Alex couldn’t believe it was happening while it was happening. It led to the best sex he had ever had. And so much more. Had it not been for baseball, would the ‘so much more’ ever have happened?
That was a question Alex would ask himself for the rest of his life.
Alex, 31 years old and never married, had known Kate for fourteen years.
Emily, Alex’s older sister by two years, had roomed with Kate for four years at college. When Alex, as a high school senior, stayed with Emily on a football weekend, and saw Kate for the first time, and slept on the floor of their dorm room, Kate’s drop-dead-beautiful face and athletic body left him unable to speak to her in complete sentences.
After college, Emily and Kate were each other’s maids of honor for their starter marriages, which both ended in divorces before their fourth anniversaries. Emily’s first husband turned out to be a philanderer with a gambling addiction. Kate married an All-Conference quarterback and bodybuilder who looked like an Adonis, and who turned out to be more into men than into women.
On the second Saturday in October, Emily was to become the second wife of a billionaire hedge fund manager, and the stepmother for his two pre-pubescent sons, whom Emily’s mother considered monsters. Kate, still single, was to be Emily’s maid of honor for the second time, on the day that led, hour by hour and minute by minute, to the greatest night of Alex’s life up to that point.
On Friday evening, after the members of the wedding party finished the rehearsal, they drove to the restaurant and met the bride and grooms’ family members and out-of-town guests for the rehearsal dinner.
When Alex saw Kate walk into the large dining room he felt a rush of testosterone. He was back on that dorm room’s floor. ‘I’m like one of Pavlov’s dogs when she’s around’, he thought, ‘except the hydraulics take place in my groin, not in my salivary glands, thank God’.
During the drinks, before everyone was seated, Alex and Kate caught each other up on their lives. Alex spoke haltingly, because her physical beauty still intimidated him, and the testosterone that washed through the speech center of his brain affected his ability to construct sentences. He told her that he was still doing CPA work in one of the Big Four accounting firms. Kate told Alex that she was still a manufacturer’s representative for a corporation that made solar panels.
‘Those sapphire-blue eyes’, Alex thought as he and Kate made small talk. ‘She couldn’t possibly be interested in me, could she? She’s a ten. I’m in great shape, but I’m an eight-point-three at best, and I’m boring’.
He asked her some questions, to get her to keep talking, so he could continue to look at her eyes, her flawless complexion, her perfect, glistening teeth, and the movements of her sensuous full lips.
“She can’t be without a man,” Alex remembered Emily saying after Kate’s divorce. “She’ll be remarried within two years.”
But Kate didn’t remarry. And she had come to this wedding alone, even though she had received a plus-one invitation, just as Alex had.
“You didn’t bring anyone?” Kate said.
“No,” Alex said.
“Neither did I,” Kate said, and winked.
The wink shocked Alex. ‘Was that wink a kind of promissory note?’ Alex wondered.
Shortly thereafter, Kate sat down at the table with the bridesmaids, and Alex sat with his parents, the groom’s grandparents, and his parents, whose palatial home, on Chicago’s North Shore, was to be the venue for the wedding the following afternoon. The groom’s brother, being a groomsman, sat with the other groomsmen.
After everyone was seated, Alex took note of the fact that all the groomsmen had wedding rings on, and as he looked around the room he saw only a few guys his age who weren’t wearing them, none of whom seemed to merit ratings above eight-point-three.
During the dinner, Alex’s line of sight enabled him to see Kate’s face, and they made eye contact twice. She gave him a small, sexy smile the first time, and while maintaining the eye contact she ran the tip of her tongue ever so slowly across her upper lip. She raised her eyebrows twice in succession the second time.
‘Am I dreaming this?’ Alex wondered.
He made small talk with the parents and grandparents of the groom, who seemed underwhelmed and bored by the bride’s three family members at their table. By the time the entrees were brought Emily’s future in-laws were talking only to each other. Alex could see that his parents felt disrespected, but so what? Something much more important was afoot.
‘If she really does consider me worthy’, Alex thought, ‘how will she logisticize The Big Event? She has to be the one to do it, because her 1.7-point edge on me puts her in the power position.
When the rehearsal dinner was over, Alex rode with his parents, in their rental car, to the hotel they were staying in. Kate got a ride to the same hotel with one of the bridesmaids. When Alex got to his room he hoped he’d get a call from Kate. He didn’t.
When he was trying to get to sleep that night, he felt he was back on that dorm floor.
‘She owns me’, he thought, ‘and she knows it. I can’t ask for more than that at this point’.
* * *
Alex, at the age of 31, was still thin and rangy. He had played baseball in high school, and was named the All Conference First Team second baseman in his junior year. He threw and batted right-handed. In his senior year he accepted a scholarship from a Mid-American Conference university, where he became the starting second baseman in his sophomore year. His picture on the university’s web page for the baseball team showed him with his right arm outstretched across the front of his chest, as if he’d just finished throwing a ball. He finished that season with a .319 batting average, which was fourth on the team, and had a 12-game hitting streak, the third longest on the team. In his third game as a junior, his baseball career ended at the age of 21 when an opposing player slid hard into second base while Alex was trying to turn a double play. The slide broke Alex’s left shinbone, and when he fell forward over the opposing player and tried to break his fall he tore the ligaments and tendons in the shoulder of his throwing arm, which never recovered. The shock of the pain was matched by his shock at the fact that his teammates had watched the opposing player’s obvious attempt not just to break up a double play, but also to injure their second baseman, and not one of them had gone after the guy.
When Alex graduated from college he concluded that that disaster at second base was his life’s B.C./A.D. moment. Up until then the three main forces that pushed him forward in life were his love of baseball, his desire to do well in school, and, from the age of twelve on, his mind’s wrestling match with his body’s testosterone levels. The accident ended his dream of playing second base for a Major League team, leaving him with simply the desire to make a decent living, his mind’s continued wrestling match with his body’s testosterone levels, and the hope of someday marrying the woman of his dreams.
* * *
When Alex finally fell asleep after lying awake and thinking about Kate’s wink and that moment when she raised her eyebrows twice in succession, he had a dream.
He was nine years old again. The dream returned him to an event that had actually happened.
He was his team’s second baseman in his Little League’s winner-take-all championship game. He was at bat with one out in the ninth inning, with his team trailing by one run. The bases were loaded. A single would bring the kid in from third base and tie the game. A long sacrifice fly would do that too. A double and a bad throw from the outfielder to home plate would bring in two runners and win the game.
The right-handed pitcher, who had just been brought in to replace the kid who had walked the last two batters, was a big kid who looked like he might be 15, and who threw with a straight over-the-top delivery.
Alex fouled off the first pitch, a blazing fastball.
The next three pitches were balls.
“Good eye,” Alex heard his manager, assistant manager, and teammates shout each time he chose not to swing.
‘One more ball will walk the kid in from third base, tie the game, and I’ll be off the hook’, Alex thought.
He stepped out of the batter’s box, and turned to look at the third base coach, expecting to see him give the sign not to swing at the next pitch – the 3-1 pitch – and that’s what the third base coach did, by touching the bill of his cap, then his nose, then tapping his hand back and forth on his shoulders twice, and finishing by tapping his belt: it was where his hand ended up that mattered, and it ended up on his belt, which meant let the next pitch go by.
The pitch was right down the middle. It was a poorly thrown curveball that seemed to hang in the air like a party balloon; it floated across the heart of the plate, belt-high, where Alex dreamed of seeing pitches. He had hit hanging curveballs like that one for home runs.
He stepped back out of the batter’s box and told himself not to look at his father in the stands. He looked at the third base coach, who touched both ears, then the wrist and elbow of his left hand, then his nose, and ended by tapping himself on the belly twice, which meant, of course, ‘swing away’. Alex never understood why signs were given to batters on 3-2 pitches, since it would make no sense to attempt a bunt, or not to swing at a pitch the ump was sure to call a strike.
Alex swung at the 3-2 pitch – a fastball. He hit a ground ball to the shortstop, who scooped it up, took a few steps toward second base, dragged his foot across the top of the bag, threw the ball to first base, and Alex stepped on the bag two strides after the first baseman had caught the ball, with a loud thwop that Alex would never forget, that ended the game.
After taking a half dozen strides past first base, Alex froze there, on the foul line.
In the dream, Alex felt a kind of tingling start in his feet, move quickly upward through all of his body, to the top of his head, and then go away.
As he stood there on the foul line he looked up and saw an exact replica of himself – in his cap and uniform – but in the form of see-through, barely visible vapor – rise up slowly into the air. ‘It must have come out of my head,’ he thought.
He lifted his head and watched the figure from within him ascend, and fade, little by little, the higher it got.
He didn’t hear all the screaming around him.
When the figure had risen to about ten feet in the air Alex could barely see it; at fifteen feet, it disappeared.
He squinted up into the deep blue cloudless sky and gave up trying to see the thing that had just exited him. He lowered his head.
‘What was that?’ he wondered. ‘Did I just die, and that was my angel, carrying my soul up to heaven?’
He suddenly heard the screaming that he hadn’t heard until then.
‘I lost the game for my team’, he thought. ‘If I had swung at that 3-1 pitch I’d have won the game for my team. I might have even hit a grand slam’.
He felt his assistant manager’s hand pat him on the back, but he couldn’t hear what the man said over all the screaming. He looked over at his father.
That’s when the dream ended. That ending – seeing his father’s face – startled Alex. He opened his eyes, realized where he was, and rolled over on his other side.
When he fell back asleep he saw that 3-1 pitch again – the one he was told not to swing at – coming at him in super-slow motion, again and again, and he felt, again and again, in his return to his dream, what he had felt that day when he kept himself from swinging at that pitch: that was my pitch – a once-in-a-lifetime 3-1 pitch – and I should have swung at it even though I was told not to. It was the most beautiful home run pitch of my life up to that point, and in the years to come I never saw another one anywhere near as beautiful.
When he woke up in the morning what he remembered from the dream was that feeling of regret he had for not swinging at that 3-1 pitch.
While he was shaving he asked himself ‘Would Kate be considered forbidden fruit, because she’s my sister’s best friend? I let a golden opportunity get away once before, in that championship game. I’d be an idiot to let it happen again. And Kate seems to have already decided that I’m not forbidden fruit, so why should I worry? If what I hope happens tonight actually does happen, who says Emily ever has to know?’
* * *
The groom’s parents’ home, built in 1914, was on a 4-acre lot that had 400 feet of frontage along Lake Michigan’s shoreline. It was at the end of a very long, tree-lined driveway.
When Alex and his parents arrived at 2:45 p.m. they entered the home’s three-story atrium, which featured a spiral marble staircase, marble floors, and a massive chandelier. A man in a black tuxedo welcomed them and gave them a brief tour, but Alex could not have cared less about the place. He wanted to lay eyes on Kate.
He saw Kate when she came into the atrium with other members of the wedding party, for their photos.
Her exposed clavicles were what really got to Alex.
‘My God’, he thought, ‘how can a woman’s clavicles be so sexy?’
As Kate and Alex exchanged comments about the beauty of the home, Alex worried that maybe Kate noticed his occasional downward glances at her clavicles, but he couldn’t help himself.
He remembered a former girlfriend’s remark that sometimes when he was horny he had a ‘dog-waiting-for-a-treat look’ on his face, and he hoped Kate wasn’t giving him demerits for his facial expression or his poor eye control.
“I want to dance with you tonight,” Kate said.
“Great,” Alex said. “I look forward to that.” ‘What a stupid, nerdy response’, he thought.
Kate laughed.
‘She’s laughing at my helplessness’, Alex thought. ‘She knows I’m her plaything, but I don’t care. Rapture may be only hours away.”
The wedding party’s group photo session took place at 3:00. The photos of the wedding party with their family members were taken at 4:00. After that, lots of people began to show up for the wedding’s starting time of 5:30. Everyone was directed to a large ballroom whose semicircular two-story wall of windows offered a view of the large lawn, a white gazebo, and Lake Michigan. The wedding started at 5:45, with a Justice of the Peace presiding in front of the windows. Alex could not take his eyes off Kate. The cocktail hour began at 6:15. Alex was locked in. Kate approached him. She offered him a sip of her drink.
“Mmmm,” he said, knowing that she had no idea what he was thinking.
“Yeah,” she said. There was a sparkle in her eyes.
That sparkle produced an immediate hydraulic effect in Alex’s loins.
‘If I get a chance to hit, there’s gonna be a lot of dugout time between now and my at-bat’, he thought. ‘How am I gonna to survive the next five hours?’
* * *
When the dance floor opened at 9:00 Kate came to him. They danced a slow dance. She pressed her thigh up between Alex’s legs. He felt his pulse throbbing in his temples, and elsewhere.
“You’re the only person here who has depth” Kate whispered in his ear.
‘Depth?’ he thought. ‘What does she mean? My lust is deep. Very deep. Depthless, maybe. But what else about me is deep? Does my quietness, from being tongue-tied, seem like depth to her?’
“You’re too kind,” Alex said.
He felt her breath on his neck.
“What’s your room number?” Kate said.
He told her.
At 10:30 his parents said they were getting ready to leave. Alex said he wanted to stay for a while longer, and would catch a ride with someone else.
* * *
When Alex got back to his room at 11:30 he was nervous. He assumed he was in the on-deck circle, but he wasn’t sure of that.
‘What should I be wearing?’ he wondered. He took off his suit jacket, tie, and dress shirt, and hung them in the closet. He untied his shoelaces, stepped out of his shoes, and slid them into the closet. He left his white T-shirt on. He went to the thermostat and set it at 72º.
‘Maybe watching some sports will relax me’, he thought. He went to the TV, found a channel that was airing a hockey game that was taking place on the West Coast, and put the sound on mute.
He heard a knock on the door.
‘Oh my God!’ he thought. ‘I thought she’d was call first!’
Alex opened the door, stepped back to let Kate in, closed the door, locked the deadbolt, turned around, and watched Kate step over to the queen-size bed.
She turned around to face Alex.
She was wearing black tights and a snug black tank top that ended above her exposed belly button, which had a stud in it, with a fake diamond on one end and a tiny silver sphere on the other end.
Alex had to remind himself to breathe. ‘She is sooooooooo out of my league’ he thought. ‘But as nervous as I am, this sure does feel like a second chance at that 3-1 pitch. And do I want to spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn’t at least swing?’
She stepped toward him, put her arms around him, offered her mouth, and he took it.
She pulled her head back, grabbed him by the belt, and walked backward, pulling him toward the bed.
“Oh, you have hockey on,” Kate said. “Let’s watch it for a while.”
“Sure,” Alex said. ‘Another nerdy reaction’, he thought. ‘Damn. I blew it. She’ll probably fall asleep on me now’.
“Which side of the bed do you like?” she said.
“The left, if that’s okay,” he said.
She walked around the right side of the bed, used her toes to peel off her ballet flats, propped the two extra-wide pillows up against the headboard, with one on top of the other, and sat down on the bed with her back against the pillows, on top of the sheet and blanket.
“Well?” she said, and patted the bed to her right.
Alex hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing.
He looked at her, wondered whether he should make a stop in the bathroom first, decided not to, and stepped around the left side of the bed. He stacked the two pillows there the same way she had, and sat down with his back against them.
Kate turned her head to her right and looked at Alex.
He sensed her looking at him, but he didn’t turn his head.
She grasped his left hand.
He looked down at his zipper, to see if there was a noticeable bulge there.
He envisioned himself being a tiny astronaut inside the tip of a massive rocket that was about to be launched. ‘I have to crowd out that image’, he thought. ‘I’ve gotta do everything possible to prevent a premature launch. I’ve gotta think about baseball’.
While staring at the hockey game on the TV and trying to ignore the very uncomfortable position of the crotch seam of his pants, Alex decided to call balls and strikes from behind home plate.
It’s a hot day in the third week of August. Today’s attendance, as just flashed up on the jumbotron, is 37,491. He feels himself crouching, with the fingertips of his left hand gently touching the upper back of the catcher, as the two of them await the next pitch. There’s nobody on base. A late-breaking curveball from a tall, lanky left-hander, who throws with a classic three-quarters pitching motion, catches the inside corner for the left-handed batter, for a strike, as the batter keeps his feet planted but jerks his bat and upper body backward a few inches, and when he hears ‘Strike’ he shakes his head while staring toward third base.
“What are you thinking about?” Kate said.
“Nothing in particular,” Alex said. He slowly reached down with his right hand, put it in his pants pocket, and pulled his erection away from the crotch seam.
Kate looked at where Alex’s hand had gone. “Is something going on down there?” she said with a smile.
Alex turned his head and looked at Kate.
“Down where?” he said.
“You know where I mean,” she said, and laughed.
She pulled the bottom of his T-shirt up, used both hands to undo his belt, opened the front of his pants, reached down inside his boxer shorts, and took control of the tiller with her right hand.
“You can take your hand out of your pocket,” she said.
Alex turned his head, looked at her, with his mouth open a little, and pulled his hand out of his pocket.
“I’m flattered,” Kate said. “You’re fully charged.”
‘Fully charged?’ Alex thought. ‘Maybe so. But I’ve gotta keep thinking about baseball’.
Kate sidled over to him. She switched hands, slipped her right arm behind his neck, and put her tongue in his mouth.
He put his right hand on Kate’s left breast.
Kate let go of the tiller, took her tongue out of Alex’s mouth, pushed off her tights and panties, rolled to her right, got up on her knees next to Alex’s legs, used both her arms to pull her tank top over her head, dropped it behind her, grasped the tops of Alex’s dress pants and boxer’s shorts, at the sides, and he lifted his buttocks as she pulled them down, turned them inside-out as she got them over his feet, tossed them on the floor, and pulled his socks off.
She lifted her left knee over Alex’s knees, pivoted, to face him, reached down, and used one hand on herself and the other on Alex.
Alex pulled his T-shirt up over his head, dropped it over the side of the bed, and put his hands on Kate’s breasts. She leaned forward, arched her back, placed her left hand on the top of the headboard, looked down, slid her knees forward, and lowered herself. She moaned softly as she moved up and down slowly. Alex put his hands under her buttocks.
‘I have to maintain’, Alex told himself.
She moaned a little louder as she continued to move up and down.
The pitcher is a right-hander now. A side-armer. The batter is also a righty. There’s still nobody on base. The batter waits for the pitch.
Kate’s up and down movements continued. She let go of the headboard, straightened up, put her hands on her breasts, and used her legs to keep the up and down movements going.
Alex felt he couldn’t hold back when he saw the flexion of her abdominal muscles and felt her buttocks tighten, but baseball came to the rescue.
The pitcher repeatedly shakes off the catcher’s signs.
The heat and humidity are overwhelming. Sweat soaks Alex’s chest protector, his underpants, the insides of his shin guards, the socks inside his heavy black leather shoes with the metal toe caps, the fabric of his jock strap, which holds his carbon fiber cup, and his scalp, under the hard-plastic black cap. The inside cushion of his umpire’s mask, where it presses against the front of his chin, slides on a layer of sweat when he moves his head, and the sweat drips down onto the catcher’s back right before each pitch. His chin itches.
Alex took his right hand from under Kate’s left buttock, scratched his chin, and put his hand back under her buttock as she continued to move up and down.
The pitch from the side-armer is down in the dirt, way outside for the right-handed batter. The catcher makes a nice stop. He tosses the dirt-stained ball over to where a ball boy picks it up.
Alex reaches into the cloth ball bag that hangs off his right hip and takes out a fresh baseball. The catcher, still in his crouch, holds his upturned right palm over his right shoulder, takes the ball from Alex, and throws it to the pitcher, who catches it, takes it from his glove, tucks his glove under his left armpit, and begins to rub the ball between his hands.
Kate used her left hand to grab Alex’s right hand, brought it to her left breast, pulled his hand hard against it, reached down with her right hand, and massaged herself right above where so much of the action was taking place. She moaned.
Alex watched Kate’s eyes open, then close tightly, and then open again. She looked down at her right hand. He felt her clutch his hand against her breast all the harder as her moaning got louder. The pillows had worked their way downward behind Alex, so he sat up straighter, to change the area where the headboard was rubbing so hard against his back.
The next pitch is right down the middle. The batter steps back and shakes his head, knowing he should have swung at it.
‘What must the temperature be in this ballpark?’ Alex wonders. “It’s gotta be over 120 degrees’.
The sounds that came out of Kate, and the perspiration – the shine – on her face, neck, clavicles, chest, breasts, and her firm, flat abdomen, and the shininess down where she was massaging herself, became more than Alex thought he could continue to bear.
He felt he was back in the tip of that rocket, and the countdown before the launch had begun.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah…mmmmmmmm…” came out of Kate in an elongated, deep moan that was accompanied by a shudder, a pause, her eyes closing and opening, then a second shudder, a pause, a third shudder, and a fourth. She put her hands on Alex’s shoulders, looked down at him, moved forward and back, and put her tongue in Alex’s mouth. He tightened his hands on her buttocks, bent his knees, to better position himself to lift her, and after five ups and downs and a final up he blasted off toward Mars.
Kate fell forward on Alex’s chest.
“I’m still feeling the tail end of my fourth orgasm,” Kate said. ‘That’s a new personal best. You were soooooooo patient’.
Alex gently pressed his lips against the side of Kate’s neck. ‘Thank you, baseball’, he thought. ‘That was the grand slam that third base coach denied me’.
When Kate lifted her head off Alex’s chest, she put her hands on his cheeks, smiled, and kissed him on the lips.
She leaned to her right, lifted her left leg over Alex’s legs, pulled back the sheet and blanket on that side, and slid under them. Alex got off the bed, pulled back the sheet and blanket on his side, and got in next to Kate. She put her head on his chest and laid her arm on his stomach.
A few minutes later Alex could tell from her breathing, and the softening of her body, that she had fallen asleep. The hockey game had ended, and the local news was on.
‘What now?’ he wondered. But he didn’t wonder that for long. Exhaustion overcame him.
* * *
When Alex woke up, at 7:00, he saw the light on in the bathroom and heard the shower running. Kate had somehow gotten out of bed without awakening him.
As he looked at the light framed by the bathroom door he thought about the dream with the vapory, see-through replica of himself ascending into the air above the foul line a few seconds after the thwop in the glove of that first baseman ended the Little League championship game. ‘That mini-me left me because he was angry I didn’t swing at that 3-1 pitch. I learned my lesson from him. Last night I got another hanging curveball, I didn’t bother to look for any third base coach’s signs, and I hit a grand slam’.
Then he thought about his time as an umpire the previous night.
‘Why did it take me until last night to come up with that?’ he wondered. ‘Without it, last night probably would’ve been a rain-out after one inning. I’ll never get a woman like Kate to marry an ordinary guy like me unless I always use baseball as my secret superpower during sex. And if my baseball imaginings in bed make me a better lover, can those same kinds of imaginings at work help me with my career?’
* * *
Alex and Kate recently celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary. Their son and daughter have each given them a grandchild. Alex, at the age of 64, secretly attributes the success and the longevity of his marriage and his career to baseball, into which he is able to let his mind escape, instantly and completely, in the presence of people who have no idea, as he looks at them intently and remains silent – and projects the persona of someone of great depth – that his thoughts are in a ballpark. He may be a pitcher, a batter, a fielder, an umpire, a manager, a pitching coach, or a third base coach. He has invented countless game situations over the years, with himself at the center of each of them, to occupy his mind through the mundanities at the office; and when he looks into Kate’s sapphire-blue eyes, in the bedroom or anywhere else, he can secretly summon baseball superpowers that still, decades later, surprise even her.
— THE END —