Charlie Brice writes

The Truth About Curveballs

Someone, writes Anna, threw her a curveball.

She has to go back downstate, but wants to see

us at our lake house. All she requires is a view.

I think about that awful summer of 1964.

I stepped into the batter’s box only to flee

as the ball barreled toward my head.

“Strike one!” the ump growled. Surely

he’d misplaced the whiskbroom used

to dust off his sanity. I stepped back

into the batter’s box only to duck again,

the ball locked onto my dome. “Strike two!”

bellowed the madman behind the plate.

In the dugout, after my third strike,

Coach explained that I was the victim

of a junk pitcher throwing curves. My

survival instinct wouldn’t allow me

to stick in there and watch the malicious orb

descend from concussion level to make its

lazy swerve over the plate. A few games later

I was replaced by a guy who cared little

for life and limb. He pounded those seamed

projectiles with impunity. Three weeks after

I’d turned in my uniform, my father smoked

his last cigarette and died, and now our friend,

Anna, says her surgeon has thrown a curveball,

put her in a box she can’t step out of. Her gall-

bladder is playing for a team called Cancer. I sit

on our couch, much as I sat in that dugout fifty

years ago, listen to what this junk pitcher has

thrown our friend who trained for every season,

kept a careful diet, exercised, and rose early

to behold the grandeur of sun, lake, and wind.

She’ll stick in there, I pray, even when

that awful orb beans her. She’ll get

on base, steal second. Some fearless guy

named Chemo will hit her home.