Free Everything Is Wrong with Me by Jason Mulgrew Page A

yet). Then they would tell the rest of the school what an incredible lover I was, and the remainder of my time in high school would be filled with make-out sessions and masterfully unhooked bras, perfect grades and perfect SATs, and game-winning hits and adoration, adoration, adoration.
    Of course, my mother would cry at graduation when, during my valedictorian speech, I announced that I was turning down the big baseball schools and instead choosing the academic scholarship to Harvard, where I could both make her proud in the classroom and lead their once-proud but now-faltering baseball program back to glory. And of course, that is exactly what I would do. After an 0-28 season the year before, the team would finish with a 26-2 record in my freshman year (one loss coming when I had to play the entire outfield by myself because my teammates were involved in a minor bus accident and the other when I was momentarily hampered with dysentery; even in my fantasies I was a hypochondriac). We would never lose again on my watch.
    After my freshman year, the Phillies, Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and pretty much every major-league team would come calling with offers of big money, fast cars, and loose women. But I’d brush them all aside because I had another dream to attend to first. In addition to being a stellar athlete, I’d be an equally stellar student. And for my honors thesis, I’d have an ambitious goal to perform the first ever heart-liver double transplant— in front of a live studio audience . It would be a success, and afterward three girls would make out with me at the same time, thus concluding my college career.
    And then on to the majors. You know how the rest of the story goes. First overall pick by the hometown Philadelphia Phillies. A rookie year featuring the Rookie of the Year Award and a World Series championship, earning me the nickname Jason “Midas” Mulgrew, since everything I touched turned to gold. Then sixteen Gold Gloves, eight MVP awards (the writers would eventually turn against me), almost 800 home runs, and a career .340 average. Later, I’d be up there on the podium at the Hall of Fame, giving my speech. It would be similar to the speech that I’d given to the Nobel Prize people only a year before, but more about baseball and less about peace/medicine/literature/physics/general awesomeness. I’d look at my mom and dad and thank them for all their support over the years. They’d smile and nod with appreciation, and then look at my brother (the convict) and my sister (the telemarketer) and shake their heads in disapproval. Then I’d look at my wife, Cindy Crawford, and thank her for always being there for me, through all the wins and losses, slumps and hitting streaks. She’d smile and wink, and I’d blush. Then Cindy and I would go back to the hotel and do whatever it was that a guy and a girl did when they were in a hotel room together.
    So surely I would take to Little League very quickly. This wasn’t even in question. I had never played fast-pitch hardball before, but I wasn’t concerned with this.
    No one I knew played fast-pitch hardball, because that required resources that we didn’t have access to. For one thing, grass and open space were both pretty hard to come by on Second Street. If we were feeling ambitious, my friends and I could head down to “the Rec,” * the park down at Third and Shunk that had two baseball fields, some basketball courts, a public pool, and a lot of grass. But going to the Rec was a ballsy move, because we ran the risk of being hassled or picked on by older kids or some of the Puerto Rican or black kids from the surrounding neighborhoods. I loved baseball, but I loved not getting wedgies and not having to run from a large group of Puerto Rican kids who wanted my glove even more.
    Instead, as city kids, we improvised, playing various baseball-type games that were easier and more accessible to us. There were five variations:
     
Wiffle ball: This was Played