Play At The Plate

Three and two, Ace walked the bases full on purpose just to get to me, and my life is on the line.

Forget the game.

Forget the championship.

Life. And home. And May-Lynn.

I had come to Hawaii to play out the string on my baseball career, the has-been that never was. Come to find out that baseball never was the point of all of this.

Everywhere we’ve played, from just off of the U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor, to an island near Molokai that appeared out of the ocean just for us to play ball on, to inside Haleakala volcano with Pele the volcano goddess in attendance, and baseball was besides the point.

And I was missing the point when I took Ace up on his challenge.

Flash back to a few weeks earlier. I had landed in Honolulu and had my first encounter with Tehani. I wouldn’t have thought too much about it, plenty of little girls in Hawaii, except for the fact that she had been dead five decades by the time I met her.

And she was there to be my guiding spirit. My foul mouthed, vengeful, little guardian angel.

I met her outside the airport. She saw me and then scared all hell out of me by literally walking through traffic to get to me. Then she continued to scare all hell out of me to keep me coming back to the Sunset Aloha Cafe.

Owned by my ex-wife.

The woman who hated me and could’ve, quite happily, lived without me in her life. May-Lynn Rogers.

Apparently, her assignment was to get us back together, her higher ups must’ve sent her because it would be good for us.

And I tried to tell Tehani, tried to point out to her that she died way before some jerk like me got a little scared about “losing their freedom” after getting married, then found the most convenient willing woman to screw (and screw her over) with. And then, other than signing the divorce papers, had no other contact with her since. Just hit the road and got on with my baseball career.

She talked me into it by ripping open her face and having her skull scream at me.

In the time since, by working on both my stubborn self and appealing to something May-Lynn didn’t know she still had, Tehani was getting us back to a place where things could start working out again.

She even came with us on a road trip, and we spent a couple of days together in a wonderful forest where I played a game on a field created by magical creatures that I kept from doing their job and messing up the field.

But she still thought I was cute.

My teammates, not so much. But she did.

But none of this sunk in, that it had nothing to do with baseball and less to do with me and what I wanted. I was here to get myself right so I could treat her right.

And I let Ace get to me, make me finally grow a spine and make it stiffen at the wrong time all at once.

He challenged me for ownership of the league. Literally, ownership of the league.

Come to find out, he’s some kind of supernatural being. Like a god, or Satan, or whatever.

See, I thought it was kind of odd that I was playing ball with all these people with deep thoughts. I love baseball, and the players are great guys to hang out with, but you’re not getting personal advice and wise sayings when standing at first. But guys were getting on base and telling me that people that were wronged have to have strength to forgive. Or that you’re not the hero to the person you’re stopping from getting what they want.

Or perfectly quoting Shakespeare. Giving speeches while trotting out a home run that would make a politician cry.

And through all of that, I apparently learned nothing, because I took a challenge from a supernatural being.

That if I lost to Ace, I would lose my baseball skills to him. No big deal.

But he would also send me back in time. And make the world forget I ever existed. Except for me. I would remember everything.

And lose May-Lynn after finally getting close to getting back in her life.

And my damn spine acted up.

The two women in my life had different reactions that still boiled down to disappointment.

Tehani told me she told her bosses that it was a waste of time. That I was too competitive and would take the bait and lose everything. She didn’t yell, or cry, or tear her head and foot off and juggle with it, just said “I told them” as she faded out of view, making me wish she had.

May-Lynn dropped me with a right hand before we boarded a plane to the Big Island without saying a word.

Then did it again.

We didn’t see each other until after my team clinched a spot in the championship game. She didn’t have anything to say to me, or even look at me, when I met her at her restaurant when she was locking up.

I’m the one that had to step up and give her something I hadn’t given her in all the time we’d known each other.

My honesty.

So I went back to the beginning, and finally gave it to her.

“I remember telling you that day that you made me cheat. With your nagging and everything else. I regret every part of what I did, but I regret that the most. You could put that woman in a lineup with my mother, someone I’d never met, and Pamela Anderson and I still wouldn’t be able to pick her out as the woman I went to bed with, because I didn’t know her, I didn’t want to know her, she was just the means to an end.

“When we had lunch the other day, you and I both know that wasn’t me talking because I’m too much of a coward to admit that I’m a coward.

“And nothing’s changed. I’m still selfish. Instead of thinking, ‘How will this bet affect my chances with May-Lynn?,’ or, more important, ‘How much will it hurt her?,’ I thought, ’I can take this guy, and I don’t care who tells me otherwise.

“My baseball skills, if I thought it would get me off the hook, I’d give them to that bastard now. If we lose that game, it’s not baseball I’m going to regret losing.”

She hadn’t looked at me the whole time I spoke, except at the end for a moment, and when she looked away, I figured I should go.

Before I could open the truck door, a set of slender fingers wrapped around my right wrist and pulled my hand off the door.

Then took it and put it around her waist as she slid into my arms and gave me a kiss so sweet, soft and passionate, Hollywood couldn’t have pulled it off with their best directors on hand.

Then she took a step back and, while holding my left hand in her right, hauled back and brought my ass to Jesus.

I lay on the ground, dueling urges to laugh and cry. “What was that?,” I asked.

“Which one?”

“Both?”

“The second one was for being an ass.”

“And the first?”

“To remind you what you’ll lose if you lose that game. Think about both. I hope you can come back and see me.”

And here I was. We’re down by a run, there’s two outs, and Ace wanted to make me the last out.

“You...will...fail! And no one will remember you!,” he yelled from the mound, “Give up!”

I had stepped out of the box, exhausted. I glared at him then. He wasn’t winning this. I wasn’t losing everything over this jerkwad.

I stepped back in and told him to bring it.