The First Pitch from Billy Church
by Michael DiMaria

Eighteen years ago I threw my first pitch in Little League. It was the first time I ever felt real excitement in the pit of my young stomach. It was in Franklin, Michigan. The gray gravel baseball field was next to the village gazebo that was decorated for opening day with red, white, and blue bunting. Inside the open-air gazebo the Franklin Church Brass Band was whooping it up something fierce in celebration of the new crisp smell of spring that was left by the thaw that had only recently occurred. The batter’s box and baselines were freshly chalked, and I didn’t want to disturb it. I walked onto the field almost on tiptoe as if walking on eggshells, while the other kids dragged and stomped there feet like clumsy drunkards.

Balloons were tied and waved from the foul poles. Children from the other Franklin Little League teams ran and played tag around the gazebo with similar balloons tied to their wrists, as if nothing of importance was happening. They ran and giggled like girls, as the grown-ups geared up for the strawberry and ice cream social that followed the first game of the day, our game. The church bells rang twelve times for high noon. The American flag was raised by Boy Scout Troop #167. The sun was out. There was no sign of rain, not even a threat. The sun beat hot on the back of my bare neck, feeling as if God himself had just pulled up his front row box seat with a sack full of hot roasted peanuts in his hands. The brand new pristine baseball was in my palm, the first pitcher for the Franklin Falcons’ first game of the Little League season 1982, eighteen years ago.

I ran my thumb over the high red stitches on the ball as the umpire yelled, “Game!” from behind his mask. The batter stepped in, dusting away some of the fresh chalk from the virgin batter’s box with his rubber cleats. With the box now broken in, it had begun. I pushed all childish thoughts out of my mind, like action figures, video games and fast food. I shook it all out. My skin felt like it was lifting off my bones. So this is what it feels like to be onstage when the lights hit you.

As soon as the batter steadied himself, I kicked my leg high like Bob Feller, throwing my cleats to the sky. I reared back, squeezing the inaugural ball with a death grip. I bit down on my tongue and threw a filthy, filthy blazer that hit the poor redheaded batter flush in the eye socket cutting the pale freckled skin just above his cheekbone. He fell flat on his back, and on a dime, the church band stopped playing their brassy celebratory notes. The children stopped playing tag. All the parents and brothers and sisters that came out to watch the game moved in close around the fences with their jaws swinging low, gasping one long inhaling gasp. The aluminum bat hit the gravel with a thud. Both the redheaded boy’s hands were cupped over his left eye and boy was he crying and kicking up a tantrum like someone just spit on his birthday cake. 

The umpire and catcher both removed their masks as the boy lay on the ground rocking shoulder to shoulder screaming, “My eye! My eye! It hurts!”

His mother ran out onto the field wearing red high heels and a tight red skirt that melted like a wet T-shirt to the curves of her ass. She ran with short, quick, careful steps towards him with her hands out in front of her, palms out, with her blood-red painted fingers up about breast-high to keep her balance as her sharp high heels sank into the gravel ball field, like pins through a pin cushion. Now, she wasn’t the typical “Little League” mom. I could tell that just by watching all the fathers, including my own, Mr. Wendell Church, press their cheeks and chins through the wire mesh fences along the first and third baselines. She crouched down to cradle her child who still hadn’t shut his mouth, whose yells were gurgling with a combination of snot and saliva. “Mommy! My eye! He hit me in my eye!”

When she crouched down, her skirt slid up. Hell, it was up almost to her waist. Her knees hovered over home plate like a catcher, wobbling, as she fought to keep her balance. I had my mitt hand resting on my hip and that’s when I saw it. Her stark, clean, white panties were centered in the heart of a Little 
Leaguer’s strike zone. It was right there, right in a clean-up hitter’s wheelhouse. It was a sacrilege. It was a damn disgrace to the Little League flag. Even as a kid I knew that. She shot me a quick angry look. Her full lips were the same blood red as her long sharp fingernails, and they caught a spark from the high-noon spring sunshine. 

“Look what you did! Seth’s eye is bleeding! It’s bleeding! You should be ashamed. I knew this whole Little League idea was a mistake! I just knew it!” 

Then, her anger left her in a breath, and she deflated back, turning her motherly attention to her slightly wounded, yet overly dramatic son. “You’ll be alright sweetheart. You’re father’s gonna blame me. He always does. I’m always wrong in his eyes. He’s gonna kill me. But you will be alright.” She spoke to him softly and ran her long, sharp fingers softly through his red hair. He began to calm down. He was only sniffling now. 

My coach, Mr. Sanderson, the Franklin Village dentist who gave us all new toothbrushes and mint flavored floss at our first practice, made his way slowly out to the mound. He had a dumb saying, “the team with the best teeth always wins.” He was a jackass. He looked down at me through his orange, polarized, fishing sunglasses and past the stiff brim of his Franklin Falcons’ ball cap that sat crookedly on his head. He was a fucking disgrace to the Little League ball cap. The brim of his hat wasn’t even broken in. It was stiff and he looked foolish. Hell, the night before I spent a good hour shaping the brim of my hat with my fingers, trying to form a perfect arch, just like the pros. Coach Sanderson should’ve done the same.

“We’ll have to work on that control of yours during practice next week Billy. We have to find a way to tame that live arm of yours. Practice makes perfect. I don’t want you killing anyone, especially on opening day.” He looked at me very accusingly. “How’s a kid gonna eat his ice cream after the game, Billy? How’s he gonna enjoy it if his mouth is all swollen up? We can’t have that. Not today. A lot of people worked hard to make today special. I got to keep it that way.”

Now my gut began to burn because what he was saying went against everything I had seen on a Major League ball field. So, I looked that fucker right through his orange polarized sunglasses and said, “but I didn’t hit him in his mouth, Coach Sanderson. I hit him in the eye. He can still eat his ice cream.” He didn’t respond. He just put out his empty hand in demand, and I gave him the ball. The fucker didn’t even let me pitch another ball. My opening day was over quicker than I could reach down to adjust my cup.

I walked off, pounding my mitt once with my throwing hand, the way I had seen big league pitchers do on television when they got pulled from a game. I looked at all the concerned people pushing against the fences. They all looked at me hard as if I tried to kill the damn redhead. All I did was give him an opportunity to grow a little character. It’s not my fault he didn’t take it. It was my first pitch in a uniform, a uniform of powder blue. All that newfound excitement I was feeling for the first time, that feeling of significance I felt putting on that uniform, It all sank into the pit of my stomach. It sank, then it simply disappeared as if it laid its head on a hard pillow and went to sleep. My first fastball turned into a twenty-five cent peepshow for Wendell Church and the other fathers. To this day I know what “cheap” tastes like on the tongue. You can ask me. It tastes sharp and metallic, like licking the top of a nine-volt battery. Anger ran from the button on the top of my blue ball cap all the way down to the dull rubber nubs on the bottom of my cleats. I was pissed at the redheaded boy’s mother in high heels for falling for her son’s need for attention, and for littering our ball field with high heel holes. I was especially pissed at her for exposing her panties over the divine sanctity of home plate. 

The way I saw it, God himself cleared his schedule to watch me pitch and I was pissed at all the fathers, including my own, Mr. Wendell Church, who dripped sweat and licked their lips and wrapped their fingers tight around the meshing of the wire fences until their knuckles turned white. And I was pissed at Coach Sanderson for taking me out of the game while wearing that stupid stiff brimmed hat. I was just plain fucking pissed. No one said anything about my fastball. It was a damn filthy blazer too! It felt good leaving my grip. The redhead never had a prayer and no one said boo about it, not even a word from Wendell. As I watched his knuckles turn deathly white from pure lust and constriction, thank the Lord my mother wasn’t there that day, I began to call my father by his first name. It was much easier to understand his faults when I thought of him as Wendell Church, and not my father. I remember thinking to myself that day, through all that commotion, hey look at Wendell over there acting strange. It was as simple as that. It was much easier than asking yourself, why is my father over there acting like an asshole? So I sat down on the dugout bench and the Franklin Church Brass Band began to strike up once again as if the day were beginning anew. This time, it was starting without me.

The woman in the skin tight red dress had finally gotten her son onto his feet and she pulled her skirt down very calmly as if it had happened in public many times before. The crowd began applauding as if he had done something heroic by showing absolutely no reflexes at all. He just stood there frozen in the box and let my fastball make a crying snotty mess out of him. Tears were running down his face now, like drops of rain down a windowpane and I began to feel better. To this day, I have never let a redheaded batter hit safely off of me. And I have come to plant my beliefs firmly on one truth, that is, visible panties have no place within the foul poles of a baseball diamond. 

It was on that Saturday afternoon, as the brass band played, and the day picked up his walking stick and began moving on, whistling like hitchhiker while I was left behind on that stupid dugout bench, while those kids in different colored baseball uniforms ran around with stupid fucking balloons of red, purple, and green, or red, white and blue tied to their wrists like silly anchors, that I realized this game wasn’t for everyone. It sure as hot soup wasn’t for red-headed Seth. Everyone could see that. Shit, because of that fastball to the eye socket he’s probably still afraid of his own skinny, freckled, redheaded shadow.

Nobody gave a shit that day. To everyone gathered around that gazebo, Opening Day, 1982 was just another reason to eat ice cream with strawberries. But as my feet dangled from the dugout bench, I knew this game wasn’t for everyone. But, it was definitely for me.