Safe Hittin’ Chance Britton

Safe Hittin’ Chance Britton

Author: P.B. Landon

Chapter 1

            IT is…God’s favorite game. Few would debate it. What else has running, catching, stealing, hitting, faking, waiting, celebrating and every other “ing” one can think of in the first seven innings? In life, like the game, only ninety degrees from the focal point is in play. Funny, because only about a quarter of the things I ever did in my life seemed to matter. I’ve played games, hell, whole home stands without the ball even being hit to me and won the game. Then again, I batted the cycle twice in a double header and lost both games. Two months ago, a fly ball tore through the webbing on my glove and hit me in the nose, only for me to clutch my hands to my face and wedge the ball between my body and elbow for the catch. Sacrifice in most sports is subjective, in this magnificent game, it is its own stat. The game is backwards, forwards, Kierkegaard style, like in a hit and run. The men run before the ball is hit and only with a leap of faith can the play be executed to perfection, or you’re caught out there leaving the crowd with a “what was that for” kinda feel. It’s like watching something break while it’s still falling. A Kierkegaard, either or, kind of thing. But when it works, it works to perfection. Speaking of perfection in other games, it’s subjective; in this one, it’s a stat.

            It does not cease to amaze me, and other enthusiasts of this game, the power and symmetry of that perfect instance when a homerun ball is hit. Nor the shame of being fooled so badly by a pitch that one drops to a knee and hangs one’s head while heading back to the dugout. Lest we ever forget, the greatest basketball player even quit so he could play baseball in the Minors. In this game, and it’s been said a hundred times before, you take a round ball, hit it with a round bat, and anything can happen.

            Could you honestly see the Almighty kick a field goal? Or worse, doing something as lame as dribbling a soccer ball? I mean He could do anything, but would He, if He had the choice, do those things or dig in His spikes into the dirt and ease into an assured stance, or take the mound resplendent? Don’t think too hard, you know which one He’d prefer; and don’t think too hard, because you can’t think and hit if you do.

            All this and much, much, more is why I just can’t seem to quit baseball. How can you quit a game so much like life and still be living? How can you feel dead when playing it makes you feel so alive? Great swaths of time go past and I’m just kicking grass by the warning track in right field when -CRACK!- and now it’s win or lose on whether I can catch that sucker traveling 1000 miles per hour in the gap. If I don’t, I’m going to regret it forever. I still can recall every drop I’ve ever made, but can only recall maybe the top five catches I’ve made. This game certainly is a series of duels. Indeed, it is true, time before time the game was preordained, long before “the mountain must come to Muhammad” or commandments written on tablets. The game had a coolness that no Tao master could ever deny or best, even before anointed ones were pledged to sacrifice on the hill of skulls, long before any of that existed there was the sun: a round ball itself and the other celestials gliding around it to the will of its gravity. The lord of the spheres colliding in joyful play of the heavens proceeded and concludes us all.

            “Britton! How’s the thumb?” asked Browney, my current manager.

            “Good enough to hit this bum,” I replied.

“Get warm. You’re up next.”

“Skip, what? C’mon, taking the bat out of my hand…literally!” decried Wallace as he stomped back into the dugout.  

“Wally, you’re one strike out away from a golden sombrero and can’t hit lefties for nuthin. Britton gonna hit for ya and you’re gonna’ like it,” affirmed Browney.

Wallace loudly shoved his helmet into its slot and made a purposeful effort to stow away his bat by first rattling it against all the others hanging up along the wall to emphasize his discontent.

“This league is about player development,” Wallace said getting entirely too close to Browney. Then, continuing, “…and I can’t develop if you’re cutting me short!”

“Wallace, watching you develop takes longer than old photography film. No one likes ending the night getting fanned, and I am trying to win a ballgame here. Another thing,” Browney growled this time between clenched teeth, “never question me again out loud in front of everyone! Go take a shower!” This was followed by an intense but brief staring competition that Wallace lost as he stomped through the dugout and towards the locker room.

“Hum, Babe! Chance, don’t make me regret it,” Browney gave a look at me with a slight smirk on his face. As I walked by him in the dugout, he gave me a playful slap on the top of my helmet, for encouragement. Other than the thumb, I was feeling good…real good. I had been twenty-five for my last fifty-two and hitting safe for the last twenty games and pretty timely hitting at that. Two games ago, I broke open a tie game doubling the opposite way down the third base line, scoring two. The game before that, I wrapped one down the right field foul pole, a rarity for me as that kind of hitting for power hadn’t been my strong suit since high school. All in all, I also had a nice sprinkling of solid hitting in between. I considered all those things in my head and skipped up the steps of the dugout.

I took my first practice cut and got a nice jolt of pain in my bottom thumb knuckle that traveled all the way up to my elbow. I’ll never do the dumb catchers a favor again of helping out in the bullpen warming up the young, stud pitchers, I told myself again. We probably got two or three guys flirting with ninety-five mph cheese, no control to speak of, but great stuff, and well, it takes one of those heavy balls caught the wrong way to ruin your day. I didn’t hear any tendons pop or snap but one guy we have has a natural cut action to his fastball and I got it toward the bottom heel of my hand and…ouch! I sat out a game and didn’t complain about it. I could barely close my fist it had swelled up so bad. When Browney asked me If I could go today, I told him “sure…in standby, no problem.” Looking at my hand now with a home game on the line and a runner on second in the tenth and one out, I thought I may have made a miscalculation.

Hot is hot, though, and you don’t mess with a streak. I took another practice cut as I looked out on the game, and it still hurt but less than the time before. This guy was throwing hard, no real breaking ball to speak of, but I knew if I get ahead in the count, he was going to cave and give me exactly what I wanted. More than all of that though was that this streak was unlike any I’ve ever had before.

I can’t really explain it, but my whole life, in particularly on the diamond, I get these sensations. It starts in my feet, why there, your guess is as good as mine. It feels like I am, I don’t know…stepping into warm mud, but in a good way. Then, from the warm glow of my feet, it shoots straight up into my body and into my eyes and then I become super alert. Every pore on my face opens up and sweats and the undeniable feeling overcomes me with a premonition I have to act on.

For about two weeks before our current home stand, I was in the outfield doing my usual counting sheep thing. Barely, and I mean barely, paying attention, even though we were up by one in the ninth, man on first, two outs. I had this tendency to rock on my heels when I am bored or nervous. The souls of my feet were like the scalp of my head. When I rocked on them back and forth, side to side, feeling every spike in my cleats press against the balls and arch of my feet, it was sort of like a brain message, don’t ask me why. At any rate, I’m a hundred miles away, eyes closed, and exhale slowly when -BAM!- The ball wasn’t hit yet, but my eyes flew open and beyond explanation, I ran toward right center. I’m not talking just taking a couple of shuffling wide side steps to my right, I mean full on, drop step, and sprint diagonally three, maybe four strides, before the pitch was even hit. I looked back over my shoulder as the bat cracked the ball. The batter really leaned into it and hit it like a laser beam deep into the gap. The guy was running out of the box thinking extra bases for sure. There were runners on the move, third and first base coaches waving them on. The home crowd gasped in horror. All were silent, then there I am standing flatfooted in the gap right at the warning track completely settled under the ball. I could hear it whizzing toward me as I casually held out my arm and made the one-handed catch. It came to me like I had been just standing there all along.

It was so impressive that even the home crowd didn’t cheer. Everyone was too stunned to comprehend what I had done. The runner rounded first base still running flat out, their coach had to stop him at second. It was so quiet I could hear the crickets in early August. I just tucked my glove under my arm and jogged off the field. Ole Browney was too funny about it. I hopped into the dugout and he goes, “If you put a shift on without telling me or anybody else again, I’ll kill ya!” The weirdest thing was that during the next couple of games, every so often when I rocked on my heels the same feeling came over me, and then, lo and behold, it happened again! The premonitions weren’t exact, but they sure were close. Knowing pitches, where the pitches were going to be, I swear to God, I’m two for two when I have been on base.  I knew the pitches to get big jumps on and just like that, they were both pass balls!

-CRACK!- Oh, crap! Jimmy, our first baseman, popped up the ball. Their third baseman waved off everyone and settled underneath it. Back to reality. Two outs now, man on second, tied 4-4 in the tenth. I removed the weighted donut from the bat and took one more practice cut as I walked to the plate and swiveled my head around to face the crowd. By the tenth inning, on a Tuesday, in short season low A ball, there couldn’t have been twenty people in the place. It didn’t matter if we were in first. It didn’t matter that it was tied, this was the life where nobody knows your name.

There was one enthusiastic fan, though, a little girl with a hula-hoop and chocolate smeared across her face screaming, “Let’s go, Jackals!” Bless her heart, she had to be the only fan in the place with any enthusiasm left. Undoubtedly, her father was the guy in the green shirt behind her twirling his car keys in his hand. You could tell by looking at him that this was the last inning he was going to stick around and watch.

If you don’t talk to yourself a little at the plate, you’re crazy. If you talk to yourself too much at the plate, you’re slumping. If you talk to yourself, by yourself, in your house, you’re nuts. Funny how God’s favorite game works. I knocked the dirt from my cleats in the box and squared up for the pitch. It was the heat, a little too far outside for my liking, but a strike.

-THWACK!- The ball cracked the catcher’s glove. “Striiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” bellowed the umpire. I frowned but shook it off. I rocked on my heels, squared up. He threw a slider in the dirt. Now, like I said, I had been hot as of late but when everybody in both dugouts and the twenty people in the crowd started screaming at the pass ball, I was admittedly caught a bit off guard.

“GO! GO! GO! GO! BEHIND YOU!” the third base coach, Willie, was pointing to the bag, as Xavier ran to it standing up, clapping his hands.

“Alright, end it, baby!” The shout came out from the key twirling father flashing a smile of relief at the thought of finally being able to take his daughter home. “End it” now was right. If I hit a single when Xavier was on second, we probably had a seventy-thirty chance of walking off with the win. Xavier, though it could not be confirmed, was widely believed to have a bullet as his biological father. Twice this season I had seen him hit the ball back to the pitcher and be safe at first. No error, no bobble, just caught him napping, and the pitcher lobbed it to first to have Xavi beat the throw by a step. I stepped back into the box said under my breath, “Well, that simplifies things.”

            The pitcher was clearly flustered. He had been in for two innings and the manager was asking a lot of him to shut down the top and heart of our order to close it out. He was sweating profusely, knowing this was it. The pitcher exhaled, got the sign, and came set. He was not going to risk throwing another breaking ball, putting another one in the dirt again. He was definitely coming with the cheese. He came set and a thick drop of perspiration fell from his nose. I rocked on my heels square up and it happened. Like a blast from my feet, every synapse in my mind conducted some whirling calculations and I was certain that not only was the fastball coming, but it was coming in high and tight!

            Half a second before the pitch was thrown, I open my stance a little and -ZOOM!- this kid’s stuff was good, maybe I was giving the whole premonition thing too much credit. I mean, c’mon, how tough would it have been to guess a hard throwing reliever would use his go to pitch after putting one behind the catcher? No matter though, I eyed it, opened my hips and connected. Sure, it was a little too high and too in, but better to swing at a ball I know then get fooled by a strike I didn’t think was coming. -CRACK!- “OWWWWWWWW!” I screamed, the reality of my sore thumb flooding back to me in the sharpest way. I got the ball square, but right off the handle. The energy of the ball felt like I lost my thumb in the transaction.

            The ball was lined over the pitcher’s head, a step toward the first base side. It bounced into centerfield and the centerfielder just picked it up and jogged it in. My dugout exploded, looking like everybody was happy to finally go home. I ran out to first base never looking up from my sore thumb the whole time. I crossed the bag and had the first base coach and a couple of the more exuberant young guys from the squad walk out for cordial high fives on my way into the dugout. I gave my helmet to the chubby and cheerful bat boy as well as a couple more fives. It took a while because I could only do it with one hand. There were smiles all around except for maybe Wallace, I didn’t see him by the time I got back to the dugout. I made a few more high fives, including a big one accompanied by a chest thud from Xavier.

            Browney stood at the entrance to the locker room, smiling “Your parents did right by naming you Chance Britton.” Browney, much too regal for a high five, stepped forward and gave me a proper hand shake that caused me to wince because it must be done with the right hand. Browney gasped, “Say, you alright…oh, the thumb?! Well, I hope it heals up soon. I got an email this morning about you. Didn’t wanna’ tell ya’ till the end of the game today. A player has a tendency to check out if they hear they have been moved up.”

 “Alright! Well…I’ll miss you guys. Been a blast,” I replied. It suddenly dawned on Browney and I that you never talk about moving up in front of other guys. I shot them a glance and Xavi gave me another pat on the back before getting the hint and left us. After he cleared the doorway, I resumed, “You know when?”

“Tomorrow.”

            “Tomorrow? Wait, that means I’m staying in Jersey?”

“Nah. Just over the river, the Iron Pigs calling you up. I don’t know anymore; the rest of the emails were all specifics pertaining to you. I’m trying to win a championship here and first they glommed Raymond and now you. That’s when I put two and two together. When you get home check your email, though. It’ll have all your info in it.”

            “Thanks for everything, Browney.”

“Go on home and pack up and get outta’ here,” he turned to enter the locker room, “and take that hittin’ streak of yours with you!”