Fantasy Baseball
BY M.K. LAUGHLIN I JULY 2, 2008
Mary is a knuckleball thrower. Bats right, throws left, 5'11, 35-25-36, eyes the color of wet baseball dirt. She's spent her life perfecting the details of the most insane pitch in the world, a slow-moving rubber and cork beast that makes gravity its bitch. Other knuckleballers have pitches that dance. Mary's drop a few tabs of E and rave naked with neon glowsticks, screaming for the Majors to look out, they've just gone co-ed.
The Red Sox know the value of a good knuckler so Mary plays their farm; she racks up strikeouts, shutouts, and sellouts; she owns the mound like Venus owned the clamshell. Fans call "boo-yah!" Haters call "dyke!" The front office calls up. She takes her first Fenway game into the ninth with a four-hit shutout to protect. Last batter is a misogynistic handlebar mustacher who stares down Mary as she serves him up a pitch that starts high, hangs at letter height, hovers like a strafing queen bee. Here's the swing and here's the thing dropping trapdoor style into the dirt for Mary's specialty catcher to pick and that's strike one (crowd cheers), strike two (crowd takes its feet), foul, foul, ball, borderline ball (crowd is breathless, blinkless, clenched to the point of pain), foul, foul, another borderline ball, and that's a swinging strike three...
Boston explodes. Mary shines, a vision on the mound, as heavenly as the Mary those kids saw at Lourdes. In the locker room her sweaty teammates shower her in champagne, and in the newsrooms half-crazed reporters try to brainstorm workable headlines—Hail Mary, Four-Hit Wonder, Boston's Baseball Xena. Mary ends the night alone with the final strikeout ball in her bed, waiting for the ache to drain from her throwing arm, wishing for a girlfriend to suck the alcohol from her hair. The night is young and the season is young and she's young and full of plans, for a perfect game, a perfect night, a better bedmate than a ball.
But for now, this is enough. For now, she is happy to smile alone in the dark, cradling her knuckles against her chest, savoring all the details of a baseball dream come true.
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