See the Ball

“If I told you about something that would change things—would you actually do it?” “Whaddaya mean?” “I mean if I told you a secret about how to catch—something you could do that would let you catch any ball that came your way, any time, maybe even every time—would you do exactly what I tell you? Actually do it and not just talk about it, pretend you’ve done it, or make excuses?” “I guess so.” “I need to hear a ‘yes’.” “OK. It’s ‘yes’, I guess,” not knowing what I was getting myself into. “OK. And well … would your answer be the same if I told you that this thing might really cost you?” “Like how much?” I asked.

There was a gray toy safe on my shelf back at home nestled between a hard-bound version of Daniel Boone Wilderness Scout and a purple rock from Michigan. Inside were six black cat firecrackers that my mom didn’t know about, two five dollar bills, six ones, five quarters, five nickels, and a dime. I’d been saving those seventeen dollars and sixty cents for more than a year. “Like giving up who you are,” he said. “That’s how much.” That didn’t seem so bad. I was relieved that I was not going to lose my whole seventeen-sixty! Giving up ‘who I was’ didn’t seem like such a big deal to me. I was only nine years old. I wanted to be somebody else.

“You got a deal,” I heard myself say. “I’ll consider that a promise.” He motioned me closer, leaning forward to whisper. “My little brother, from here on out, all of the time, no matter what…” he said, leaning still closer, now right in my ear “Watch … the … ball …, watch the ball, then watch the ball some more. Don’t you take your eyes off it, for any reason, no matter what. Do just this one thing, and let everything else take care of itself.” He pulled upright.

“Ya got it?” “I think so.” “So when are you going to start?” I just looked at him and shrugged. He smiled at my hesitation. “Always off in the future isn’t it?” He knelt back down and looked at the ground, rubbed his cheek, then turned and pulled on my elbow. “Do you want to hear a secret? I’ll tell you one, no extra charge,” he whispered. “What’s that?” He sat back on his ankles, folding his hands in front of him. “Listen. Whether it’s tonight or a hundred years from now, there’s only one place and one time that you can ever actually do anything, see anything, or realize anything. It’s the most important moment in life.” “When’s that?”

His eyes softened and he smiled gently at me. “I offer this moment. Right now. And what could shift right now that will create the next moment, and then the next, and the next, which is …” he paused … “now a moment that has just arrived.” He stood up, reached forward, and put the first two fingers of his right hand gently against my forehead. I felt my mind shift outside of itself. For an instant I believed … no … I knew that I could watch that ball, no matter what. Of course I could do it. It was already done. Then he took his fingers away and the feeling left me. I just stood there, looking into his blue eyes.

“Ya got it?” “Yes, I think so,” I said, not knowing what had just happened. “So whatcha gonna do?” “Watch the ball?” “And when are you going to do it?” “Right now?” “Alright then!” The man stepped back, and I was outside again. Some kind of boundary went up between us, but it was softer and not as fierce as before. He doffed his hat with his left hand and pointed the cap toward the Structo dugout. He smiled and bowed to me with his right palm upraised. I picked up my glove, turned, and ran back to my
teammates. The other squad had already taken the field, and I was holding up the game. I sat down and looked back to the first base fence where the man had been standing. He was gone…

Each game I’d come and watch the ball. I watched the ball as it left the hand of the pitcher, and followed its line into the catcher’s glove. I watched The Turk mindlessly rub a ball in his hands like he wanted to erase the lacings. I watched the foul grounders come toward the dugout, making little craters as they hopped, and watched the little rooster tail of dirt behind them as they rolled to a stop. It didn’t take more than a few innings to realize what a bit of heavy lifting I’d taken on. Despite my desire to create something more interesting, at bottom there was absolutely nothing more to watching the ball than watching a ball. Nothing. Of course it’s not so hard to watch the ball some of the time. I could do that without much problem, then go back to drawing pictures in the dirt of the dugout floor. But to watch the ball all of the time, no matter what, like the man told me to do: that was a whole different thing.

To never take your eye off the ball was hard. It was boring. Just watching, and only watching the flight of every pitch and throwback. Exactly following the path of every hit and never looking at the Runner - never going to the bathroom, or turning to talk. If I watched the ball properly, I couldn’t do anything else. What’s more, I was failing at this one simple thing. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t watch for more than three minutes at a stretch. I started to itch. A rogue bee buzzed my head. I had to pee. The sun was in my eyes. I started to use the word ‘damn’, just like the man on the sideline. I must have taken my eyes off the damn ball six hundred times.

Watching got so hard that the very fact that it was so hard began to make it interesting. Some unseen force is trying to stop me from looking at the ball and keeping my promise, I thought. I was sure of it. So I started to play a game that I made up. After I’d reached a point when I was sure I couldn’t last another second, I’d count five more breaths and keep watching. Sometimes I would look away right after the fifth exhale. But at other times I would break through and be able to watch for many minutes more. My body could watch forever—the problem was in my mind. I was in a hardball staring contest with myself as both winner and loser. I watched from the dugout, and watched from right field when I got a chance to play. Then slowly, like a growing thing, something started to happen. I started to see the ball…

I knew what was going to happen before Mac released the first pitch. I watched the arc of the ball traveling in his hand as it came around behind him to be released high as Mac fell forward, trying to force it over the plate. A weak, fat fastball with no spin at all high up in the strike zone. It would’ve been a changeup had Mac established a real fastball first, but that hadn’t happened. Bobby started to swing but then hitched back, waiting for it to come. A late swing would launch it toward the weak spot in the defense and the closest outfield fence. That was right field, and me. I was moving before the sound reached me. I could see Bobby’s open stance and the ball hanging on the fat of the bat, like it was being slung forward instead of hit. It cleared the infield, rising hot, a three-foot streak picked up by the weak lights of the Rec. League field. A little over-spin as it turned in the air over to my right, getting bigger. I could pick out the slow rotation of a red string that had been jarred loose. There was nothing in my mind but quiet.

I barely felt the old snow fence as I hit it, going clean through the faded slats, stumbling just a little but not enough to break my watch on the ball. I saw it fall, now big as a grapefruit, and heard the soft sizzling sound of a ball slicing the air not five feet away. Left foot down … one full stride … then the glove reaching—a four-inch leather pocket traveling gently through space at a dead run five feet off the ground towards a meeting place: the only place in the universe, at the only instant in time, where the small pocket and the falling ball could ever come together. I slowed down and looked at the ball nestled in my glove, realizing for the first time that a baseball had beautiful, tiny, cell-like patterns on its leather surface. THE SILENCE was broken by a full, happy sound from the infield rising toward me on the night air. I could hear Mom cheering, and the boom and bellow of The Turk, our coach and mentor, his fat, powerful fingers wrapped into chain link; ramming and rattling the dugout fence like a gorilla in a cage. “Frickin-A! Frickin-A, did you see that? Frickin-A!”

I was too much aglow, in love with everything, with the deep evening wrapped around me and the game ball in my glove, to care much when the plate umpire ruled the hit a home run. His contention was that the ball had cleared the park, and could not have been reached by me but for a construction defect in the playing field. Had an archangel appeared bodily with a flaming sword, Structo could have found no better advocate and defender than now materialized in the unlikely body of The Turk. All that he was, all that he had, and all that he might become was committed at that moment to me and to the cause of preserving Structo Fabricating’s only win of the season. He’d finally found something honorable to fight for. The fracas found its epicenter in front of home plate, pulling everyone out of the stands. I could not have cared less. The win didn’t matter. Bobby and I smiled across the diamond at each other. We both knew just how well he’d hit that ball—and that just this once, this one time in my life, I’d caught it better. That was enough. I slipped away with the ball in my glove and jumped over the third base fence to be alone and look up at the stars…”

~ ROSS HOSTETTER, KEEPERS OF THE FIELD: An Invitation to the Unitive Life