Oligo My Own

Oligo My Own

By Eligio Mares

I rounded third base with a vengeance. Once this was said and done, once the dust settled, one thing was for certain, my life would never be the same ever again. A league of my own. Oligo, my own.

No way I was going around him, I was going through him! The competitive force had already decided for me. Middle School P.E. Pickup baseball on pick-up loop. White lines on hard asphalt. The only thing that stood between me and home was the biggest guy in the entire school.

I wasn’t even supposed to be there! This class was for outcasts, future stoners, stoner musicians, musicians. Yet there I was, no talent but baseball, no rhythm but running. This was my stage and I was determined to shine. Stride. Wide. Pride. Big Mike had no chance!

Big Mike was a guitarist turned catcher, at least for that hour. The only thing banging would be heads, as rigidly as the rock he riffed. The play came in from the center field band hall, ball as soft as brain, cracks and crevices and all. Music. Emotion. Material. Grunge. Grudge. Sponge.

I started to play organized baseball three years prior. Initially, my parents were apprehensive. To them, there was a very thin line between win and sin, as thin as the imaginary chalk line that marks foul play on a middle school bus loop. Nonexistent.

Unfair ball. Sin, and lose.

Together in seventh grade, now eighth. It was The Musicians vs. The Mexicans, a band of brothers against brothers. I felt Coach O. sided with them, getting all the calls, I thought. My parent’s cult, the coach’s insult all came to a head and my head was about to pay the price.

The final stretch of our imaginary diamond ran semi-diagonally to West Eagle, a two-way drive that separates the school from the county medical center. I would end up at that center seven years later, but for now the only thing that mattered was a frustration run up on the board.

The irony is that dad didn’t like the brutal presentation of football, yet there I laid flat on my back, next to Big Mike, swimming in a pool of regret, staring, praying at the clear sky God that didn’t want me playing baseball to begin with. No pain, no gain, all migraine.

It would otherwise be a pretty good school year. I built a small CO₂ car in woodshop, peeked at a Penthouse or two, and became the only Ben Franklin on stage at Science Place, kite high and bifocals low. My vision would never be a concern, 20/20 still in 2020, but my occipital lobe would.

The bottom right corner of the band hall squarely marked straight away center field. On the other side of the building, down a small hill, there was a leveling of the ground, making way for a brand new high school baseball field. Up to that point, they had been using a city park.

The corner of West Eagle Drive and Deer Park Road was the future site of the new field, just in time for my freshman year of high school. The following year, I received Newcomer of the Year honors. But middle school sponge ball does not care about America’s favorite pastime, nor about the future.

The time was now! Plowing full speed ahead, clearing way, clearing path. I don’t remember any of the other players or their positions. I don’t remember the batter or the fielder fielding the ball like Dad fielded asparagus in the hot fields of Walla Walla, Washington’s deep past.

I was coming in from second and all I cared about was being first. Me, myself, and Big Mike, a fellow classmate that, despite being there since second grade, I knew very little about. We never spoke in class, high school, or since. I hear he’s lost a lot of weight and looks unrecognizable.

The one thing I did know about Big Mike, aside from his rock guitar exploits, was that he also played on the school’s marching band, practicing in the very hall that basically represented the upper deck in our street stadium. He played the baby tuba with the big mouth.

The wide lip opening of the baritone resembled the CT scan I would have to slide into seven years later, headfirst, like sliding decisively into home plate, ramming into heavy metal solo barricade. RBI now, MRI later. Pressure. Baritone. Barricade. Barometric.

I am not even sure what the call was at the plate, or if it even matters at this juncture of life. I wonder if it was clear-cut, as black and white as the surface we stomped on. Or did it fall within the gray matter of the brain? The cynical me thinks they got the call yet again.

The experienced teacher in me now thinks that Coach O. actually rooted for me. If he didn’t give me any of the calls, it was because he was trying to level the playing field, just like the leveling of the baseball grounds down below, a year away from the varsity team up above.

From a family of boxers, I played a blue-collar style of game. Baseball, and eventually basketball in high school, a dual sport threat like Michael Jordan. Broken battle.

Cracked cranium. Bleeding brain. I wanted to be big like Mike, but on this day, I did not want to be Big Mike.

After high school, I would go on to take up employment at a blue-collar plant on the other side of town. As quickly as I rounded third, I went from first-string athlete to second-shift operator. “Down in a Hole” as my grunge anthem, I thought my playing days were officially over.

In the midst of my two-and-a-half-year tenure on the evening shift, I was recruited to play on the company’s softball team. A group of men with great intentions, soberly competitive during the early morning games of Saturday tournaments, victims of a brunch cocktail of booze, boos, lose.

I was the only one not on the first shift to play on the team. My supervisor ordered me out back to practice with the guys on Wednesdays. On the clock. Compensated. Conflict of interest. No complaints. At seven dollars per hour, three hours a week, I was officially a paid athlete.

Now on the day shift, that same supervisor pulled me off the floor yet again. He ordered me outback, straight into town to see my family physician, Dr. Alling. Ailing. Present confusion. Future confession. Past concussion. It had caught up to me, like rounding third with a vengeance, and I had no defense.

Mares is my last name. It means oceans. Seas. I try to stem the Tide. Wide. Pride. I often think about eighth grade. Education. Physical. I wonder how I would have called that one play if I had been the umpire. I am not really sure, but I think it’s safe to say that I was not safe at all.

The letter ‘g’ in my name Eligio is soft. The ‘g’ in my diagnosis hits double hard. Oligodendroglioma. The term so technical it runs like a long double deep in the gap of a dark MRI tube. I rounded third, ran straight into the medical center across the street. This time, taking the long way home.

This piece was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Eligio Mares is a wannabe writer, technically just a thinker. He streams down words about the past with hopes they improve the future. He was inspired by a recent trip to the Oligo Nation Gala and Baseball Hall of Fame in New York.     

Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.