Broken: A story of hope and forgiveness, Page 3

  Chapter 2

  Flashback

  Suddenly, the shortstop felt strangely disconnected from what was happening all around him. He was still in the game, but instead of his vision being sharp and senses tuned in to the things the shortstop of a baseball team needed to focus on, there was a constant haze around the edges of his sight. He knew what was going on; he just felt a bit odd, a little out of place. He had just gotten up off the ground after barely missing an infield hit that resulted in a double and had moved the man on first base to third. The front of his shirt and pants had a layer of dust that he brushed off with his gloveless right hand as he adjusted his shirt and pulled down the right leg of his pants. He looked over to the third baseman, then to second, then to the pitcher. He glanced back to the scoreboard mounted high above centerfield. It was the bottom of the seventh, the last inning to be played in a Kansas high school baseball game, and his team was up by just one hit with runners on second and third and just one out.

  Even within his momentary disorientation, he knew exactly where he was. He was on the field at the Kansas High School State Championship game. His team, Stonelee High, was barely winning, with the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second. He absorbed everything around him, something his coach told his players to do since playing in this particular game was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He could smell fresh cut grass. He also felt a cool breeze against the back of his neck. He looked up and saw a cloudless sky with the sun halfway between high noon and the western horizon. He glanced down at his watch: a few minutes past 3:00 p.m. He knew it was Saturday. He guessed the temperature to be in the low 70s. All those observations told him that it was a perfect spring day, a great day to play the last high school baseball game of his career, though he hoped and prayed it would be a victory and that his screw up wouldn’t be the most indelible memory he had of it.

  “Sorry,” he said loudly to his teammates. “I should have nailed that.”

  A few of the players nearest him just nodded. The pitcher shook his head side to side, but then smiled back. It happens, he seemed to be saying.

  A new batter took his place to the right of home plate. The catcher crouched down behind the plate, protective mask, chest guard, and shin guards in place. The umpire stood alert behind him, he, too, fully armored with a facemask and huge black chest protector held out in front of him.

  After the pitcher received his sign from the catcher’s right hand (two fingers pointing down), he started his routine. The batter stepped back from home plate. This happened twice. The batter was clearly nervous about the pressure that had just fallen upon his very youthful and inexperienced shoulders. The umpire said something to him and he stepped back into position, dropping the bat halfway through his swing a couple of times then cocking it back behind his right ear, telling the pitcher that he was finally ready. The pitcher received another sign but shook his head side to side, telling him he didn’t like the pitching choice given him by his catcher. He received another, this time just one finger pointing down. He nodded in the affirmative.

  A fastball flew past the batter, the bat not moving an inch. “Ball!” the umpire yelled.

  A curve ball came next, just catching the edge of the plate. This time the batter took a cut at the ball, but missed it by half an inch. “Steeeriiike!”

  Another fastball flew over the outside of the plate. The batter swung. The hollow sound of the aluminum bat barely catching the edge of the ball told everyone in the ballpark that the ball wouldn’t go very far. It didn’t. In fact, it popped up about twenty feet and fell to the right of the rightmost foul line to the umpire’s right. “Foul ball!” the umpire yelled, a little louder this time.

  One ball, two strikes, and runners in position to either score or be cut down by the Stonelee team’s incredibly effective infield play. The shortstop’s mistake was not representative of the team’s abilities, and certainly not his reputation. He focused all his attention on home plate with laser-like intensity. His peripheral vision kept a careful lookout on his left and right, just in case the third base runner tried something stupid like stealing home.

  The right-handed pitcher cradled the ball in the glove on his left hand and nodded in the affirmative to the sign he just received. He then paused for a split second, kicked up his left knee to just under his chin for leverage, and swiftly flung his arm back and then forward with all his body’s momentum, following through toward home plate. Nothing fancy on this one. It was just another fastball, though this time he had more heat on the ball than all of his previous pitches that inning. The radar gun clocked it at 92 miles per hour, really fast for a high school pitcher still throwing heat in the seventh inning after almost pitching a complete game—Kansas high school baseball games only go to the seventh inning, so a “complete” game for a pitcher is seven innings pitched.

  The batter again caught only part of the ball with his bat, the top edge, which knocked it down just low enough to clip the pitcher’s mound and sent it careening toward the left infield, right toward the shortstop. This time the shortstop’s senses knew it was coming. He snatched the ball out of the air as the third base runner was flying toward home plate then threw it with such velocity that it could have been mistaken for a fastball pitch off the pitcher’s mound. The catcher caught the ball, feeling a slight sting in his catcher’s mitt as he did, touched home plate with his glove then rocketed it toward the first baseman just in time. The game was over and Stonelee had just won the Kansas State High School Baseball Championship. The stadium erupted in applause. Stonelee’s players rushed the shortstop.

  As he stood there preparing to take the impact of his teammates’ tackles, elated that his catch had helped end the biggest game of their lives with the double play that followed, he felt a horrific and incredibly painful collision from behind. This wasn’t a tackle from a person—he knew from experience. His body bent backward at the waste. His head crashed into something so hard that it caused his vision to blank out. For a split second he felt the most intense pain he had ever felt in his life, starting in his head and then spreading everywhere else. It ended almost as soon as it began as the elation of winning the biggest game of his life just stopped. Blackness engulfed him and all awareness of what had just happened ended when the pain grew too intense for his mind to remain conscious.

  He knew then that he was just dreaming. What he couldn’t figure out was why the end of his dream about a game he had actually played just two weeks before had just changed so dramatically.