← Poetry

The Passed Ball

It was an easy game of pitch and catch… A fifth-grade Doug stood in the back yard throwing a baseball to his uncle. Doug on the lower north end of the yard and me backed up against the south wall of the house.

Several good pitches had gone right down the pike. Cocky with his success, the young boy wound up, kicked his leg in the air and let fly a fast one…bouncing right in front of his uncle and then on toward the house… Actually, right at the house. Specifically, the basement window of the house.

The crash could be heard in Murrayville. No stopwatch could have captured the small increment of time between the glass shattering and his dad’s arrival at the back door. Surveying, summarizing, then selecting in a split second he shouted, “Damn it, Doug! I’ve told you not to play there!”

Keith has been the recipient of many of Elmer’s traits over the years, but the young family member’s never knew Elmer’s temper when riled. I looked at Doug and he nodded in agreement with his dad.

I…what can I say? What could I say? I’d been the one who missed the damned ball. It’s perhaps making too much of a long-ago incident, but when I saw the young man walk across the commencement stage, when I saw him walk down the wedding aisle, when I saw his pictures of camping somewhere in the Alaskan woods… I saw the little guy who’s pitch I had missed. I vowed never to miss another.