Week 10 Prompt I

43. 51. Just calm down and begin at the beginning.

"Where's my umpire's gear?" he said. "They better not have lost it. In Bridgton."

I walked back onto the bus and looked along it with him. It wasn't there.

I got there on time. There was a bus there, but it did not look like the right one at all. The coach had said we would have a coach bus. I didn't think this was a coach bus, unless coach = "Bar Harbor sightseeing tour bus."

"Why do they still have that up there?" one of our players said, gesturing to the scoreboard. "Get that 17 off of there."

We got off at the field. The coach stared at the field for a moment.

"I think I'll call to make sure it's the right field."

I ran to the ball, got under it, and caught it. Then threw it in.

"Right field will be interesting," a player commented. "Tomas, you starting in right?"

"Yes."

"Have fun out there. Look at those hills."

"I suppose that if it hits the house on that hill it's a homerun."

The ball hit the huge dip on the edge of the infield grass and drilled our second baseman in the face with a thwack, knocking his glasses off.

"Well," the coach said, "I wasn't disappointed in our effort. We didn't have too many errors. But we weren't really crisp. That should come with time."

I ran after the ball, and ran past the spot the fence would have been if it had existed, and watched the ball hit the tree on their front lawn, breaking some branches off. I crawled through their lawn up to their house to retrieve it.

The school was in the background from right field, and it was bright white directly behind the batter. I figured out after one inning that unless I stood in one place in right so that the batter was in front of the shadowed part, then I could not see where the ball was going at all. This meant I had to play a little farther off the line than I would have liked, especially with the five lefties in their lineup.

There were no dugouts, so we had the sun beating down on us the entirety of the game. I held my uniform shirt up my neck a little bit when we batted, trying to prevent sunburn. It didn't really work.

We were heading to the game, and one of the players was talking. "I looked them up last night, and I looked at three of their player profiles, and saw 6-6, 6-6, and 6-4. All Pro for the state of Massachussetts in six sports last year. It's basically a one year school to prepare for the SAT." They're a prep school, and take all the stupid athletes that can't get a 2.0 GPA in college.

I looked myself later. Two players from Maine out of 26. One from Barbados.