Philip Raisor

Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are. Octavio Paz I stand in line. The woman ahead of me, blowzy-haired and angry, is told that grace is the act of restraint and road-kill is not a sport. She can choose to wait or test the judgment at another entrance. I know that morality, penance, a kind heart don't matter, nor the faith I embraced or didn't, the people I saved. I know the key is where I land on the scale of commitment. Earnhardt, Sr., died for the game, and got in. Many ancient Egyptians buried juggling balls with them, as though endless practice and craft were their gifts to the next world. They entered. I ask if I can peek in, maybe stand on the edge and look into the vast canyon of pits, arenas, fields, fairways, pools, rings, tables, tracks, courts, beaches, forests, mountains where war is forbidden. Here is what I bring for review: a nasty fastball, a runner-up ring, individual initiative, a contrary attitude, the heart of a poet. I bring a willingness to run like an outlaw, honor the Greeks and Makahiki, invent new games, practice past dusk, play on the second squad, and keep score until I can get in the game with eternity left on the clock. I hope it is enough.

I carry my spikes and step on the field an hour ahead of the others. Last day of March with April offering tickets for the new season. I'm full of sun on wet grass, in love with blistered benches. A sparrow sits on the backstop, watching, ready to dart if I catch its eye. I drop my bag on home plate and swirl my foot in the dust the way my cousin does with his fingers on the skin of a drum head. Next year he'll be released with the others who spent mornings breaking windows and trashing vacation homes like drunks in the right field bleachers. Here, I'm alone with a sparrow and the smell of a baseball morning settling around me like a comforter. I start trotting to first base, the ankles loosening, then the knees, as the dust begins to lift into the breaking light. Around second and third I stretch my arms in a rotary motion ready to fly. A hand waves back from a passing car, someone who knows me or remembers rising one morning when the game of who you are is played out in your mind, and around you a stadium full of fans begs you to do what you usually do in the clutch. The bat I pull from the bag for the first time is my father's Louisville Slugger, thirty-three inches, wood barrel. I thought enough time had passed, the attic dust hard in the grooves. I stroke it slowly like a weapon you love to touch but would never use. He hit .304 at Omaha the season he was drafted, all-star rookie-of-the-year. He said we'd join him soon. Then that other draft. He would have been here. I swear he would. The silence feels oppressive now. I dig for a scuffed ball and throw it up, shoulder high, but let it fall. A natural hitter, my father said, holding my hands. I grip the tar-stained handle. Tears blur the wall that's so far away it looks warped. I aim for marrow deep inside, April hungry for the kill.