While game two of the 2018 College World Series Finals was going on I was busy sitting in front of my TV and watching it, continually eating massive mounds of chicken wings and working on a 12 pack of Blue Moon bottles, which I’d eventually finish. In playing, in little league, I had a couple of good years in baseball. It is, though, certainly a mental game, and I found myself going into slumps from time to time, where my hitting or fielding form would develop glitches.
It was funny — the other game I’d watched was Minnesota vs. Oregon St. (now Oregon St. had advanced all the way to the final from said Super Regional and was playing Arkansas for the crown) and I try not to hate people in life, in general, but I couldn’t help but notice that this one sort of half-Mexican half-Cambodian looking dude (who you could pretty much tell played for the Northwest team and not the Ozarks crew by his complexion) had this smooth, shapely face of incredible vapidity, motionless with cold, dark eyes that seemed to probe, to gnash, to be willing to kill if killing, in life, were called for. He was on first base in the Minnesota game. Oregon St. ended up coming back and winning in that game.
Arkansas had never won the world series. They, though, had a chance to — in the bottom of the ninth with two outs their pitcher forced a pop-up out of the Beavers (OSU) hitter, near first base, and the first baseman, second baseman and right fielder all went over, with a chance to make the grab. Neither one of them made the play. The ball landed dead, the game went on, and that same killing-faced Chicano hit the game winning homer for the Oregon St. Beavers.
Except, I have a confession to make. I filled with dread when I saw that ball up there. I filled with dread at the thought of “hope,” which Aimee Bender might cite. I filled with dread at the thought that “Our greatest fear is not that we’re powerless… Our greatest fear is that we’re powerful beyond all comprehension.” I saw the stillness of a provincial restaurant. I saw Grandma Betty’s prize-winning blueberry pie from 1982 resting there in a two-foot-wide frame on the wall, I saw that same old grizzled dude who’s in there every night drinking and looking straight ahead, cracks on his face like craters on the moon. I saw fat-faced lawyers congratulating me, a blind eye turned to the wrongly accused criminals. I saw the bevy of lights — the camera flashes, the newspapers churning in warehouses as they printed my picture next to killers.