours before 

receiving my diploma 

the only reward proffered 

for the singular achievement

of surviving my teenage years

I remember well my last meal

and even the movement that followed

But damned if I can recall my final AB

Something so memorable and deep 

in a career 

so forgettable and shallow 

should be easy to conjure

like a rabbit from a hat 

or the face of Alicia Johnson 

whenever  I catch a whiff of the heather 

in our tended country garden

I know it wasn't in Little League

that I took my final cuts

the hey-batta-batta 

hey-batta-batta

suh-WING batta batta 

ringing in my ears

That day I hit a solid shot to right 

and tore my pint-sized uniform sliding severely

and unsafely 

into second. 

Babe Ruth, Junior Varsity and Legion ball 

all failed 

to serve up that evocative pitch

though there were a few coaches

who likely wished my retirement

had come the year before . . . 

It makes me wonder if company games 

or church softball 

served as The Alamo to a career that

had it been stillborn 

in Pee Wee League

would have never been remembered  

by anyone but my faithful mother 

who never missed a game

or a chance to berate an umpire 

The noise I hear today is either a stoic wind

or something calling from the cornfield. 

They are ghosts from sandlot days 

and they are short

beckoning me from the tall, green stalks 

to come play a game of catch 

and to swing 

one more time

a 24-ounce Willie Mays autographed bat 

from four foot two inches high.

It is then I realize why the detail 

of my final swing 

has eluded this often addled brain

Perhaps

even at an age 

that would make Satchel Paige

seem a rookie

I haven't yet taken my final cuts

And if my last at bat is still in front of me

I really don't want to be late. 

So I find the wooden sliver of 

a near-forgotten youth

that sweet, brown, tarnished treasure

stored in the shed

but more in perpetuity

for half a century

It seems a toothpick now 

And I yell at my wife from half out the door:

"Be gone all day. 

Be back for dinner."

©Copyright 2013 sermonauthor