Swing and a ‘Miss’

Baseball.

Is there a sport more American than baseball? Growing up, it was all I watched and all I played. I was consumed by it. I wasn’t the best, nor was I the worst, but I loved every facet of the game. My dad started me out in Tee-ball when I was 4, and I continued playing through middle and high school. Every movie made about baseball, I saw. Every game available to watch, I did. Other than my mama, baseball was probably my first love. You could say, it was my constant.

Now, fellow readers, I have a ton of material on this topic and things that have happened to me over the years with this game. Things that range from jumping out of my shoes, tripping over every single base while running, or even getting hit multiple times in the same at-bat…but those are stories for another time. Baseball has never let this goober down. As for this story, it involves two young goobers, a swinging contest, and a bush. Let’s begin this adventure, shall we?

When I was in 4th grade, I had the teacher no one wanted. Throughout the short amount of time I had spent at the school, all you heard were stories of how terrible this teacher was, so needless to say, when I found out I was in her class, I was upset, angry, and didn’t want to be there. All of that changed within the first few weeks of school as I learned firsthand that this woman cared. She was tough, but she was fair. She held us accountable, and if we worked hard, we were rewarded. The reward? Playing outside. Not just free play, but playing together as a class. Kickball! Tag! Racing! Softball! All kinds of competitive things with each other and she would play with us. For an hour, every afternoon, we would play and have fun. On one particular day, however, no fun was to be had. On this day, dear reader, a young goober committed a ‘hit and hide’ during a softball game. Allow me to explain.

The teacher had divided the class into 2 even teams, and to my surprise, I had ended up on the same team with one of my best friends. We were usually on different teams and competed against each other, but today, we would join forces to show the other half of the class how good we really were.

I remember it was our turn to hit. Our team decided that my friend and I would hit last in the inning because we were the heavy hitters. If they would get on the bases, we would bring them in. We couldn’t let our team down. We had to warm up. The teacher was the pitcher for both teams, so her attention was making sure she didn’t hit any of the children with the softball. Unfortunately, that meant she wasn’t paying attention to the goobers.

My friend and I went to the edge of the building, which was a bit of a distance from where we were playing because we wanted to swing the bats as hard as we could. As we started to swing around, the competitive feeling started flowing in both of us as to who could swing the hardest? Seriously…who could swing the hardest? How do you judge that? I’ll tell you how. You listen. Yes, you listen to the sound the wind makes when you swing. The bigger the ‘swoosh,’ the harder the swing. It’s science…

My friend swung first, and a tiny ‘swoosh’ followed. I swung next and created a louder sounding ‘swoosh.’ Being as competitive as we were, they were considered practice swings. There were a few others before we decided that the next swing would be the deciding swing. My friend swung first. ‘SWOOSH!’ His swing was crazy good in my mind. I had to beat him. He knew I couldn’t. It was a battle of wills, and this goober was not going to lose. I told my friend to back up and listen close. I tapped the bat on the ground 3 times. I dug my foot into the dirt. I squeezed the bat. I gritted my teeth. I closed my eyes. I started to swing and damn near swung out of my shoes……

I opened my eyes and saw my friend with his eye’s 2 times bigger than they were when I started my swing. My head tilted slowly to the ground where I saw a girl from our class laying at my feet with her eyes closed. Her head looked like it was growing another head, as a knot began to swell up quickly. My friend asked if she was dead. She didn’t answer him back.

We both knelt down to check on her and she was breathing. We looked around and no one had noticed. Apparently, this girl had gone to the office earlier and was coming outside to join the game. When she came around the corner, her head was introduced to my bat and she was out cold. My friend and I tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. We wanted her to be okay, but we didn’t want to get in trouble, and pretty soon, it would be our turn to hit. After some quick thinking by 2 of the biggest goobers known to man, we came up with a solution…we would hide her under the bush beside the building.

It was the perfect plan! She could rest. We could play. My friend grabbed one leg and I grabbed the other and we proceeded to drag her carefully to the bush. Luckily, it wasn’t too far away and we kept an eye out to make sure no one saw us. When we got her there, we tried to wake her up one more time to no avail. Her second head was bigger now, but she was breathing fine to us. We pushed her under the bush as well as two 9 and 10 year olds could do, took the time to shake hands, and then jogged back to our at bat.

We were probably outside another 10 to 15 minutes before our teacher wrangled us up to come back in. She got the entire class in line and we began our short walk back to the building. When we got close to the ‘scene of the crime,’ the teacher came to a screeching halt. “Oh my God! What is that?”

My friend and I immediately looked at each other. I’m sure we both turned pale. We had thought we had done a good job placing her under the bush, but apparently, it was amateur hour at the school house. Both of the poor girls legs were sticking out from under the bush like The Wicked Witch of the East’s legs in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s house landed on her.

The teacher rushed over to her and wouldn’t you know it, the girl that grew another head woke up. Fortunately for my friend and I, she could remember nothing. I’m sure by today’s standards, she was severely concussed. She was confused. She was upset. She was crying (even her newly formed head shed a tear). The teacher demanded to know what had happened. No one said a word. The teacher kept asking the poor girl if she knew what had happened or who did this to her? She could only cry and say she didn’t know. No one knew, except for my friend and I, and we never told anyone, until many years later.

Overall, in time, everything worked itself out. After staying in for several weeks until someone told the teacher what really happened, we were eventually allowed to go outside and play again without ever confessing. The poor girl that got hit was fine. After a little ice and some crying she seemed to be okay. My friend and I continued to be goobers, but we refrained from seeing who could swing the hardest for the remainder of the year. I guess if you could take anything from this, dear reader, if times are tough and you do something you shouldn’t do, never ask a 4th grader to hide a body.

Thanks for reading!