The Twilight Zone

You have now crossed over into the twilight zone...

That was the little voice of Rod Serling that I heard behind the back inside of my head, which is to say, I was disoriented in the moment much like that description. I stood in the third base dugout at the middle school ball diamond where I played in seventh and eighth grades. Back then we made the first base side dugout our home dwelling. The switching of sides was not the only oddity to which I returned now nearly ten years later.

No surprise was the fact that my old coach was still there, coaching. He greeted me from the mound as he tossed balls to one of the high school players participating in the homerun derby--a break time and wowser display for the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders working to make the A and B teams on the second day of tryouts--as was a favorite sporting event when I was there. He said, "Is that who I think it is," as I dismounted my bicycle in the parking lot and walked toward the field past the newly constructed concession stand. "It can't be. He's been on the side of a milk carton since he disappeared." Everything seemed normal as the words danced on the air over my head. Coach was referring to my disappearance or quitting of the team after my sophomore year when we finished fourth at state for Class A.

I walked to the third base dugout where all of the young kids sat and watched the big kid at the plate whiff a lob pitch and finally end his turn with a weak line drive over second. I talked to Skindog, the on-and-off assistant coach over the last couple of decades, as Coach took several pitches in his at-bat and managed to squeak two over the fence before making his fifth and final out. I'd seen Skindog already a few times over the summer and we picked up the conversation from wherever we had left off the previous time.

After his fifth out, Coach came over to the dugout and amiably asked how I was doing. He had heard about my new job and congratulated me. We made small talk, and he told me how things were different...he wasn't the hell raising son of a bitch he'd been in the past. Then, surprisingly, or not surprisingly at first, he asked me if I had quit because of him. It's hard to put our relationship that spans nearly eighteen years succinctly. To simply explain, I was a 'whipping boy' for Coach many of the years that I played ball for him. Yet, I played a great deal as a seventh grader on the eighth grade team, and I started almost all of the high school games when I played as a Freshman and a Sophomore, in Center, batting second. At the same time, I was also made to run eighteen poles one practice on a windy day, in seventh grade, because I asked Coach "What?" when I couldn't hear his orders over the blowing wind and swirling dust. For those of you who don't know, a "pole" is the length along the outfield fence from pole to pole--I ran eighteen, which was some sort of team record at the time, before he told me to stop on a hot August day, which was surely around ninety degrees farenheit and a few degrees hotter with the heat index, most likely above eighty percent humidity as well. To put it even more directly, I'm almost certain I was made to cry by Coach more times in my life than nearly all other times combined...it's not even close when limited to crying in public.

I laughed at the question and shook my head, and he asked what percentage he was responsible for. I was accustomed to this sort of routine, his pushing to get answers to questions he wants answered by reluctant interviewees. I thought about it, though I found it ridiculous, and I said "forty" to end the probing if nothing else. In his anticipation, however, his eyes actually appeared to have a genuine concern for an infinitely small fraction, perhaps as small or as large as one of the granules of dust on the infield. I said forty, and he said he was glad that it wasn't at least or as much as fifty-one. He joked. I took the whole thing as the closest it would ever come to any sort of sincere apology. The old man may be getting soft now...his oldest son is just in junior high now, playing shortstop. I wonder what it's like to yell at other people's children and to yell at your own. I've only yelled out of anger once in the classroom. I imagine I'll have to do so much more on the basketball court...with girls. I've been told repeatedly that there will be crying every day. It's hard to imagine.

Pat Conroy's football coach-English teacher character, Tom Wingo, says in "The Prince of Tides": "A coach occupies a high place in a boy's life. It is the one grand component of my arguably useless vocation. If they are lucky, good coaches can become the perfect unobtainable fathers that young boys dream about and rarely find in their own homes." How is this with girls? Much different I think, though I will learn shortly.

The eerie music became audible as I stood in the dugout and watched myriad infractions take place in the course of two minutes that would have suredly resulted in an absolute hell-bent crisis involving spit-flying tirades and many many poles. These kids have no idea how easy they got it I thought to myself. I wonder what good or bad it will do them. I know being on constant edge five months out of the year was no treat. It didn't matter if it was on the field, the bus, the locker room, the classroom, home, or in your head, sleeping even...anything at any moment was liable to 'cause' a blow-up and resulting humiliation. A deconstruction of self for all to see and witness.

It's actually quite funny how people who have done such tremendous wrongs to you are the ones who most impact your life. The worst break-up of my life was the direct cause for my decision to remain in college for an extra year and complete a degree in rhetoric and writing. More deeply pervasive and omnipresent is Coach's creation of my mild-manneredness. My sloth-like manner of speaking, my easy-going-ness if you will. I took things hard then. I punished myself all through middle school, and it wasn't until high school that I could actually respond to the mini-tortures with a "fuck you" in my head, but in my head mind you, as nearly all my "fuck yous" remain in my head never to reverberate over the air waves. I suppose I've perfected the surface repressions now with my laughing in the face of sadness and hurt, the covering of emotion.

Coach asked me if I missed it. He said he knew then and it bothered him that I would one day regret leaving it. I told him I write a lot about it now. Then, a worried look flickered across his eyes before disappearing. He asked if I wrote about how I had an asshole coach. I said there's enough of those stories out there already. He asked me to come around and help as an assistant coach with the junior high kids like I did when I was in high school. I think practice starts in seven hours. They will have announced teams last Friday and had the first official practice on Saturday. I may bike over there in the morning and check things out...look for Rod Serling under the evergeen bushes just behind the outfield fence. They were barely roots when I played out there, now they're about ten feet high, casting a cool shade along the fence where the kids run poles.