Thursday, August 08, 2019

Erratadati Roy

by Matt Rosenberger

Erratadati Roy stared down his catcher and shook off the sign for a curveball. Sure the world was going to hell, but no way was he going to throw this meatball a junk pitch. He was in Rome, Georgia, USA - two weeks out of the Inter-Asia Development League (.025 era for the Bombay Bombers!),  in the class A promised land (temporary resident alien work visa) facing a burger fed tobacco spewing hayseed with a 3-2 count in the bottom of the seventh (back end of an abbreviated doubleheader) protecting a 10-8 lead with two runners on base (not his fault).

He was gonna strike this motherfucker out, so help him shiva. He called upon the head of the hindu pantheon to help gird his loins for the upcoming pitch, even though he considered himself an adherent of the even-tempered Buddha, but seeing as how the Buddha didn't have no pantheon, and (also and to boot)  the situation called for a distinct and sudden disruption of his serene equanimity, he figured he needed a little extra juice, and he didn't care from whence it came. He waited till the catcher rolled his eyes and set a single digit down between his legs and then he (Erratadati Roy - "Errah!" to his snickering teammates) stood up strong, grabbed two seams across the ball in his glove, and with a final glance towards second base (and, coincidentally, towards Mecca, even tho he didn't give a shit)  hurled the ball towards home plate to a destiny he knew was predetermined but hoped would be strike three.

 It was a good pitch, but a microsecond before the affirmative thud of ball against leather and the confirmation of his amalgamated cultural zeitgiest there came the crushing crack of ball against ash and  a mild "Fuck" uttered by Roy as his head swiveled to mimic the arc of the ball headed out to straight centerfield. There were two outs, and he could tell from the sound of the contact, the speed with which the ball soared into the sky,  and the general tenor of his own recent fortunes, that this would go right to the fence, and that he had no idea if he would ride out with the save or be saddled with the loss.

He watched the white ball slow as it reached its apex against the night sky and as it seemed to stop still in brilliant equipoise he suddenly became aware that all 1,327 pairs of eyeballs in the Coca-Cola Rome Braves Municipal Stadium were locked in with his, watching the ball as it began its descent, those eyeballs directly hooked to brains suddenly quiescent and silent and joined in the common spectacle of watching something inevitable but not yet apparent, and in that moment, Erratadati Roy (who, he quickly admitted to himself,  had never deeply considered the application of buddhist truths to the vagaries of baseball) felt his mind suddenly snap free from its self-reflective gaze, and found  himself in the extremely unusual,  salubrious and panoramic state which he immediately recognized yet reflexively (to his credit) refused to identify as that condition which the noble Gautama had termed, in many unimpeachable translations, as "detachment"  

Image by 용한 배 from Pixabay