by Gregory Pratt, BaseballEvolution.com
March 6, 2008
There's nothing lonelier than to be a
lost Rocket in space,
alone
knowing that there are many others
hiding
on
the surface
who could join you and spare you the
miserable solitude
but don't because they're afraid of
being caught in an asteroid field
and so they leave you to your
weightlessness.
You didn't want to be alone, when you
decided to fly off the earth,
so
you asked around for company before
takeoff,
but no one would come with you.
Your best friend didn't want to invade
the sky
for fear of angering God;
your wife didn't want to let go of
gravity;
you'd burnt your bridges with
Mike Piazza;
so
you asked
Barry Bonds, and he declined:
he
doesn't fly with white people.
You knew better than to ask other
hitters,
who are notorious for keeping the
secrets of their successes to themselves
and who you have built a twenty four
year
sixty foot six inch
separation
from.
You turned to other pitchers.
Pedro Martinez was a no, claiming a
preference for mother Earth;
Greg Maddux was busy playing
catch with his children;
Randy Johnson was laid up in the
Arizona desert,
and you certainly weren't going to take
anyone less than you
into the sky because mere men can't
handle the pressures
a
Rocket can.
So
you left the Earth
alone.
You made a stop in the stratosphere,
where fallen stars are swallowed,
wondering if anyone had survived the
trip into space but
knowing that no one had ever returned.
Prospects are bleak.
At
first you didn't find much in this
exile, but when you thought all hope
lost
you stumbled on a group of old
ballplayers, tossing rocks made of cloud
underhand
and hitting them with door handles from
the jets
they were flown in on; they ran around
the
bases with singles and doubles and
triples not seen since
a
more Earthly era. Your heart skipped a
beat.
You called out
"I'm taking a trip into space! Who wants
to join me?"
Shoeless Joe Jackson turned away
from you, thought you foolish
for taking the trip voluntarily when all
you could ever want
was on Earth.
"Baseball ain't fun on the moon, ah've
been!" he shouted
and
Buck Weaver turned you away too:
"I've been begging to return to Earth
too long to leave this spot
for some place colder than any place
I've ever been."
Just when you thought all hope was gone
Pete Rose came, and offered to be
with you
for a price,
promising to whistle the star spangled
banner
and the pledge of allegiance
and take me out to the ballgame
for your amusement,
pledging cracker jacks and intensity and
dollars.
"What the hell" you said,
"it's company," and you took off
but halfway to the moon you lost your
way;
you were already growing tired of Rose's
song and dance,
so
when he bet that he could find your way
back
if
you'd hold him at the door you took him
up on it
and let him go into space. You cut your
losses and then epiphany:
"is this what will happen to me?"
As
you are hit by asteroids hurled by
force of Bob
Feller,
Walter Johnson or Pete Alexander
you can't help but feel
alone, like a batter facing the great
headhunter of his era,
overmatched,
like nature were exacting its revenge
upon you.
As
Houston advises you to take the beatings
now, and how to take the beatings,
you start to wonder whether or not you
would be better off
at
home
except it is too late now: you are lost
in space
with no clue how to get back home.
The separation between you and the world
is greater
than it was before,
in
those times when
you appeared to be an immortal from
space
but you are now a mere mortal in space
alone in a field of asteroids you
willingly walked into.
Gregory Pratt is a political science student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His political commentary can be found at the Office of the Independent Blogger, and he can be reached at Gregory@baseballevolution.com.
