In my memories of the baseball diamond behind my elementary school, it never rains. I’m sure it did—this was deep within California’s drought years, but there must have been muddy infields and cancelled practices. What I remember, though, is all sun and dry dugout dirt floating up to irritate our eyes and grazed elbows.
We had games on Saturday afternoons. Leo and I compared scrapes on the dugout bench, taking turns peeling the scabs to see who could get the cleanest pull and the steadiest blood spurts from the reopened wounds. I always won—his scabs tended to flake off in tiny pieces and scatter. Sometimes, I ripped mine to shreds and sprinkled them to the ground to make him feel better. I liked that Leo and I could talk about scabs. We had become friends in first grade through a shared fondness of his pet katydids (Katy and Did) and the recess we spent burying their corpses behind the playground.
Two years later, he was smack in the middle of our batting lineup, right ahead of me. I moved to the on-deck zone to the side with my bat, taking a few practice swings without moving my eyes off Leo. I couldn’t see his face, but I could picture how he furrowed his eyebrows in concentration and twisted the bat so the logo faced the pitcher. He batted left-handed, with an easy, downward swing for ground balls that got him tagged out before first base. Except for this time, he made contact just below center of the ball. It soared over to right field, over the kid stationed there, and Leo (who was always halfway to first by the time he heard the bat crack) started running.
My turn at bat was my favorite part of a baseball game. Once, in private, Coach told me I was the most consistent batter on the team. I took this to heart. I would spend hours after school in the backyard tossing plastic wiffle balls up in the air, trying to make them all hit the same part of the shed.
I loved grasping the bat with my left hand first, tracing the end cap across the long side of home plate, drawing a line in the dirt to stand behind. Rolling the bat into my right to tap it onto the ground three times, once by each corner on the back of the base. Glancing at Leo, anxious to leave first, his heel barely touching the plate. Adding an extra loop when swinging it behind my head, for intimidation purposes. Aligning my knuckles into a column, shifting my weight before the swing.
The kid at the pitcher’s mound sent the ball flying. I swung. Line drive. The ball spun past the shortstop and into left field. Leo was already on the move. I watched, fascinated by his lopsided stride, longer with his right leg than his left. Coach called my name from the side. I dropped my bat and ran, trying to force my right leg to propel me forward faster.
In the end, I made it to first base. Leo, always braver, got tagged out rounding third and on his way home.
In February, the Ohio frost makes its presence known in my arms, like I’m an old catcher with a knee that predicts the weather. I stuff my hands into my pockets whenever it’s below 50 to prevent my wrists from throbbing and my arms from going numb elbow down. I offer to bring my sick friend a cup of tea, forgetting about the on-and-off drizzle outside. At dinner afterwards, my fingers won’t budge from the claw shape they’ve formed, chunks of tofu falling straight through the tongs.
There isn’t much online, other than sketchy religious testimonials, to prove that wrist pain might be brought on by a curse. Still, I remain convinced by how my favorite sports teams’ poor performances parallel the stiffness in my fingers. I consider asking my dad to mail over an old medal as an amulet for a saltwater cleansing spell. I don’t end up calling him.
By some stroke of luck, our team was named after the Giants for a third consecutive spring. I always felt like this brought us good hometown karma, like we had been blessed by the gods of San Francisco to always get along on the field.
The Rockies had nicer uniforms and won more games. I was jealous until I remembered that they couldn’t wear Colorado purple jerseys to pose as if they were at bat before billboards of Buster Posey by Oracle Park during weekend trips to San Francisco. They’d look like traitors to their city if they wore their team’s caps to after-school games of Hot Lava Monster Tag the way Leo and I did on Fridays.
“Why do you and Leo always match? It’s weird,” our classmate Evan commented as he dangled from the monkey bars. “D’you wanna marry him or something?”
Evan ate paper and had his mouth hanging open all the time. I didn’t think he should be calling us weird.
“Are you stupid? This is from baseball. I’m never marrying,” I snapped, dropping to the tanbark. Leo and I were best friends, like Posey and Bumgarner on the Giants with their standout games that always aligned. Evan didn’t know anything about baseball. He couldn’t understand. Still, I felt like someone was grabbing my ribs and squeezing them together.
“Gross,” Evan snickered. “Are you crying?”
The next Monday, I ate lunch with my kindergarten friends, Cora-Nora-Laura. I didn’t say anything to them, just watched Leo make his way straight to the four-square court, lunchbox unopened in his backpack.
Cora-Nora-Laura finished their food faster than I did and left for the playground. I stayed back at the empty tables, poking at my sandwich.
Over at the four-square court, Leo got knocked out by one of our other teammates. He sulked over to the back of the line. A girl I hadn’t seen before took over his spot on the court. She had a low ponytail, a Spider-Man shirt, and neon blue athletic shorts that went down to her knees.
I didn’t know girls were allowed to wear those kinds of shorts, and I was half-tempted to storm up and tell her to her face. My food felt stuck in my chest. I wondered if it was possible to die of heart attack at age eight.
The cold doesn’t let up in Ohio. My elbow keeps clicking out of place. Rugby practice becomes painful in a way baseball never was. I am useless on the pitch, dropping catches, unable to feel the ball in my hands. I stop going and grow bored out of my mind without evening practices. I grab food at odd hours to avoid running into teammates. Squeezing toothpaste out of the tube sends a jolt of pain through my elbow up to my head.
In my room, I Google “what sports have the most players with joint problems” and “most common baseball injuries” in quick succession, so I can obsess over diagrams explaining Tommy John surgery. I’m disgusted by drawings of muscles and don’t have any problems with my UCL. Still, I have nothing to do but stare at medical articles. Used to prolong careers for pitchers with overuse injuries, doctors take a forearm tendon from the non-pitching arm to reconstruct ligament in the elbow of the pitching arm. In recent interviews, the surgery’s namesake, ex-pitcher Tommy John, seems conflicted about whether he’d still recommend it due to long-term side effects.
By mid-sixth inning of our final game of the season, we were a run ahead of the A’s and keyed up. My hair had escaped its ponytail little by little, falling in chunks out of my cap and into my eyes in a way I thought made me look tough, like a real baseball player. I sprinted into my position at shortstop, even though Coach always said to conserve all that energy for making plays.
League regulation suggested we switch fielding positions every inning, but Coach didn’t care. We were in third grade, old enough to decide for ourselves what we were good at and where we liked to play.
Jake was the coach’s son and our star pitcher. Gracie, the only other girl on the team, was catcher, because everyone hated catcher gear except for her. The rest of us got to fill in the bases and outfield. I never understood Leo’s obsession with playing at first, where he was stuck fielding ground balls and throws from left field.
Leo thought it was silly, but I was convinced the ball curved into left differently. Smoother dropping into my glove. I liked the catches I could make at shortstop, but also the responsibility. I had to decide when to go for a catch and when to cover second. I needed to know where first base (and Leo) were for our attempts at heroic double plays.
Jake pitched a strikeout. I drew a smiley face in the dirt with my heel.
Leo caught a rare fly ball at first. I added sunglasses to the face.
Jake walked a batter. I gave my art a stick body and a skateboard.
Jake pitched and the batter swung, and the ball flew over me, past the left fielder, and disappeared. Two runs for the A’s. Game over.
I kicked dust over my drawing.
In the dugout, Jake was passing out the juice pouches his mom had brought. He handed Leo a Super Fruit Punch (everyone’s favorite) and shoved a Goodness Grapeness (which nobody liked) toward me.
“How come you don’t just play softball? Girls play that ’cause the ball is softer so it doesn’t hurt them, y’know.”
I stared at him. He was older than me but still in second grade, which meant he didn’t know anything sometimes.
Jake stabbed at the top of his juice pouch with the straw. “Gracie can be catcher still, ’cause there’s not that many, but boys are better at shortstop.”
I told myself he was just mad about losing our final game. I turned to Leo to compliment his catch and found him walking away.
My winter playlists are getting old. I wear too many layers and take hot showers twice a day for my joints. Highlights from Major League Baseball spring training games are taking over my search suggestions. I switch on a Mariners game, half expecting Seattle gloom marring the field. It is an away game, and the weather report tells me it is 65 degrees and sunny in the stadium they’re playing at. The Mariners lose. I rediscover the fact that each team plays around six games a week, which means baseball is on for most of my nothing hours. I download baseball bat sound effects to loop at a low volume over live commentary of games while doing work.
The Mariners have no named curse on them, but they are still one of few teams to have never won a World Series, and the sole team to have never played in a World Series at all. Everyone has conflicting opinions on what their problem is, why they’re always plagued by injury and draft busts and great players that stop being great in Seattle. My favorite theory suggests that they’ve been worse off since switching stadiums in the middle of the 1999 season. The Kingdome was multipurpose, not built for baseball—the foul territory was too big, the diamond obscured from much of the seating. Still, the moderate success the Mariners found in their final years there never carried over two blocks to T-Mobile Park.
Cora-Nora-Laura promised Fall Ball would be fun. I could finally be on a team of like-minded people now that Leo and I were branching out and making other friends. I agreed but refused to let my dad buy a bigger glove to accommodate softballs, despite his repeated offers and Cora’s insistence it was necessary. At summer practices, the ball bounced straight out and to the ground. Windmill pitches were impossible to throw, and worse to hit. In baseball, overhand pitches travel on a slight downwards trajectory. I had been obsessive about tilting the bat the right way since preschool t-ball. I couldn’t make myself fix it to match the rise of a softball thrown underhand. It was a new season, a different sport, and I was still off-kilter. The coach started asking me to stay longer after practice to work with him and his daughter, Phoebe, on my batting.
Phoebe always double French-braided her red-blonde hair and twisted it into space buns at the nape of her neck. Her pitches were methodical and landed within the strike zone. Her private school had horses living on campus, and she made her dad show us pictures of her pony, Pepper.
I hated her.
Phoebe led the dugout cheers when our team was at bat. I didn’t know any of the words. She had a loud, clear voice and an infinite supply of chants, and switched them up every time I started to get the hang of one. During water breaks, she told us about how her light hair meant she’d never need to shave her arms, unlike some girls. I started wearing long sleeves under the sleeveless jerseys, sweating through all the games.
I tripped her during a drill once, maybe by accident. Nora helped her limp over to the bench, pitching hand blistered and bleeding, dirt in the wound. The rest of the team followed. I just stood there halfway between second and third, waiting for us to start playing again.
I drift through my days in Ohio, praying for summer to arrive faster like a little kid. The temperature rises for a day. I roll my hoodie sleeves up to my elbows, then back down when a gust of wind hits my wrist. The Mariners lose to the Giants by a run. It’s sixty in San Francisco. If I squint when the broadcast zooms out, I can see my dad’s old office building, the one where he once lifted me onto his shoulders so I could count the boats out in the Bay. I text him an old picture of the two of us in matching hats, but don’t pick up when he calls.
A.M. Patel is a prose writer from the Bay Area, currently pursuing a degree in English Literature. When they aren’t writing about sports curses, they can be found cursing at their favorite sports teams or collaging.
VAGABOND CITY 