The Pyrrhic Victory of Godfried Geisal

     "One more such victory will undo me!"

                                                 --  Pyrrhus
     You have brains in your head, You have feet in your shoes, You can steer yourself,
     In any direction you choose.
                                                                                                        --  Dr. Seuss

     The church scandal haunts and enrages him . . .“When my involvement with (it) ended, I no longer   
     recognized anything in my life. I never questioned my faith,” he said. “My spirituality is stronger
     now. I am not a Catholic. It all left me feeling empty." All these years later, when reminded of
     this, the same (sense of) emptiness returns.

                                                                               --  Ray Mouton, Attorney, quoted by
                                                                                     Jason Berry, Lead Us Not into Temptation

Pyrrhus of Epirus

In the middle of a warm and sultry afternoon overhung by partly cloudy skies, Jones did not yet admit to anyone that his once cherished game of all eyes on the future was already at an end. This made him feel hollow as he drank his first coffees after lying in their unmade bed late and listless and that dull ache of unrootedness grew like a swelling balloon inside  of him as each day ticked toward its conclusion. He found himself without setting a firm plan for his day suddenly sitting semi-isolated in a dark green painted seat in the middle of the lower stands in left field, which baseball lore has assigned a title, the bleachers. Jones had no clear memory of aiming toward the baseball park and though he had paid $25 to pass through the bank of expectant attendants who held beeping ticket scanners and said welcome and enjoy the game under the red canopy with a big P over a main entry he could not recall how he got there. Jones had been drifting for days and nights around the cracked and subsiding downtown sidewalks. Only a few hundred other paid entrants, the completely hooked baseball fanatics who show up as soon as the place is unlocked with their branded teamwear in place and their leather gloves of all shapes and sizes and trademarks mashed onto their catching hands, were wandering around (in fact most of the early arrivals were congregated in front of Jones down by and leaning over the left centerfield fence), praying that a slightly scuffed white Rawlings baseball would land like an explosive device in their laps. Jones began to think about his exhiliration in years past -- youthful, sports-loving years -- to be sitting with energy so close to the inviting playing surface of the outfield and yet vulnerable enough, God forbid, to get banged by a whizzing hard ball and knocked into a stuporous and cracked heap.

The baseball park's sound system blared uptempo but inoffensive rock and hip-hop tunes that echoed around the cavernous, unpopulated ballpark. The music like the interplay of two teams reminded Jones that the baseball game though it might be vigorously well-played today the outcome would not matter much, or at all. He was drawn to an earnest and melodramatic sermon that a middle age volunteer coach explained to a trio of  'if you say so' Little League boys about an oldtime Hall of Fame player named Richie Ashburn from the rollicking 1950s. Masterful in his judgmen  about balls and strikes and his choked-up bat control, Ashburn was legendary for being able to go deep into the count during his at-bats, then spoil about a dozen or more pitches by fouling them off, before he could coax the pitcher into curveballing his way into hurling ball four or a high hittable ball toward home plate. Coach said 'Now always be careful, guys. These balls come at you real fast here in the stands.' The man went on about a mythical day in the major leagues when Richie Ashburn lined, actually rocketed, a screaming scary foul ball with his ash color bat into the seats above the third base dugout, the twelfth of twelve such foul shots. A graying matron whose reflexes had experienced far quicker days gone by was just beginning to register the red alert of panic blaring on and off with a fury in her mind's eye, her hands down helplessly and wrapped around a red-and-white striped popcorn box, when the line drive by Ashburn smacked into her cranium just above her left eye. Blood spurted forth into the popcorn box and part of her eye got squished out onto her face. Her brain shorted. She slumped motionless, like a flexible, wornout old mannequin, bleeding over the painted seat back in front of her, her arms and hands now lifeless, dangling all the way down.

Worried onlookers thought at first that she was dead. But she was not. Long minutes later (and skipping over many lurid details here), play resumed a bit breathlessly. Ashburn fouled two more pitches straight back. Ushers in ancient, fraying usher uniforms and straw hats with American flags on them carried the victim precariously upon an army green stretcher up some stairs toward a breezeway exit. The woman was blood-smeared and completely unresponsive as the crowd cheered gamely for her. Her face looked doughy and very pale, plus it was turning a sickly blue and black.  A few police officers tripped up the steps alongside the ushers carrying the stretcher; they tried to seem helpful. As the cheering died down, as the third pitch since the mishap reached the batter, Ashburn sliced a loud foul ball that went cutting and ripping  down the first base line. With the ominous crack of his bat, everyone (stretcher crew included, but not the out-cold woman) flinched and gazed back grimacing toward home plate. Ashburn growled with displeasure as he saw the ball bounce into the bullpen in right.

Then, something that strains one's ability to believe in anything good in this world happened. The pitcher released another pitch -- a change-up, a very flatline pitch, one that truly did match the obsolete, Abner Doubleday era label of slowball, that inched its way over time toward the plate and batter. Time in the ball park stood still. Ashburn held back. He pumped his bat down then up. He waited patiently. The pitch faded away from him. The catcher reached wide to snag the errant pitch. The chief umpire was raising his left hand to call "Ball four." Yet suddenly, Richie Ashburn, a hall of famer and legend to forever be in American sports, dropped his ash bat with lightning quickness onto the rotating ball (actually, the pitch that had mostly passed him by). The ball launched off Ashburn's bat like a missile strike from a modern war drone into the third base seating area, up behind the dugout. The awful foul hurtled toward its primary target. It crashed like a brick hurled from a high bridge into the poor insentient woman's jawbone -- which instantly cracked into many pieces with a horrifying, tree-splintering smash. This baseball then gently rolled from her chin after the electrifying impact and settled onto her slack left arm. Then it departed the ballpark right beside her on the stretcher. Everyone around seemed afraid to touch the ball. It has been often reported that nothing of this sort, this two lethal fouls for one ticketholder during one at-bat, has ever been repeated in the recorded history of major league baseball, which has a lot of chapters written in it.

'That kind of thing can happen at any time, men!' warned the leader of the young trio. 'So heads up. Keep your eye on the ball all the time. Your whole life can change with something just like that.'

The boys nodded but looked vacant then confused. The moral of the story from their coach had yet to sink in as they replayed the lurid images in their minds.

Jones vhaguely eard the slight sound-delayed but mighty thwack of a wooden bat as he thought about this. A fly ball, hit by someone he never would be able to accurately name, which just might have the distance, folks, came arc-ing toward him high and black in the partly cloudy sky. Jones is sitting semi-isolated in a painted chair half the way up the rows of seats in left field. Only a few other people, the hardcore baseball junkies and souvenir fanatics, were assembled this afternoon like an unruly lot, the aimless Israelites waiting for Moses to reappear on the mountain, straining down and leaning over the left field fence. A cheer went up because they suddenly believed that this leathery rocket smacked out of the batting cage would stretch its arm all the way to their gathering spot. Jones had judged otherwise. He was therefore distracted for a few seconds by the improbable image of a long-haired skinny guy walking by, like a misplaced and sneering biblical prophet, wearing a hometown ball cap and carrying a blade carved placard that proclaimed, Repent, the end is near! John 3:16. Go Giants.  The batting practice homer suddenly exploded on the painted stadium chair next to Jones. He felt a rush of emotions as he figured out what had just happened. At once a number of people young and old were around him. Exhiliration gave way to shock and a tremble of fear. Jones scolded himself for such bad judgment. He envied whoever got that baseball.

'You coulda got beaned really really bad, buddy,' a fan with a Boston accent nearby yelled at him. Yep, then I'd a been rendered forever stuporous and regretful Jones said to himself nervously. He imagined he would have felt much like that poor old lady on the rude and painful receiving end, twice, of Richie Ashburn's offensive wrath. No one else paid much attention to him though. They all seemed distracted completely, chasing after the BP stamped baseball. This included the trio of boys and their coach-chaperone. Another sound-delayed but mighty thwack of a wooden bat shook his world. This long ball was racing up into the left field sky with a vengeance. Danger was stealthily, relentlessly, aiming toward him, on its relentless way, once more. He sat very still.

Then, Jones smiled. This moment reminded him of something. His professional and personal life had been changed during a similar moment twenty-eight years before. A harmless-seeming flyball in the guise of a news feature came flying through the haze and slammed down onto the respected front page, above the fold, of The Examiner before his eyes.  Jones' professional and personal life, and the lives of millions of persons, barely reco gnized the haze setting in. They did not feel the full fury of the game change -- but they were perversely beaned, beaned really bad, like the passed out and bleeding old lady who was heading up Row 13 behind the home team's dugout. Yet they never felt the slam at the time. The sky was empty and gave no signals to Jones. The sting and the aches and the bone breaks would be revealed later.


Gilbert Geisal:  These balls come at you fast here



To be continued


"On An Island"  --  David Gilmour

Remember that night, the warmth and the laughter
Candles burn though the church was deserted
At dawn we went down through empty streets to the harbor
Dreamers may leave but they're here ever after
Let the night surround you, We're halfway to the stars