Free Gold Dust by Chris Lynch

pressed too hard I lost control and hit worse and worse little squibbly nothings. Then I would jump over to the right side, crank a few shots, sigh and smile and never want to leave that box again because the right box was the right box, and I was right when I was in it, and Jeez, why should you have to work twice as hard for something if you don’t have to.
    I was younger then. That was before I could see very far into the future. That was before Fred Lynn was sent to me to show me.
    So the slow pitch machine was fine for the time being. I dug in my feet, rubbed my right hand all the way up to the end of the bat like Fred did, and calmly sat back waiting for what came.
    Pop, not bad. Smack, better. I could do this. Smack again, I was going with the pitches, just the way Fred was doing in Winter Haven as he prepared to use Fenway’s Green Monster left field wall. I couldn’t muscle anything yet, but I could use what the machine gave me, take what I could get, take advantage. Control I would learn first, and power would follow, as I was certain Fred himself had learned.
    But what I did not like. What I did not like was the way, for the first time in a long time, I did not feel right with a baseball bat in my hands. I did not feel, instinctively, that I was where I belonged. I did not know without question that I was doing what god and the world and Fred Lynn wanted me to do and it made me weirdly, dizzily, and scarily, nervous. Like I was in the wrong body, in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. Like I did not now understand the world, where I could have sworn I completely understood it a few minutes before.
    This could not be allowed. I took a step off the plate and rested the head of the bat on the ground. I closed my eyes and remembered what I wanted. I remembered that baseball would only get better if I learned it better from all angles. I wanted that. Of course I wanted that. I would master this, I would control it. And I would love it even more.
    It was going to take a hard head, though.
    I stepped back in.
    There were a lot of awful swings to get out of my system, and there was nobody there to take it out on when the whole deal made me angry. All there was to do was to keep on doing. Steady. Steady. I could do this.
    I took pitch after pitch after pitch, as if to show the pitching machine that it was going to break down before I would. When it ran out of balls I ran to refill it.
    Gradually, it came. I’d swing, I’d make contact, I’d recoil into my well-practiced mini-Lynn stance, and I’d snap out at it again. The ball came, I sent it back. The ball came, I sent it back. I was every bit as oiled as the machine that was pitching to me, and after a while just as unconscious of it. The groove I slipped into must have been the thing I had heard long-distance runners talk about, a kind of trance thing that feels like a whole nother kind of life.
    Because by the time the machine had emptied once more and sat there just humming at me, wanting to throw something at me but having nothing left, the college guys were already gathering around at the sides, and I never even noticed them coming in. I didn’t even stop hovering over the plate waiting on the next pitch that wasn’t coming, until several of them started clapping for me.
    They must have been watching for a while. I felt flushed, embarrassed and proud, but most of all, exposed. I never think of anybody watching me when I’m hitting, because I’m thinking about... hitting. Especially when I had to work so hard at it.
    These were baseball guys, though. Not just players, but players. Felt kind of nice, the few splashes of applause. From people who appreciated.
    I have always sort of assumed nobody properly could. Appreciate it.
    I gave them a short little wave, scooped up my jacket and gloves. I pulled my Bruins ski cap down low, put my Adirondack on my shoulder and hurried on out.
    I was standing there on Huntington Avenue, crusted snow under my sneakers,