Archive for July 2nd, 2010

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.” Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone.

Witness Young Daniel Murphy, a man perplexed by a game where he has no position. A man whose body has betrayed him. A man unable to play the game he loves.

“Oh baseball Gods, Why? Why Me?” cried Young Daniel with no answer until the day it arrived.

He opened the brown cardboard box slowly, he could hear something rattling inside, it was poorly packed.

On top of a few crumpled newspapers, he saw a folded note.

Dear Murph,

Hey son, I’m sorry about everything that happened this year. You know, I really was goin’ to have you be my first baseman this year, even though you were hittin’ like .186 down in Florida. Yeah, we sent Ike back down then even though he had about 6 homers.

Then you hurt your knee. Dang, and I was goin’ to take you out the inning before.

Oh well, when you got better, I was goin’ to play you at second what with Luis runnin’ around like a one legged Chicken. Then you hurt your knee, again. You might of seen we called up Tejada and he’s doin’ pretty good.

Well I did hear that Dillion Gee tried to stick one in the ear of that fool that took you out on that slide. Too bad, son, too bad.

Hey, was cleaning out the basement and I found this, thought you could use it. Razor reloaded it for you, just add water and fire.  Enjoy son, it’ll make the time pass until you’re ready to try another position. We could use some more relief pitchers, I think I might have blown Nieve out.

Peace,

Jerry

Young Daniel pulled the contraption from the box. An assembly of pipes and tubes and a bowl or jar of some sort. “Oh! Wait, I’ve seen this on an episode of the Amazing Race when they were in India” thought Daniel. “It’s a water pipe. Jerry wants me to smoke? Well, I heard it’s relaxing, I guess I could try it once”

“Funny lookin’ tobacco” thought Daniel as he unrolled the plastic bag at the bottom of the box.

Daniel started to smoke and cough and then relax. Relax, like never before. He thought, “I can hardly remember that my knee hurts” then he stood up and tried to run a few steps and collapsed in a heap.

“Why, Baseball Gods, why?”

Suddenly a vision appeared, not quite human, not quite baseball, it’s, it’s Mr. Met!

“Mr. Met, what are you doing here?”

“Daniel, I’m not Mr. Met, I’m the baseball God” said the orb headed vision.

“Baseball God, you’re the Baseball God? why did you never answer me?”

“Ah, but I DID answer you. Last year you asked ‘why us Baseball God, why is everybody on the team hurt? I did it for you, Daniel, so you could play”

“But why did you do this to me this year?” asked Daniel.

“What, you think you’re the only one who prays to the Baseball God? Please, give me a break. At least your team is happy. Hey, did you see what I arranged for Utley? Nice, Huh? Muhahahahahaha!!!”

Young Daniel fell asleep, in another dimension.