Brittle Innings
“At shortstop, I watched it all happen, my mouth full of worry flannel.In the bottom of the eighth, the first bat showed up. I don’t mean baseball bat either. I mean living bat, a flying varmint with tattered wings. Against the rinsed blue of the sky, it seemed so humdrum, as it dive-bombed the field and swerved up from a thousand near collisions, that most of us mistook it for a bird—if we mistook it for anything other than a scudding magnolia leaf. Then more such wheeling varmints swept into v...iew, and I wondered if a pigeon breeder on the roof of a nearby barracks had emptied his dovecotes. But the varmints got thicker and noisier, breaking into squadrons and chirping like airborne crickets, and I knew them for bats, several pesky flights of them. They stirred more breeze than the day did, zooming from the stands to the outfield, and from the fences to the stands, pip-pip-pipping so damned tinnily I started thinking of them as . . . as pip-squeaks.In the black half of the eighth, the Dominicans sent up first baseman Gumbo Garcia, center fielder Tommy Christmas, and right fielder Gator Partlow.MoreLess
Read book Brittle Innings for free
Write Review:
Guest
Read Also
9 / 10
User Reviews: