My son lives and breathes baseball.
It all started when he was a baby. I would plop him in front of the games on TV. He’d stare at the screen for minutes before trying to crawl out of the room because he couldn’t handle the excitement. But I never let him. If I didn’t let him watch anything else, I knew he would fall in love with baseball like I did, and all the screaming and crying would be worth it.
It was.
He spent hours after school throwing baseballs at a target that was a photo of his mother. To improve his arm strength, I set up a bench press in the garage and injected him with trenbolone acetate in his sleep. Once he improved his accuracy, he learned how to swing a bat, and together we destroyed the pastel canvases he had created.
My son just loves the game. As soon as we get to the field, he runs away from me and into the dugout and perches himself atop an empty sunflower seed bucket far away from anyone else. He won’t say a word to me as he psyches himself up to inflict deep mental and physical harm on the opposition.
No eleven-year-old competes harder. When Eric Margherita, the best hitter in the league, stepped up to the plate, my son threw at his head and split it wide open, guaranteeing the prize of a warm meal, shelter, and reassurance that I wouldn’t make him burn the canvas that he secretly painted with my ex-wife and hid under his bed.
After leaning into a fastball to reach first base for our team, he didn’t whine. He let his bruises do the talking. His unrivaled love of the game, and the bond that we share, allowed him to finish the game, and the rest of the season, with only a minor shoulder fracture.
Even the Tommy John surgery two years ago didn’t sideline him. Doctors said they had never seen a nine-year-old need the surgery before, but that’s because they had never seen an athlete like my son.
Parents pack the stands every game to get a glimpse of my budding star. Some parents claim he cries in the dugout, but they’re wrong. They confuse tears with brain sweat, which is understandable. You see, no one has ever loved the game like my boy. His passion overwhelms his brain, and when it leaks out of his eyes, I give him chewing tobacco to calm his nerves.
He looks the part, and he acts the part. That’s why his team, the Johnson Septic Care Co. Lizards, is in first place. I manage the team, by the way, and our players are warriors because many of them already have mustaches thanks to the testosterone supplements I put in their Gatorade.
But one thing they don’t have is Keith Hernandez, my baseball hero, who’s currently in my trunk.
My son will dedicate his life to baseball, so I used my 401k to hire someone to take Keith Hernandez and bring him to me as my son’s personal trainer. It will pay off when my son goes to the surprise tryout I booked for him with a travel league team after my boy singlehandedly wins the league championship.
He’ll get to live out his dream of playing, watching, and studying baseball, not art, 24/7. Every weekend, which is when I have custody, we’ll travel the country as a family, with our hero Keith Hernandez zip-tied in the back seat, for the greatest game ever, and the people will get to see the greatest player ever: my son.
