The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [122]
I looked back at the boy smiling at me. He didn’t seem concerned with his mother’s tears. Maybe he was used to them by now, even though he didn’t understand what brought them on. His hat sat loosely over his head. A pale face framing eyes of bright blue hid underneath the bill. His skin, from the little legs that extended from his shorts to the free hand not covered with a tiny baseball glove, was ghostly white in the middle of summer. He was three years old, and he was dying.
I looked at the bag of baseballs. I looked at the boys in their chairs just feet from me. I looked at my jersey, to the field, to anything that could make this situation better. When I glanced back to the mother, she had not looked anywhere else but to me.
“What can I do?” I would gladly give him a ball or anything else I could give away.
“Just be a real person to him,” she said. “That’s all I ask.”
I looked down on the boy. “Wait here.”
I requested the attention of the bullpen, recounted the tale, and pointed to the child. Without a second thought, we scooped the boy up and placed him in the pen with us, in the middle of our pack, surrounded by players. We turned our chairs to face him, begged him to tell us about adventures of his young life, and offered him the gum bucket like a bowl of Halloween candy.
He loved baseball. He also loved cartoons, playing at the playground, and eating candy, which he shoved into his mouth until it was so full he could hardly answer. He liked school and he didn’t like girls. And he was going to start T-ball soon, but he proudly declared that he didn’t need the tee.
“That’s one step ahead of me,” I said. The pen chuckled, the boy smiled.
“Are you going to be a big leaguer when you grow up?”
He nodded his head up and down, unwaveringly certain. We nodded in approval.
He ate almost all our bullpen gum. He tried seeds, but they were too much work to eat, so we taught him how to flick them at fans instead—he liked that. We let him try on our gloves, which swallowed up his hands like beach towels. For an inning or two, he was one of the guys, complete with a pair of pants that went up to his shins and a newfound appreciation for nice legs.
When it was time for us to give the boy back to his mother, before lifting him back over the fence, we produced a baseball and a pen to sign with. Each of us stretched our names across the leather in lovingly crafted scribbles, punctuated at the ends with our numbers. We handed the ball to the boy, pressing it into his tiny hands. His face alight, mouth gaping in awe, he looked up at us in wonder, as if we had handed him a treasure from the heavens.
He spun and stretched his arm with the ball for his mother to see. “Alright!” she said, clapping her hands together. She reached for it to take a closer look, but the boy pulled it back to his chest. It was his baseball. His mother laughed.
“Okay, bud, let’s get you back to Mom.” We hoisted the boy, still tightly gripping his ball, and deposited him on the other side of the fence.
“Did you say thank you?” she asked.
“Thank you!” the boy said, with a big smile.
“You’re welcome, buddy,” said Ox.
“Thank you all so much,” the mother said, her face wet from tears.
“It was our pleasure,” said Rob.
We won that night, but the game did not matter. Wins, losses, and numbers behind them were rendered meaningless by two perfect innings spent in the bullpen. Something else, something bigger than baseball that can’t be recorded took place. Something no one will read about in the box scores. Something only uniforms with real people inside could make happen.
Baseball and life—such funny things that don’t always make sense. Yet, in those moments spent with that child, watching him live in the game in a way none of us who played it could, everything