Smash-Mouth Baseball

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—10/11/10—I’m happy I can write this piece without having to cover a disfigured face. For a few weeks when I was between my sophomore and junior year in high school, I feared I might live my life as a freak, all of it owing to my love of baseball.

As spring ushered in a longing to return to the smack of leather and the crack of bat, two of my cousins, Mary Sue Greer and Rex Norris, and I rounded up a ball, some gloves, and a bat and headed to the playground at Deep Gap Elementary School for batting practice.

Tomboyish Mary Sue insisted on batting first. Rex was eager to test his throwing arm. That left me to catch—without a mask, since that was not part of the gear we owned.

Sue hoisted her bat, swung it a few times to loosen up, and Rex took more than the usual total of practice throws, for his arm was still stiff from frigid Blue Ridge winter weather. When he felt comfortable, Rex motioned to Sue to take her place at the plate. I settled in behind her.

Rex first threw a few slow pitches, and the best Sue could do with them was to foul them off. Our Blue Ridge winter had stiffened her as well. Rex grew tired of chasing her fouls and signaled that he wanted to fire a fast pitch. I didn’t shake him off.

In came his smoker, Sue missing it by a country mile, and I caught it, smack-dab in the kisser. Mostly on the lower lip. Blood spurted from my mouth. But no incisors fell into my hand as looked at my blood-stained fingers after wiping my face with my bare hands.

Almost instantly, my lips began to swell, the lower one ballooning out and then curling downward until it pressed against my bruised chin. We rushed to Sue’s house, which was next to the playground, and cleaned my wound. But there was nothing for the throbbing ache I felt.

Bad as the pain was, my fear of disfigurement was far greater. For I knew that a neighbor, Ralph Moretz, had been struck by a baseball in his mouth during his teens and had been disfigured by a clownish-looking lower lip. If such were to be the outcome of the blow I’d just suffered, I knew I’d lack Ralph’s grace and good will. I foresaw spending the rest of my days cursing the Fates, Fortune, or any god I could think to blame.

“Oh, I’m ruined for life,” I moaned as I lay in bed that night. Next morning, my mirror told an awful story. My lower lip was much larger than it was when I’d gone to bed. “How can I face my classmates in Boone?” I groaned as I looked at my disfigured image. I didn’t want to go to school, but a perfect-attendance record was at stake and I went, hand covering mouth as I boarded the bus for the ride to Boone.

During classes, I held a book before my face, praying fervently that no teacher would call on me for an answer. When lunch time came, I rushed outside to sit on steps leading to the main entrance. Since most students used a side entrance, I could be free of their glances.

My thoughts disheartened me, for who among the girls I liked at Appalachian High School would date a fellow with a messed-up face, a virtual country clown. I would be a bachelor, a freak in a traveling show, a self-hating misfit, an object of scorn and ridicule and finger-pointing by kids.

The rest of the day went no better. My emotional and physical anguish made me miserable.

Within three or four days, the swelling went down, the purplish patches turned a light blue, and my spirits began to rise as the school year ended. My daydreams returned. I’d no longer be a bachelor, a freak, a circus clown.

But I had a setback. It came a few days after the school year ended. I found a job as a mason’s helper, not an easy job by any measure, since I had to mix mortar, keep the masons supplied with blocks and brick, and help move scaffolds as needed. As I worked, my lower lip started to swell again.

All the self-pitying I had engaged in on the high schools steps rushed to the fore again. I just knew that the Fates had bound me to a life of misery. When I looked at it in a mirror, I saw a pocket of pus. Instead of telling my parents about the problem, I went back to work, knowing that the masons were counting on me.

Sometime during that day, the pocket of pus burst, draining into my mouth, foul-tasting, putrid stuff, thick, yellowish, sickening. I spat and spat, rinsed and rinsed, and tried to kill the rotten taste with swigs of Coke. The Coke sizzled and burned in the newly opened wound. But it was good medicine. Within a few days, most of the swelling was gone. What remained of the swollen look seemed sexy, I thought as I took up my mirror again. A mere bee sting on a lower lip! Self-hate suddenly changed to self-glorification! The joys of youth and manhood could be mine. No more thoughts of bachelorhood! What a grand reward for a little episode of smash-mouth baseball.