The Good of a Broken Bat

The Good of a Broken Bat

By Kiyoshi Hirawa

For a few, getting dressed is a poem of professional progression: the successive garmenting of a nude body until function consumes form, every thread and article a declaration of duty, a soliloquy. Soldiers understand. So do firefighters. Sometimes, this transformation occurs in private, but more often, the venue is a locker room, that sacrosanct cocoon of forced, fleeting intimacy.

“Spring training, rookie, you better be ready.”

Lucas Wright engages the mirror instead of the locker room’s most obnoxious silverback. He understands that few sports words embody duality more than rookie, a fulcrum balancing hope and hostility–the promise of what may lay ahead and the threat of who may be left behind. Better to ignore an insecure veteran and instead marvel at one’s metamorphosis.

“You hear me, rook?”

Spurning the invitation to be mocked, Wright begins his inspection where his discomfort starts. The belt is new, but his hips are prematurely worn, hidden damage humbling a man far too young to limp, however slight. The buttons glint and march north, bisecting a nervous stomach boiling with corrosive questions like Do I really belong here? and What happens if I fail?. His heels ache if he stands too long. However, uniform regulations limit his selection of footwear. Maybe orthotics, he thinks, if insurance pays half.

“Hey. Rookie. You ready?”

The mirror offers introspection, but not relocation. Wright turns and faces Harry Dierson, the thick hick of prickville. Past his prime, but not out of time, Dierson mourns his dwindling youth by poisoning everyone else’s.

“Yeah, I’m ready.” Wright slides his hat on and tugs on the bill to loosen the elastic.

Dierson points to Wright’s belt and smirks. “You forgot your gun.”

The bottom falls out of Wright’s stomach as his hand jerks towards his hip. The gun is there. Wright exhales his panic. “Why’re you such an asshole, Dierson?”

Dierson’s laugh makes babies cry and angels weep. “Dunno. Been one since I had one.” He steps past Wright to the mirror. He adjusts the badge on his police officer’s hat, then the shield over his heart, and finally, the leather belt of weapons grossly overused over the past two decades. “By the way, I’m your training officer until Potter gets here. Captain’s orders.”

“How long will that be?”

“Couple hours, probably. He’s working an accident on the 41. No injuries, just a minor pileup.”

“We still headed to the stadium, though, right?”

“No, rookie, we’re gonna paddleboat the Myakka and eat cucumber sandwiches in the moonlight.” Dierson jams his hand into his pocket and yanks out a thick keyring. “‘Course we’re headed to the stadium. Eight thousand sheeple need protecting.” He snaps the keys at Wright, expecting them to strike him in the face, but Wright catches them without turning his head.

“Guess I’m driving then.” Wright walks briskly out of the locker room. The pace troubles his hips, but he knows it hurts Dierson’s arthritic knees even more.

* * *

“So what’ve you heard about me?” Dierson asks, thumbing a glob of chew into his lower lip as Wright heads west on the freeway.

“Nothing.” Wright has been a cop for two months and already despises the department’s toxic vat of gossip.

“It’s okay, I know how cops talk. What’d Potter say about me?”

“Potter doesn’t say much about other cops.” Wright wanders just beyond truth’s porous border.

“Yeah, right. Potter never met a story he didn’t enjoy retelling. Probably told you about the search warrant and my gun going off, didn’t he? Or someone stealing my gun belt? Lies, kid, all lies. Don’t believe ‘em.”

“Okay.” Wright doesn’t bother asking why Dierson is disclosing all this. He already knows. In his short twenty-five years, he’s witnessed all manner of fragile egos and narcissism. Who tells the story first tells the story best.

“Such bullshit that third shift gets called in early to work the stadium,” Dierson complains to the sun setting on the ocean, less than an hour until splashdown. He taps on his window and nods toward a gas station. “Pit stop, rookie. Let’s grab a soda.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be at the stadium before the first pitch?”

“Just take a minute. And you know those major leaguers, they take their sweet time getting ready. We’ll probably still be early.”

Wright obliges Dierson and pulls into the lot. Not seeing any spots, he starts to circle around when Dierson barks at him, “Handicapped spot.”

“What?”

“Handicapped spot. We’ll just be a second. Remember, rookie, this is God’s car–we drive and park how and where we want.”

Wright obliges Dierson and parks on top of the painted white wheelchair, wondering when he’ll develop his own god complex. A woman with a double stroller stares at them as they exit the cruiser. Noticing, Wright lets Dierson walk by him, then mouths the word asshole and points to his shoulder sleeve devoid of chevrons, rank, and authority, as if to say, What can you do?

The woman nods, apparently empathetic, but then mouths the word coward before shrugging and walking away.

Wright starts after her, wanting to explain, but embarrassment wins out and he retreats to the convenience store. Dierson is somehow already unscrewing a soda and on his way out when Wright enters.

“They’re cop-friendly,” Dierson explains.

Wright looks at the clerk, an old man who no longer hides a shotgun under the counter because his glare could vaporize a robber at fifty yards. He feels the clerk’s withering crosshairs tracking Dierson.

Wright reaches for his wallet. “Lemme buy you that soda.”

Dierson chugs half the bottle and regards Wright. “Interesting. You’ll park in a cripple spot but you won’t take gratuities. So that’s where you draw the line, huh?”

Wright ignores him and digs in his wallet for cash. Finding none, he gives his credit card to the clerk, who glances at the back and says spitefully, “Sorry, Officer, but it says to ask for ID. You got any?” Wright hands over his driver’s license and the clerk’s hostility abruptly vanishes. He swipes the credit card and hands it back, looking Wright up and down. His gaze lingers on the scar tearing up the younger man’s elbow and arm. Awe and pity replace the lasers in the old man’s eyes.

“Thanks.” Wright avoids the clerk’s gaze. He jams the credit card and driver’s license in one pocket and his wallet in the other, then stroll-bolts to the door, trying to escape.

“Hey, Officer,” the clerk calls suddenly. “Don’t suppose you used to play ball, did you?”

The question is a poisoned dart. It hits Wright between the shoulder blades, and the venom starts the blood in his temples pounding. “Yes,” he concedes.

The clerk leans forward on the counter. “Lucas Wright,” he marvels wistfully. “In my store.”

Dierson drains the rest of the bottle and burps. “You supposed to be somebody?” he asks Wright.

“No.” Wright tries to walk past him, but Dierson puts a hand on his chest and looks over at the clerk. “You know this guy?”

The clerk frosts Dierson with contempt. “That’s Lucas Wright.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Lucas Wright.” The clerk pulls down his apron to reveal a t-shirt with a yellow-laced red tomahawk. “First round draft pick. Two-time college player of the year. Bona fide switch hitter. Left field arm cannon.”

“Bullshit.” Dierson steps back and squints at Wright. “If he was so good, why’s he standing here with us?”

Wright bumps past Dierson and pushes open the door. The clerk watches him go and winces, catching the hidden limp in his step.

“So what happened to him?” Dierson asks.

The old man turns his back on Dierson and begins stacking tins of tobacco. “Not my story to tell.” He pauses, then mumbles, “Asshat.”

* * *

“What was that about, rookie?” Dierson has delayed saying anything until they pull into the stadium lot off the parkway. “Didn’t know I was riding with a legend.”

“You aren’t. And I’m not.” Wright parks the cruiser–legally–in one of the spaces designated for law enforcement vehicles outside the stadium’s front gate.

“That guy sure thought you were something special.”

Wright doesn’t answer. It’s the conversational equivalent of an intentional walk–if you don’t talk, they can’t tee off on anything you say.

Dierson persists. “C’mon, man, I told you about that stuff about me. Remember what I said about hearing the truth first? Either tell me what happened or I’m gonna hear a bunch of rumors from other people.”

Dierson is not going to shut up, Wright realizes. This is the conversational equivalent of charging the mound after being intentionally walked. And if the mound is going to be charged, better to be Nolan Ryan than Robin Ventura.

Wright passes through the first set of gates, not for the first time. “So about four years ago, I got drafted–first pick, just like that guy said. Every scout and manager thought I was headed to the majors. And I was. I spent a year in double and triple A before being called up the next year.”

He walks into the lengthening stadium shadows, welcoming the looming cool night. Dierson, the field training officer, is supposed to be leading, yet he’s uncharacteristically deferring to his trainee.

“That spring training, I torched the league. Struck out the fewest times. Led the league in batting and home runs. Third in steals. I know it was only spring training, but still…”

“So what happened?” Dierson jumps ahead like only an impatient egoist can. “You get cocky, lose your mojo?”

“Yeah, but not how you think. It was the last game of spring training. Last at-bat, in fact, and I was a triple shy of hitting for the cycle. 2-2 curveball, down and out, and I gapped it to the right field wall. I’m coming around second and they’re telling me to hold up, but I know I can beat the throw, so I run through the stop sign, digging for third.”

Wright unconsciously grasps his left elbow, massaging the scar.

“I feel this pain in my hip as I dive into third just as the throw comes in. The third baseman is partially blocking the bag. He knows I need the triple for the cycle and he’s not gonna let some rookie just stroll in. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but my arm jammed straight against his ankle or leg as I slid in and he came down on my back and hip. For a second, I thought my elbow had actually ripped out of my skin, that’s how bad it hurt. I had to be stretchered off.”

The all-powerful stanchions with their velvet ropes are barricading the VIP hallway that winds down to home plate. Wright nods to security and steps past. A minute later, the two cops are standing in the cradle of World Series dreams.

“My radius and ulna both broke, the ulna in two places, and a tendon completely tore. It took a metal plate and twelve screws to fix. The doctor said the surgery would be a home run if I could still wipe my ass. Think about that. A home run…if I could wipe my ass.”

“Doc get you fixed up, then?

Wright reaches back and grabs his left buttock. “Home run.”

“You ever play again?”

“I tried. But I was a month into my arm rehab when they realized I’d also torn my hip labrum. Needed surgery for that, too. All told, it took me a full year to recover. And at that point, I knew no team would ever take a chance on me. And they didn’t.”

Dierson takes in the hope of eight thousand people and contemplates the story. “That’s gotta be the shittiest day anybody’s ever had in this stadium.”

Wright remembers being stretchered off, remembers seeing the crowd along the third base line, remembers that splotchy red shirt. “Not even close,” he murmurs, but Dierson doesn’t notice. The first pitch is about to be thrown, the game about to be christened.

“You know anybody on this year’s team?” Dierson asks.

“A few guys.”

“They know you’re a cop now? Like, a cop here?”

Wright shakes his head. “When you wash out of the league, you kinda get washed away from everybody still playing or coaching.”

Dierson leans hard on the railing, oblivious that his gunbelt is chipping the fresh red paint. “You coulda been a cop anywhere–there are thousands of departments. But you came here, knowing you’d be in the stadium every spring. Why come back here? Why torture yourself?”

That malignant question has been taking up residence in Wright’s head for some time. “I’m not really sure,” he admits, deciding how much to disclose. However, when the pitcher drops the rosin bag and the wind blows the smell across the infield grass and into Wright’s nostrils, he succumbs.

“When I was in high school, I read this Ray Bradbury story,” Wright explains. “I didn’t really like reading, but I remember this quote from that story. It was something like, ‘There must be one night for everyone…when all the circumstances of weather and light and grass and train and town are balanced upon the trembling of a finger.’ That’s always what baseball has always felt like to me–all these unrelated events and people, all balanced on a fingertip.”

“Grass and trains and towns?” Dierson scoffs. “Shit, you could’ve experienced that anywhere.”

“Yeah, but it feels like there’s something else on that fingertip,” Wright says. “Some part of me that’s still here. Roaming. Waiting.”

“Waiting for what? Your night?”

Wright shrugs. “Dunno.”

“Hope it’s not waiting for you to come back as a coach or manager.” Dierson flicks Wright’s badge. “ ‘Cause if it is, you done screwed up, rookie.”

“Hey,” a voice barks behind them. “You guys gonna patrol or just stand there?”

Wright and Dierson turn to find a grizzly bear of a cop glowering down at them. There’s a muffled snap of leather and Dierson jerks his head toward the field.

“Damn it, Terminator, you made me miss the first pitch.”

* * *

For the last month, Wright has been riding with Field Training Officer Dante Potter, who wears three blue pins above his right breast pocket, one for each decade of service. He’s been a cop–and unrepentant cynic–longer than half the officers on his squad have been alive. His former trainees call him the Terminator, owing to the numerous recruits he’s coldly discharged from the training program, never to be cops again.

“You’re supposed to be watching the crowd, not the game,” Potter lectures them.

“You ain’t my FTO anymore, Terminator,” Dierson drawls cheerfully.  “Just ‘cause you got a railroad spike up your ass doesn’t mean I do.”

“Let’s move.” Potter ignores Dierson. “Supposed to have made our first lap already.”

“So long, Superstar.” Dierson makes finger pistols in Wright’s direction, then starts checking out women in the nearby crowd.

“You and Dierson didn’t get into anything, did you?” Potter asks as they pass the team shop near the second gate. Wright shakes his head. “Watch yourself around that guy…he’ll get you caught up in some bad stuff if you’re not careful. And it starts small, so be careful. Be ready to stand your ground.”

Wright thinks about the woman with the stroller who watched them park in a handicapped spot and mouthed the word coward at him. “Okay.”

“Here’s the plan for the evening,” Potter starts, but the radio cuts him off.

“211 to dispatch, be advised that a dad just told me he lost his kid.” Even through the radio, Wright can hear Dierson’s annoyance at being bothered by civilian matters. “He said his name is Sam Eliana. Twelve years old, Hispanic male. Wearing a red shirt, black shorts, like everybody else here. Dad said he went to the bathroom and never came back.”

“Twelve-year-old boys don’t get lost,” Potter says. “They either run away…or somebody takes them away.” He starts sprint-walking, talking into the radio. “241 to 211, we’ll work the southern stretch for now. How long has he been missing?” He nudges Wright. “Start checking concession stands, bathrooms, and dumpsters.”

“Dumpsters?” The unforeseen horror dawns on Wright.

The Terminator nods grimly. “Dumpsters.”

Dierson returns on the radio. “Dad said…two hours ago.”

Potter stops and motions Wright back, shaking his head. “Two hours? No one waits two hours to report a missing kid. Something’s up, we should check local files on this guy.” He radios Dierson, “What’s the dad’s name?”

The long pause suggests Dierson’s lazy investigation has not yet gathered this obvious piece of information. “Rafael Dominguez,” he finally replies.

“Aw, shit,” Potter grimaces, gripping the mic. “241 to 211, where are you?”

“West side bathrooms, first floor.”

Potter leads Wright back the way they came, still on the radio. “Copy that, we’re en route to your location. Hold onto dad, that kid’s not missing.”

Wright is utterly baffled. “He’s not missing? Then where is he?”

Spiderweb veins are pulse-swarming Potter’s bald head. “He’s dead.”

* * *

A disheveled and bloodied Dierson is picking himself up off the ground when they arrive. His radio mic is dangling and bobbing around his knees like an abandoned bungee jumper. A small group of people is standing around with their phones, some filming, some texting.

“What happened?” asks Potter, looking around incredulously. “Where’s the dad?” He sees Dierson’s slanted nose. “What happened to your face? Wait, what’d you tell him?”

Dierson snorts and spits blood. “Same thing you told me–that his kid wasn’t missing. Next thing I know, he starts screaming at me and then punches me in the face and runs off.” He puts a hand against a pillar. “Shitpiss, I’m dizzy.”

Potter helps him sit down and radios for medical. Two other cops arrive, followed by security, and Potter hands Dierson off to them.

“This way.” Potter breaks for the first tunnel toward the field.

“You gonna fill me in on what just happened?” Wright says. “Are we looking for the dad? The kid’s body? Both?”

The two cops step into the final rays of the sun as the crowd roars. Despite bobbling a bad pitch, the catcher has managed to gun down the runner trying for second. Potter scans the crowd.

“A few years ago, we had a death during a game,” the Terminator recalls. “I wasn’t there, but apparently, a player got hurt and the medics were on the field, and at the exact same time, this kid in the stands has an aneurysm. Just a freak thing, medics probably couldn’t have saved him, even if they hadn’t been on the field. Anyway, he dies. Absolutely tragic.

“So the next year, I’m working the season opener and this guy comes up to me and reports his kid missing. We spent probably three hours looking for him, shutting down the parking lot, etc., before we figure out that it’s the dad of this dead kid. Poor bastard is wandering the stadium, thinking his kid is just lost, not dead. Same thing happened the year after and we had to take him to the psych hospital. Haven’t seen him since, but I guess he’s back.”

Potter’s eyes flash across the crowd, looking for any unusual movement. People are standing, sitting, scorekeeping, screaming, high-fiving, kissing, shuttling an armload of beers, grabbing toddlers away from the gum under the bleachers, but no sign of a guy who just punched a cop.

“Guy could be anywhere,” Potter grouses, still scanning.

“Maybe we should check the area where his kid died.” Wright looks to the opposite horizon, absently hoping for the moon.

“Not a bad idea, just not sure where it happened. Left field stands, I think.”

“No,” Wright says, remembering the splotchy red shirt. “Third base line, right at the bag, four rows up.”

Ever the veteran, Potter knows that explanations waste time in critical situations, so he follows Wright down the concrete steps, studying the scar on the rookie’s arm.

* * *

When every thread and article of your outfit announces your occupation, declares your duty, you surrender the sanctity of being viewed as an individual. You represent an institution, for better or for worse. Priests and nuns understand. So do baseball players. And definitely cops. People don’t see you, they see what you’re wearing, and they react with all their memories of that garment.

So when Rafael Dominguez sees two uniformed police officers walking towards him, it doesn’t matter that their hands are up or that they look concerned–particularly the younger cop–or that they ask him if he’s okay. He only sees himself being cuffed and stuffed into a cop car and driven to a psych ward where he’ll be medicated out of his mind.

Dominguez bolts out of his seat and up the concrete steps, hearing the older cop shout, “Police, stop!” and the younger cop say, “Wait, wait, wait, hold on.” He arrives at the nosebleed section, red-faced and out of breath, looking like a maniac to the fans, some staring surprised, but most recoiling or actively fleeing the bleachers. Dominguez feels an enormous weariness gush forth within him. There is weight upon weight, stones upon stones, and Dominguez puts one leg over the railing.

“Stop!” If voices were knives, Potter’s would be a switchblade. Dominguez’s second leg rises to follow the first and try to roll his entire body over the edge.

“Please.” Wright’s quieter voice slows Dominguez’s leg. “Just listen.”

The leg hovers, then touches back down, and the scene shatters like a mirror, the pieces of glass falling to reveal a tapestry hidden behind the looking glass. Suddenly, there is no spring training, no baseball game, no stadium, only a rookie cop staring at a father who is straddling the railing and one quick leg lift from joining his dead son.

“You don’t have to jump,” Wright says. “Can you move off the rail so we can talk?”

“Why?” Dominguez asks. His dark eyes water, twin liquid lamentations.

“Because if you don’t, you might accidentally fall, and if you fall, you’re probably going to die.” Almost like he’s taking a lead off first base, Wright gauges the distance between Dominguez and him, wondering if he can still dive that twelve tenuous feet.

“No.” Dominguez has the gaze of an albatross chasing the horizon. “Not that why. I want to know…why.”

“Why your son died, right?”

Dominguez lowers his chest onto the square iron railing, cheek to metal, precariously balancing. “My son.” His cracking voice is a pop fly lost in the lights.

“No one ever knows why.” The Terminator slides into the conversation, spikes up. “Bad things happen. To everyone. In every place.”

“Like people jumping off stadiums.” Dominguez’s second leg lifts, and Wright thinks he’s going over, but it’s only to adjust and make himself more comfortable.

“You’re not going to jump,” Potter scowls. “You’re going to slide back off that railing and talk to us, you hear me? It’s going to be okay.”

Dominguez stares a thousand yards through the Terminator. “When people tell you it’s going to be okay, they’re only trying to calm you down long enough to arrest you or drug you. What they really mean is that it’s going to be okay for them…as soon as you’re gone.”

Contrary to actors in movies, police academy instructors will tell you the most dangerous emotion isn’t anger or rage–it’s resignation, killer calm masquerading as quiet. Rage seeks to be heard and seen; resignation seeks an end. Furious people are communicating with everyone. Resigned individuals are only communicating with themselves.

And Wright thinks Dominquez is sounding a lot like a soliloquy.

“Hey, Rafael, listen to me.”

 “I’ve already talked to people.” Dominguez’s voice lowers into a dream-like tone. “Pastors. Shrinks. Cops. And they all say the same stuff: death isn’t the end; there are still good things in the world; good can come out of tragedy. But I can’t get there. You know why? Because when I ask them, ‘What’s the good of a dead boy?’, nobody has an answer.”

His gaze recedes and settles in Wright’s eyes. A slight breeze crests the stadium, followed by the edge of the moon. For a moment, the entire crowd witnesses the perfect balancing of dusk, the liminal space of daylight retreating and nightfall advancing, that chrysalis where memories begin transforming into dreams.

“What’s the good,” replies Wright, “of a broken bat?”

“A broken bat? Nothing. It’s worthless.”

“Really?” Wright says. “Worthless? Do you think the broken bat that hit Cabrera’s two-run homer in Game 4 of the 2012 World Series is worthless? Do you think Luis Gonzales and the ‘01 Diamondbacks think his Game 7 broken bat is worthless?”

“So what?”

“Your son died in a stadium of eight thousand people, but you were the only one who saw him die–everybody else was watching a game. You might be up on the ledge because your son died, but that’s not why you want to jump. You want to jump because the thought of no one noticing his life, his death, is utterly unbearable.”

The light is fading from both Dominguez’s eyes and the horizon.

“Rafael, I want to tell you something about your son.”

“What could you possibly tell me? You never knew him.”

Wright steps to within a batter’s box of Dominguez. “I want to tell you how he died.”

“You don’t know anything about that.”

“I know he was wearing a red Braves t-shirt that day. It wasn’t perfectly red. It had these white splotches down the front, but it didn’t look like it was part of the design. And he was wearing a new blue cap–the price tag was still hanging on the side.

“And I know he was being held by his father when he died. His head was tilted back, looking up at you. You were kneeling, cradling him, shouting at everyone around you, but everyone was watching some rookie who got injured trying to leg out a triple, every person trying to figure out how bad he was hurt. Eight thousand people more concerned with some baseball player’s arm than your dying boy.”

Wright’s words seem to hollow out Dominguez.

“It was bleach,” he says. “Those blotches. I washed it, accidentally put it in with some towels. It got bleached, the lower part of the shirt, just under the tomahawk logo. I told him I’d buy him another, but he said it was his favorite and he just refused to wear anything else to spring training. It was almost too small for him.”

Wright steps close enough to touch Dominguez. He can feel Potter behind him, wanting to pounce and drag Dominguez off the rail. He raises his hand, telling the Terminator to stand down.

Dominguez sees the swerving mess of scars slashing across Wright’s raised elbow.

“Do you know the last thing he said to me?” Dominguez asks, still gazing at Wright’s arm. “He said, ‘He’s gonna make it.’ “

Wright rubs his elbow, turns to show Dominguez the full jagged river flowing down from his tricep. “I didn’t.”

“Neither did he,” Dominguez says. He tilts his head away from Wright, looking out over the edge.

“I don’t know why your son died.” Wright glances around and suddenly feels the collective gaze of the stadium upon him. “But I can tell you he died in a place he loved with a person he loved–and that’s more than most people get. And I don’t know what good a dead boy is, but I can tell you that whatever good he brought into the world isn’t lost–it’s never lost. Just like the RBI or home run of a broken bat. Nothing good is ever lost, especially if we talk about it, remember it.”

Wright steps forward and touches Dominguez on the shoulder with one hand while keeping Potter behind him with the other.

“I’d like to know more about your son, if you’re ready to get off the railing and tell me about him.”

Dominguez doesn’t answer, and Wright doesn’t move, not even when Dominguez closes his eyes, relaxes his legs, and pushes himself off the edge, and then there is nothing but iron railing and moonlight and dead boys and broken bats and murmur-gasps and feet dangling, falling, turning, then reaching, and finally touching down on bleachers still warm from the departed sun or a family’s blanket or perhaps the invisible embers of every imperishable goodness stubbornly clinging to events and places and objects.

“I know you have to handcuff me,” Dominguez says. “But can my hands be in front?”

This blatantly violates department protocol. The Terminator steps in, grasping Dominguez’s right arm before catching Wright’s glance. “Yeah, as long as you don’t punch anybody else.”

They handcuff Dominguez. Wright takes his left arm, and the trio starts the long walk down the steps. There is a brief smoldering of applause, then a full-blown wildfire of cheering that engulfs the stadium.

Potter looks over at Wright triumphantly. “You hear that, rookie? They’re cheering for us.”

Wright smiles, but he understands what Potter never will, that the applause is not praise, but an acclamation of fragility and survival, a late inning lead held, a collapse averted, a diving catch, a save, the tangling of anguish and joy, the rebirth of the broken, all balanced upon the trembling of a finger.

This story won the 2025 Sidd Finch Finction Prize.

Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet, writer, and former police officer who was wrongfully terminated after reporting sexual misconduct and rape committed by fellow police officers. Hirawa’s writing focuses on mental health, trauma, resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked. Hirawa still dreams of pitching alongside Glavine, Smoltz, and of course, Maddux.

Jeff Brain is a San Francisco-based baseball artist and poet. He was a featured poet at the first two National Baseball Poetry Festivals, and now serves on the Poets Committee of the NBPF held each May in Worcester, MA.

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