See What Happens? By Jack Steinbrink
This might be hard to believe, but baseball fields can be lonely places at night.
I had just finished announcing the high school baseball game, and after shutting everything down
and locking up, I rolled down the ramp they built for me, from the announcer’s booth to the parking lot, in time to see some of the players from my former high school jump into pickups with friends and head out into the early evening. I sat there for nearly an hour, watching everyone leave: Players from both teams, all the umpires (including the home plate umpire who has a big, black beard and is a real character), parents and little kids (siblings of the players who have been dragged to the game), and finally even the concession people. It usually takes my mom a while to show up in the van, and it’s not like I can roll home in my wheelchair. By the time she got there, there was a chill in the air, and I could actually hear crickets. We won the game and the kids from my old high school were whooping it up, probably heading off to a big keg party. I couldn’t blame them since I had done the same thing when I was their age, and it was Saturday.
Some of them waived to me as they left, and I waived back. One time after a game a girl flashed
her boobs at me. That was nice, like the girls do in New Orleans, from what I hear. I’ve never been there, but I bet it would be fun to sit above that Bourbon Street and watch all the partying. Having too much fun is the reason I’m in this chair, or that’s what my mom likes to say, though I kind of wish she would stop saying it.
It was the spring of my senior year, and we had just won the baseball district title (which is a big
deal in our town, and I got two hits in the game: a single and a double), and I hopped into the back of a pickup with all my gear and my teammates and a few friends and some girls (including my girlfriend) who always came to my games, and we sped off in the direction of a party. Someone handed me a Coors Light tall boy, and I stood up and chugged it, right there in the back of the truck. After I finished chugging, I smiled at everyone, and right then we hit a pothole and the bounce pitched me over the side. I remember getting launched over the side of the truck, the world seeming to roll over, and I remember it almost in slow motion like something in a movie, but I don’t remember much else. I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t feel anything below my waist, and that’s the way it’s been ever since. 30
The park was completely dark when my mom rolled up in her van; even the lights for the field had
