Chapter 2 Short Stop

Rock bottom is typically looked at as a pretty silly thing by adults who have forgotten what adolescence is all about. It’s 1994, and I’m a sophomore in high school. I’m out at shortstop and everything is spinning. It’s hot and it’s muggy and I don’t want to be there. All eyes are on me, and not in the 2Pac kind of way. I can’t actually see their eyes because of the veil of tears over my eyes, but I’m quite certain that everyone in attendance and the millions watching around the world are aware of the gigantic problem I’m having out on the field. With each consecutive error my royal blue hat gets lower and lower on my forehead, partly to hide the tears, mostly in an attempt to push myself through the dirt and away from here. Six feet under would be just fine with me.

 

The “H” on my hat doesn’t stand for Hanson High School anymore. No, sir. Now it means “Hit it Here. And Hard.”

 

 

In my Little League years all the way through just a year ago when I was an All-District shortstop selection as a freshman, I’ve never had four straight ground balls come my way. Isn’t that what every Little Leaguer wants? Our selfishness at that age is actually a necessary symptom of our desire to be the hero. I wasn’t any different, always wanting the ball, relishing the few times I was able to make all three outs in an inning. Ah, the glory of it all, the high fives, the adrenaline rush of being the man.

 

 

But never four in a row. Only the truly inept get four ground balls in a row, anyway, considering you only have to get three outs in an inning.

 

 

Just a year ago, on a cool night in Morgan City, I tied a record held by many by recording all three outs in an inning, the final one coming on a deft turn of the glove before the ball could bounce past the third baseman. A rocket-fire throw across the diamond later and I’m definitely feeling the rush. Jackson Beil, the senior left fielder, has already reached me by the time the ball reaches first base. “I can get a head start to the dugout with you, out here,” he says. “You’re the man, LeJeune.”

 

 

Just one year later, though, in the here and now Beil isn’t the only thing gone. My confidence, my grit, my will—they are all parts of the same failing mechanism now. There are no more heroic skips across the diamond. No more high-fives in the dugout where the hot senior stat-girls are waiting to offer their praise. There is only misses and misery now.

 

 

One…two…three…four. Four consecutive ground balls. Consecutive means in a row. None in between. Between the legs, bad throw, a bobble and another bad throw, a bad hop off the neck. It doesn’t matter. Hell, the way I’m feeling at this point, there is a part of me that wants someone else to get a groundball, not so they can make the out, but so they can maybe make an error or two. Misery loves company. Bestrews the blame. 

 

 

It has been like this all year. Last year as a freshman, I beat out the incumbent shortstop, who was a junior. I was called by my coach the smoothest young shortstop he’d ever seen. I relished the opportunities to show off my gun and fire a pill across the diamond.

 

 

Something has happened since then, though. Something deeply psychological has been altered. Is it the fact that my brother, a Hanson legend, has come back from college to coach me in both basketball and baseball? Is the fact that I had my first real girlfriend this year, one that I actually got to kiss, only to lose her just five months after we started talking and six years and a day before our certain wedding? Is there any reason at all? Maybe I’ve just lost it. Maybe I’m just not that good anymore.

 

 

I’m not sure what it is so I block out every reason except the last one. In the very first baseball game of the season, which was a few weeks back, I know something is wrong, because, for some reason, I’m scared to death for that ball to come to me. This is a totally foreign feeling. I do finally get one ball in the fifth inning, and I casually and coolly scoop up the ball and toss it to our second baseman for the force-out. I do it in a way that says, “I’m in total control,” and to the thousands in attendance surely that’s what they see too. Or maybe they are more focused on their hot dogs. Whatever the case may be, I survive this game, but there are many more to come, including this disaster against Vermilion Catholic.

 

 

Trenton Hebert at second base finally gets my attention after the fourth error. He tries to pick him up. “Just make the next play,” he says. The thing is, I want to tell him, I don’t want the next play. I can’t even see him clearly through my tears and the bugs. “How am I going to negotiate a screaming ball into my glove?” the smart-ass poet in me wants to say. “And if the ball does happen to catch my glove, can I give it to you to throw to first base?”

 

 

Smart-ass probably wouldn’t work right now. The guy’s being nice, but he’s probably pissed off at me just like everybody else. Might as well just nod my head.

 

 

Back to the action. The baseball god in charge of directing the last of the four aforementioned balls is especially courteous, smacking it toward me just as I’m sneezing. That’s the jewel off the neck. One of my teammate’s moms tells me later that, dawgon it, she’d seen me sneeze, and she just knows I would’ve made that play if I wouldn’t have sneezed.

 

 

“Thanks,” I’d say.

 

Anyway, consecutive error number four brings in the 99^th run of the second inning and any chance of our underdog team pulling off a much-desired upset over hated VC is already gone. The only chance we have is if my clone is playing shortstop for VC and we happen to direct our .195 batting average assault at him in the bottom half of the inning. Cut the lead to 99-50. Striking distance.

 

 

I can never remember at which point the fan started yelling at both me and the head coach from the stands. The more he shouts from the stands, the lower my hat gets and the more I pray another ball doesn’t come my way. I’m not only bad right now as a sophomore, in the present tense. This is the terrible proof that there’d been a mistake all along. I should’ve never been the starting shortstop. Even last year and all its splendor is now hummed away with the shrill sound of his voice.

 

 

“Need another shortstop, Coach!

 

 

“Can’t even make a throw!

 

 

“Gotta give someone else a chance!”

 

 

This is rock bottom. I’ve never felt so sick. Maybe God steps in, though, because the balls finally do stop screaming my way.  Three outs are recorded somehow. I have no idea who makes them. 

 

 

I run off the field, but I go straight to the bullpen area. I toss my glove far into the thick woods across the fence. I drop to the ground and just sit with my back to everything. I’m not going back in. I wanted to quit that night. And not just the game.

 

 

I take my hat off and look at the “H.” Hell comes to mind.

 

 

“I’m sorry,” I tell my brother. “I’m embarrassing you. I can’t play anymore.”

 

 

Amazing what a little white ball with red stitches can do to your psyche. Amazing what can happen to a promising young athlete with massive potential when his mind is the opponent and it’s winning. I want no part of this. This isn’t what sports is supposed to be. I’ve let down everybody, my coach, my teammates, my brother. Even the parents are against me. And then, quite suddenly and it comes and goes in a flash, a glimmer of hope: My brother hands me my glove. A teammate has retrieved it in the woods, and I wonder how in the heck he found it amongst the branches and vines.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of Postmarked Baltimore and The Final Chase. He teaches American Literature and U. S. History at St. Louis Catholic High School.