nails, his sons told me, a fact that seemed too painful for a follow-up question. We watched him, impressed, as he recorded a bunch of acrobatic putouts in left field.
But Athens limped to the finish against Taiwan, putting only five balls in play. Scean Atkinson, an infielder who usually has the confidence and voice of a shock jock, struck out three times, chopping down awkwardly at the ball. And while it’s easier to have an “it’s just a game” feeling when you lose in beep ball, most of the players don’t want that feeling. Athens (0–3 on the first day of round-robin play), Boston (2–1), Indy (also 2–1), and Austin (3–0, easily) weren’t looking for moral victories. Blind people have mostly had their fill of that sort of thing, of being told how courageous they are just to be out there. Instead, they all took the field knowing that they had the emancipating opportunity to simply compete, and Athens got a faceful of that freedom on day one. The final score against Taiwan was 19–2.
My personal solace came when one of the Athens volunteers penciled in my name on the T-wolves’ roster while some official-seeming officials—clipboards, lanyards—weren’t looking. Due to that deft bit of corruption, I became an eligible emergency replacement, a kindly vulture circling my new blind buddies and half hoping that one of them—maybe the shortstop nicknamed Cupcake, the old man?—would fake a hip flexor and give me a chance to play.
After the Taiwan drubbing, I wandered away from the Athens bench to catch some other games. The Minnesota Millers and the Iowa Reapers had a fraternal rivalry, Steve Guerra vs. Frank Guerra, that I wanted to check out. The twins, both of whom had congenital cataracts and lost their sight in the early seventies after bungled operations, are the Click and Clack of the NBBA. During their game, Steve jokingly threatened an ump who’d ruled against his team. “You can’t run,” he shouted to the ump, and Frank retorted, “But you can’t find him.”
Both Guerra brothers used to play for the Long Island Bombers—Frank sported a Bombers tattoo on his chest—but their jobs took them to the Midwest. All of this—sight loss, the heartland, brotherhood—including the detail that Frank was born two minutes earlier and therefore believes his brother to be “overcooked”—seemed like it had the makings of a good-natured Reader’s Digest story to me, but before I could come up with any of my own “Humor in Uniform” jokes, I got the call-up.
Athens infielder Tamara Hale (Cupcake!) had tweaked her leg—wink?—and my team needed me against the Long Island Bombers. I hadn’t played baseball in years, but I thought I might be an improvement over an injured young blind lady. I sprinted from field to field. Maybe if I made some good plays they’d nickname me “Sheetcake.” In my fantasy, I became crack third baseman and clutch hitter:
I gallop into the gap and dive for the beep ball, tipping it expertly to Ron Whorley in an act of athleticism unmatched in the annals of sighted–blind cooperation. At the plate, I call my shot, Babe Ruth style, even though I’m not entirely sure where I’m pointing. This is understood by teammate and opponent alike as an act of great gumption, and I rocket the first pitch deep to center, hitting it with such force that the ball emits, instead of its normal beeping, an instrumental version of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best.”
Cries of “Sheetcake, Sheetcake” reverberate across the Peach State. The art of Braille, I find, isn’t hard to master, and the gathered guide dogs consider me a most firm alpha male. My facial hair becomes a league-wide style, and later, against Taiwan in the final, I scoop up the series clincher while declaring in Mandarin, “Fine effort, fellows, but all for naught.”
When an Athens volunteer covered my eyes with a spare piece of ripped cloth the Timberwolves had in their bat bag, though, my Walter Mittyish bravado disappeared. The anticipation to rush out on the field was replaced by a deep desire to find a fence, get my back up against it, and stay put until someone handed me a sandwich. Whorley, the Athens left fielder, informed me that while I was blindfolded I would feel like I’d moved forty feet while only moving four, but knowing that in advance was not like experiencing it. I took six steps and thought I was in my correct position on the field, but then I hit my shin on the Athens bench, overturning our water jug.
At bat, I knelt down to align myself, touched the plate four times like I’d seen Rock Kuo do, pointed to the pitcher’s voice, and swung hard at the void. I struck out. In my next plate appearance, Ben, Ron’s son and the Athens pitcher, set me up well and I dribbled one to the infield somewhere. Third base buzzed, so I was supposed to run, unnaturally, toward the sound on my left. Except that’s the way the beep ball rolled too. Confused by the dueling noises, I hopped twice and ran in the opposite direction before realizing my mistake and booking for third. My wife tells me I have the sense of direction of a squirrel crossing the street, and it was certainly true during that at-bat. My arms were everywhere as I crossed close to the pitcher’s mound, nearly trampling the Bombers’ charging third baseman, who was unaware that I was barreling toward him like a disoriented Pete Rose at a defenseless Ray Fosse. The umpire yelled “Stop!,” preventing our head-on collision, and my main athletic feat of the game was the restraint I showed in not breaking an opponent’s nose with my knee.
I was out. I went 0 for 4 in the game, with three strikeouts.
In the field, I fared a little better. Out of generosity or out of respect for my noteworthy wingspan, the Athens coaches put me at third base, the busiest beep ball position. Once there, I entered into an ongoing call-and-response with Scean and Ron.
“Scean, not sure if I’m right.”
“You’re good.”
“Ron?” I said pleadingly, as if I’d begun to fear he’d somehow disappeared in the middle of the inning.
“Yep.”
Ron was my on-field compass, and by the fourth I felt more comfortable, but he’d just had a shock himself and needed some grounding. During our at-bat, he’d laced a ball right up the middle and struck his son, the pitcher, in the temple. Upon contact, Ron raced for the first-base bag, finding out moments later that Ben was crumpled on the ground. Pitchers are a brave lot, and Ben is no exception. They stand close to the plate and serve up meatballs to some pretty burly folks. Kevin Sibson of Austin gets pegged every practice, and Tim Hibner, a journeyman pitcher from Oklahoma City, actually likes getting hit because it means he’s timing his pitch correctly.
Usually, a beep ball to the crotch is the worst-case scenario, but some have been knocked out by frozen ropes to the heart, and at least one pitcher has spat teeth.
Ben got up after three minutes, we all gave the requisite applause for a sports injury, and Ron, who’d been retired on the play, had to run out to the field again. When he came back to the bench after that half inning, Ron whispered to me, “Where’s Ben? Let me get to Ben.” I stood up and Ron slid over to his woozy son. He threw an arm around him, called him “boy,” and felt for his bruise.
• • •
With concussion fears behind us, Ron dispensed more of his wisdom. He’d recognized from the distance of my voice that I was a step, or six steps, out of place. Scean, too, directed me toward the baseline or away from it as I called out, “Ron, Scean, am I good?”
“That beep,” Scean said. “You chase that beep and when you find it, you feel like you achieve something.” He roamed the field. He had some of his swagger back after recording a putout; I didn’t. I still felt like a three-year-old asking for the hall light to be left on.
We called out our positions in the field, around the horn. “Where are you, Timberwolves?” Keeney shouted, adding his “one” from first base. “Two,” said Jonathan, at second. Scean yelled “three,” and I put everything I had into my “four.” Ron and Amanda chimed in with five and six. It was a simple sound-off to let each other know we were still together.
Swelling with team pride and thigh sweat, I tried hard to act natural. Wearing the blindfold made me feel languid, though, and I noticed that sightlessness, even if it’s just an experiment, gets a guy to limit his unnecessary movements. I imagine I resembled an upright corpse, but I also tilted my head to the left, maybe to hear better out of my