Not a baseball blog, oh not at all!

I'd really love to hear the comments from both men and women to this story I wrote years ago, and which appears in chapter 11 of my last book "Interknot" the Internet dating storybook. (www.interknot.us)
I will not tell you why I wrote this story, so you'll really need to read between the lines just a wee bit and you'll get clearly what this story intends on teaching.

Spike...

Life can be so very strange. Just when you think you have it all
figured out, you miss a down and away curve for strike ONE….
Then, after you brush yourself off, you get the heater down the middle,
catching you unaware, for strike TWO…
Now, on your guard for something off the plate, low and outside, comes a little chin music, throwing you to the ground violently, one ball two strikes.

Now you’re PISSED!

You brush the mud from your uniform, stand as tall as you can, and get back
in the box for another try…heater down the middle, foul ball…
Uncle Charley low and outside, two balls two strikes.

She looks at you with disdain, but respect, as you glare back at her,
twirling your 34 oz. bat around like it were a toothpick. She goes into
the stretch, the sign, the delivery, as you swing with everything
you’ve got…
IT’S A LONG FLY BALL, DEEP TO LEFT, IT’S LONG ENOUGH, IT’S HIGH ENOUGH, IT’S, IT’S,
IT’S……..
FOUL…….

You wince,
as another awesome effort is wasted. Hard to return to the batters box after that
last one. You’ve should’ve had it, ya jumped all over it, leaving her
gasping for breath and afraid to give you another one down the middle,
as you wore her out on the last go round.
She steadies herself as the manager pats her on the butt. She studies your every move now, thinking, debating every tiny movement and sound you make. You smile at her, and step back up to the plate, as you know that you own her.
Low and inside, high and outside, fastball, slider, curve, it does not
matter. You can handle anything she can throw at you.
She sets, you brace, here it comes, right down the middle, but dropping rapidly, and slowing, falling….
you back off, ball three in the dirt, full count.

Now it’s on, as there will be only one winner here.
Bases loaded, two outs, three balls, two strikes. The crowd is out of their minds. The sweat is trickling down her nose, onto her neck, glistening in the sun,
but you cannot lose focus now, this is the real deal.

She heaves a deep sigh, takes in a full breath. Her chest rises and falls as she
climbs the hill back to the mound from which she will deliver her final
pitch. She sets, gets the sign from the catcher, and you call time and
step out of the box, just to shake her up even more, just to get her
thinking, “what IS he gonna do next?”

You put some pine tar on your bat handle, as you wipe the sweat from your brow. Kicking the mud from your spikes, you glance out at the mound. There she stands, proud, defiant, amazing, talented. Exactly the type of pitcher you’d like to
go to war with. Unbowed, undaunted, but you HAVE put an ounce of fear
into her, just by being who you are, nothing more, nothing less. You flash a sudden smile in her direction, and she gives one back that cuts into the very fiber of your soul.
You stagger, and she knows she has you.

You enter the box with a confidence level, just slightly bowed by a tiny doubt, due to the glint in her eye. The first baseman had said something to her. You have played with this first baseman before, and had success, but she knows you. All the good and all the bad, and you wonder, just what it was that she shared with the pitcher that has her smirking?
You are unbowed though, and prepare to give her best pitch the ride of it’s life. So she sets, and you dig in. The delivery is swift and sure, but you are prepared.
You connect on the sweet spot, solid, strong directly back at the pitcher a blistering line drive that will surely go for a bases clearing double.

If only life were so simple.
If only we got what we deserved, what we worked for.
She raises her glove in self-defense as her eyes close. The ball sticks, the glove closes, three outs.

You gasp!
You did your best.
There was nothing more you could possibly have done! You may never have
hit a ball this sweetly before, yet you come away empty, game over, and
on to the next one……
oh well……