On the Train to NYC

Last week, I was on the train to NYC with my brother and parents. My parent's had bought Yankee tickets and I agreed to go, even though I am now a converted Mets' fan. Still, I never pass up a professional ballgame. Especially, when your parent's will still buy you $7 hot dogs at the age of 23.
There is nothing like going to a major league game. Every piece of poetic bullshit you have already heard or read about it true, so I won't bore you with the details. The sights, the smells, the green grass, the dimensions, the sound of the crack of the bat, the scoreboards tallying up numbers, the roar of the fan next to you. You've all heard about it in one documentary or another, or experienced it in person.
But, not many warn you about the rude guy you meet on the train going to the game. And I'm not talking about the subway. I'm talking about the straight up train, from South Amboy NJ to New York Penn Station. On the morning of last Wednesday, I met my family (2 parents, 1 little brother whose reaching 16), at the train station. We boarded. I was tired. My brother proceeded to eat his egg and steak sandwich my parents purchased for him at WaWa. He opened his blueberry soda and proceeded to spill half of it on the floor next to his steak and eggs scraps. I was dead tired.
I was so fucking tired, in fact, that I asked to switch seats with him, even though he held the coveted window seat. "Brian," I said. "Can I have your seat?" I needed to rest my weary head against the pane and try to catch some shut eye before hitting the House that Ruth Built. He agreed.
My feet slide on the wet, sticky floor of overflown blueberry soda and eggs. Oh yeah, and steak. My 15 and a half year old brother managed to make the floor as ransacked as a bum pissing on it while eating a cat's stomach. It was a moment for Ripley's Believe it or Not. My feet could not sit still, seemingly floating on the sticky surface.
Finally, a few towns in to our trip to NY, with my head rested against the glass, I opened one eye to take note of a suave man who took the two-seater in front of us. He had his hair slicked back, and partially frosted. He carried a leather briefcase. He wore a toilet-bowel blue suit coat over a cat-vomit shirt that looked hideous, but probably cost him up to a thousand bucks! His watched glisten as the sunlight beamed off the dials into my red eyes.
I continued to doze on and off during our trip, wishing the train would stop shifting so much. I remember at one point, I coughed. Then I coughed again. I woke up once and sneezed. Finally, I woke up, and asked my mother, who was seated behind me, if she had packed any drinks. My mother, always the walking survival kit, packs hearty food, snacks, drinks, and medications no matter where my bones have ventured in life. Sure enough, she handed me an Iced Tea bottle which I promptly downed in one gulp.
After I finished the Iced Tea I stuck the bottle in between the seat and the wall of the train, in front of that suave fella I mentioned earlier, and closed my eyes. My shoes continued to skated amongst the spilt pop and breakfast sandwich remains. I opened them again to see the man in front of me's head looking at me rather nervously as he chattered on his cellphone in some foreign accent (I believe it was Italian. You know, I took 2 semesters in college so I'm fucking brilliant at it).
My eyes remanded shut until I heard a voice from over the seat .
"Are you sick?"
"What?" I said completely confused as to who said what.
"Are you sick?" the guy in front of me asked, speaking over his shoulder, most of his face concealed by the high blue seats in front of me.
Outraged by the stupidity of the moment, I retorted, "Am I sick? No."
The man shook his head in disbelief, placing his sweaty palm up to his shiny forehead. "Do you have a cold?"
"No."
He had it. "You keep coughin. And sneezin. And coughin. And you keep puttin dis bot'l in da seat," he said motioning to the Iced Tea bottle I had wedged into between his seat in the wall.
Who the fuck was this guy? I wasn't sick. I was sick and tired of being tired, and decided to rest my eyes. With blueberry soda and steak and eggs beneath my feet and an empty bottle fit for recycling I decided to wedge the future of an inconvenient truth in between a seat and myself. Now this guy in a fucked up suit and an accent, fit for fucking everything that cast a shadow, decided to question my health. I don't think so.
I promptly wedged my bottle back in between the seat and the train's wall. His head began to percolate, bobbing up and down. He couldn't take it, his comb-over and all. He promptly spun in his seat, and like a little bitch, and smacked the empty bottle, with open palm, in my direction. It flew, lifelessly, and hit me in the crotch.
I shit you not. He then said, while stammering, "I don't need... your.... your... cooties."
I laughed. I wanted to slaughter this man with his briefcase and his endless mid-train cell calls and his proverbial ladder he attempted to climb everyday. "Cooties?" I said. "Holy shit. Nice fuckin' suit, buddy," I said as I wedged my knee right into the back of his seat.
I began to cough, faking a new incurable sickness, telling my brother I could not get rid of the phlegm, all while wedging my empty bottle between the seat. Finally, our foreign, and financially well to do friend moved to the front of the train car. He shot me a look. I waved to him, happily, although dying of an incurable sickness.
When we finally stopped, my brother was laughing. I saw that man stand up and get off the train. I waved while performing licking on my empty bottle of Ice Tea, vulgarly. I don' think he saw me. But if anyone ever questions your free right to be sick in a public place, at any time, just think of the business men in gaudy suits and hair grease who get away with more bullshit than you can even conjure up. It's unfathomable sometimes. Give the motherfucker next to you cooties. He's an asshole for questioning if you even have it. And by the way, Mr. motherfucker, I have allergies. And the Yankees beat the Rays 2-1. Let's Go Rays!

An Idiot's Guide to Playing Baseball as Told by an Idiot (Part 4)

When my nightmare on the pitching mound came to a crashing halt, I finished out the rest of my first season back in the little leagues, returning after a six year drought. Even though the pitches weren't mine to throw the rest of the season, I still had to play the field, and unfortunately, come to bat. One game, my coach batted me in the clean-up spot, in an attempt to build my confidence. The clean-up spot is the 4th man to bat on a team, who is usually the best, or second best hitter on the team, and always shows great displays of power, so they can bat in men left on base. Just because I had a gut that hung far over my belt line didn't qualify me as a clean-up hitter. When a teammate laughed out loud (lol'd, if you will) while reading that game's line up card, I was so mad and embarrassed that I deliberately struck out 4 times. I was a lost cause in cleats.

Finally, with about five games to go in the season, I was 0 for 2 in that day's game when I came up to bat. Suddenly, the opposing team took out their pitcher and put in a kid who I actually knew from school. My fears dissolved as I thought, "Hey, I know this guy." He couldn't be very tough. He was a wimp in real life, like me. How good could he be on the mound?

Apparently, not very good at all, because after he delivered his second pitch, I squared in and shot the ball into center field. BASE HIT. I had my first hit of the season. It was one of the greatest comebacks of my life.

As the humidity intensified, and final exams hide just around the corner, my first season back in the big time was over. My team took a decidedly deserved spot in last place, with me only aiding in our decline. As I left my last game, I felt a tremendous weight drop from my shoulders. Still, I was a little sentimental. I finished the season with a whopping 3 hits. Some players get 4 or 5 a game, on a great night. Me, I just didn't want to push it.

So next spring, when I was in 8th grade, my parent's asked if they should sign me up for baseball again. Now, if you've been keeping up with the past few entries of this nightmare, then you know that any self respecting person with half a brain would have tried to find something they were good at and excel in other areas. Painting, or crocheting, or pottery, or truck driving. Anything. But I didn't want to be a quitter. "Sign me up," I said. If I could travel back in time, I'd kick my own ass back to the tee ball days.

So, I set off for my fourth and last season of little league. I was in 8th grade and ready for more of the same disaster. I felt like a kid walking into the middle of a bullfight, or a kid in a wheelchair who wheeled up to the school bull and spit in the back of his hair. But like I said, I didn't want to let the other assholes of the world laugh me out of something I was rightfully no good at.

And well, this team wasn't any better than the one I was on in 7th grade, as far as attitude or winning consistency. Nor did I fare any better in my play. In fact, I ended up getting 3 hits during the course of the whole season, just like the prior season. I actually improved in the outfield a bit, which is a bit anti-climatic in the whole "failure-is-the-only-option" theme of these entries. But still, when that season came to a close, I couldn't wait to hang up my cap and declare that I would never, under circumstances of deadly consequence, try out for high school baseball. My playing days were deservedly done.

Looking back, my 8th grade season was pretty dull. Scary for me, for sure. However, there weren't too many moments where I wished I was dead, as I had in 7th grade. I mostly sat around and prayed for rainouts or practice cancellations. Or hoped against odds my teammates would strikeout early so I didn't have to get up in the inning. It's was a pretty dull season. Embarrassing, for sure, but dull, and for that I won't dwell on it.

When my 7th and 8th grade seasons had ended I racked up a total of 6 hits. I did some rough calculations the other day and deduced that my adolescent little league average was about .038 with, roughly, 110 strikeouts. If you haven't figured out, that kind of performance is punishable by execution in most countries.

So, I gave up the game of organized baseball forever. Maybe, one day I'll be coaching my kid's little league team or sign up to be a conditioning coach for a local high school team. But that's all down the beaten path. A path lined with cleat marks and used tobacco juice. For now, I'll reserve my duties to sitting on the couch, watching Mets' games, and ESPN baseball highlights. I'll read my baseball memoirs, newspapers, and memorize Hall of Famer's stats. I'll watch my movies and wish I could have done something out on the basepaths or had the wisdom to have kept my nerve in the game on every inside pitch thrown to me as a first grader. So the next time you see a major league player drop a routine fly ball, or swing at a pitch headed for his groin to end a rally, think of me and all the asthmatic, allergic, chubby, nimrods of the world. Maybe we're sittin' around writing a blog somewhere. Or a life story. Or a novel. Or a declaration to the greatest games and moments that slipped through our fingers and passed us by without going easy on us.

Someday.