The Catch I was nine, playing in the Amherst Little League. In the field by Western Automatics plant and the cold storage center, down by the RR tracks. Playing for Harry Robinson’s team, Houston. Nine through eleven-year-olds. I had a pretty good glove, signed by Billy Pierce himself. It was pat’s old glove. He had cared for it over the winter with neat’s foot oil. Had a deep, moist, bicycle oil-smelling pocket. I was lucky to get such a classy hand-me-down. Whoever Billy Pierce was. I shouldn’t have been terrible. I wasn’t deformed or anything. Pat and I played ball a lot. We were great together. Sometimes our dad took turns throwing to us in the driveway, lit cigarette in his hand. My best skill was flies and grounders. I was pretty good at getting under the ball and bringing it in. Because it was just me. But during a game I tended to clutch, because everyone was watching. I was so self-conscious and needy. I wanted them to know I was an imaginative ballplayer, leaping, twisting, doing everything in one motion like Woody Held or Jimmy Piersall. I had the wrong psychology for kids’ baseball. I wanted to be a pheenom, somebody who who could do
everything at once. The cigars would fall out of old men’s mouths, seeing what I could do. “Why, not since the great DiMaggio...” I guess I needed to outshine my brother, who was very reliable on the field in a solid, thoughtful way. Circus tricks was the only way I could think of to match his exploits. And they suited me. They stuck me in left field, because the kids in center and right were even more hopeless than me. The kid in right had glove his mom made for him, that looked like a potholder. But no one hits to right, except sometimes a grounder that rolls through. But left-field, kids actually hit pop-ups to. And that’s what happened. An eleven-year-old, Marty Seagram, got good wood on the ball and jacked it up high in the setting sun. The infield looked at me with despair in their eyes. Denny Dotson, at third, threw his glove into the dirt. We were ahead, it was the bottom of the sixth inning, and now we had to deal with Finley The Younger. “In the sky!” cried my brother Pat, standing and taking off his face mask. He was carrying me, and did not want to live with the disgrace that was in progress. “Hey Finley, that brother of yours should try out for the big leagues!” The ball had reached its apex. It had caused no harm
to this point. Then it began to fall. I was afraid. It was all going to happen again. I would find a new way to mess this up. The game was on the line. Maybe there was a future in poetry. I saw the ball now, and stumbled through the grasshoppery grass -- it was June and it grew tall fast -- and turned by back to the ball. Not usually a good strategy. I fell to my knees. But the ball, not knowing any better, dropped into my glove, about six inches from the ground. And stayed there. My mouth dropped open. I held it up. Game over. We won. I was enveloped by my teammates, who seconds earlier were cursing their luck having me on the team. They were all slapping me on the back with their gloves and loving me. All because I turned my back on the ball and it fell into the pocket. I want to slow time down and tell everyone about each tick of the clock as I stood out there in the dying sunlight. But good judgment overtakes me, and I keep my mouth shut. We get ice cream at Zimmerman's. Mouth still shut. Ballplayers don’t brag. But I am dying to. Gradually people turn to other topics. They are drifting from my moment.
On the ride home, I announce modestly from the back seat to my dad and brother, "Boy I was as surprised as anyone by that catch!" But no one wants to hear. I tend to wear people out with my consciousness. I got to keep the game ball. All the way home I toss it from one hand into the well-oiled pouch. The catch was a fluke. I had no idea where that ball was. If anything, It caught me. But it my great catch. The only one. Forever.