baseball messiah
(excerpted from "Baseball Messiah: a Tomboy Justifies Her Life" originally printed in AJoP #2)
Hard to say where she began, the tomboy in me, but the first sign was surely the way I broke my arm in first grade: I tripped over Allen Marshall while running the bases in kickball. Allen was crouched down, tying his shoe, and I was going full speed on the asphalt. I didn't see him, I saw third base. I would continue to break one of my arms virtually every year of my childhood—as well as almost all of my fingers, my big toe, and both ankles (several times), not to mention incurring numerous head injuries as an aggressive soccer goalie—and by eighth grade, I’d broken so many bones in so many different athletic accidents that when I was pushed into the wall of the gym after a breakaway lay-up, there was no question about the result: my arm is broken, I remember saying, and you need to call my mom. The coaches were reticent, asking, how do you know? Trust me, I thought. I know.
It is perhaps surprising then that my most infamous injury would come during a brief fourth-grade attempt at girlyness. In our backyard in Houston my parents had installed a large playground swing set, heavy green metal poles anchoring three u-shaped swings of black rubber. My sister Lauren and I were expert swingers after years of practice, and our greatest skill was jumping off the swings from incredible heights. One ill-fated spring afternoon, we were outside with a tape player listening to the soundtrack from Annie, singing along at the top of our lungs; at the tragic moment we were listening, specifically, to "It's a Hard Knock Life." Those unfamiliar with the song should know that it is a brash, inspirational tune about freedom from slavery and breaking the chains that bind us all, even innocent little children. It also has a large, lift-the-cloud-and-belt-it-out type of ending, and it was this ending that inspired both me and Lauren to time our jumps off the swings with the final, "It's. A. Hard. Knock. Liiiiiiiife," landing, arms outstretched, with the last note.
So this is a girly thing, right? Annie is girly, right? See, that was my thought, my terrible, hubris-riddled thought, as I prepped for the leap. I got to "It's. A. Hard. Knock…" and swung back, and looked straight down (for I was parallel to the ground at this point) and I—well, I let go. And I rushed to the earth, straight down right into the fine Texas dust I had been soaring over the beat before, that dust now in my teeth and up my nose and in my eyes and rocks poking at my legs and where is my arm I can't feel my arm and oh god I can't breathe. My mother, who had been tending to some sort of sickly plant near the house, came running over to see how on earth her baby daughter had managed to cast herself off the swing in such a violent manner, and why wasn't she moving? She rolled me onto my back, took one look at me and yelled, Lauren, get your father, your sister broke her arm again. Sure enough, I looked down at my right hand and it dangled there, marionette-style, at a 90 degree angle to the rest of my arm. Interesting, I thought. Lauren, god bless her, took one look and fainted dead away.
After a dramatic afternoon at the hospital, we learned that my left wrist, very quietly, had been broken as well, and for the first time, I would need two casts instead of just one.
Oh dear, what a disaster: the two broken arms effectively prevented me from appearing in the recital for my first-ever musical theater class. That was to be my big coming out, you see, my big chance to smile and sing like an angel and show the world once and for all that I was a pretty girl who could wear a pretty dress and sing pretty songs. But it was not to be—the director was adamant that no cripple would perform on his stage, and besides, what if I knocked into one of the pretty girls with my big, monstrous, ugly casts? Heartbroken, I gave up on my last attempt at a girly after-school activity, deciding the fates were against me. As revenge against God for making me a girl, I would learn everything there was to know about the Houston Astros.
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 photo by Michele McCarthy |
In 1962, Major League Baseball welcomed two expansion teams to the National League: the New York Mets and the Colt .45’s of Houston, Texas.
In 1975, on the day I was born, the Houston Astros beat the New York Mets, 6-2. If you’ll allow me, I would like to propose that the seemingly inconsequential victory of ‘Stros over Mets—of Cain over Abel, if you will—sparked something in the Houston Astros franchise. I know this to be true. Hell, maybe it started earlier, maybe it was my first heartbeat as a fetus that started something, but all I know is, on the day I took my first breath in this world, my future converged with that of the former Colt ‘45s, and I became the Baseball Messiah.
The summer I broke both my arms was 1985. The Astros went 83 and 79 that year, and Nolan Ryan pitched his 4,000th career strikeout. The lineup was solid: a combination of grizzled veterans and fresh-faced rookies who began to play steady ball, championship ball, and they ended the summer in a very respectable third place. And by the end of that summer, during which I lay in bed unable to move, my two casts heavy across my chest, I was a ten-year-old girl who could turn down the sound on the television during games and do the play by play. I listened to a transistor radio under my pillow during night games, through the post-game call-in show, and all the way to the station sign-off. I learned to keep score and memorized stats and read the sports page before my father could get to it, every morning. I was obsessed. I wanted to be the first female major league baseball player, but, failing that, I thought maybe being a sportscaster or a manager or even a ballboy would be ok. I lived and breathed baseball. And whatever my skills are as the Messiah, they carried the Astros through the off-season and into the greatest year in franchise history.
Attendance on Opening Day 1986 was abysmal. But our H-town boys played that season like they’d wandered into some turbo-charged pants, and when it came down to the wire, there were the Astros, in first place. Heavens to Betsy, they were beautiful to behold.
And then.
And then there was the horrid, life-altering 1986 National League Championship Series. Cain vs. Abel. Good vs. Evil. The Houston Astros lost to the New York Mets in the sixth game, perhaps the greatest game of baseball ever played, a 16-inning epic that ended when Kevin Bass struck out—with the winning runs on base.
Sigh.
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