The rules state that any fly ball deflected into the stands by a fielder is a home run. “I really didn’t feel it,” Canseco said. “I really don’t know what happened other than I was looking for the wall and the ball nicked off my glove and hit my head.”

Central Amherst Little League is where I pretend I am Ozzie Smith for the better part of a decade.  My friends and I practice every morning, afternoon, and night, and every minute thereafter having watched Sandlot. 

There is an abandoned post office with a hundred yard parking lot behind the woods behind my house.  We use the red brick wall as a catcher.  This is where Marty Patowski teaches me to fire his bee bee gun by shooting through its windows.  The doors were locked and the front windows boarded up so the only way inside was through 15’ high windows.  We talk for months about sneaking my father’s ladder out from the garage, crawling up through the broken glass to get inside and to pretend we’re robbing the post office. 

When we bat we have to look around for glass, crinkled bags and flattened cups from fast food restaurants, who’s on first, and used condoms.  One day Audra says the purple one is supposed to taste like blueberries.  

First base is three parking spaces to the right, second a pizza box, and third the tree farthest from the woods.  Home is an old hemorrhoid cushion we steal from Crazy Ables after she calls the cops and accuses Jeremy of burying cocaine underneath her flowerbed.  The full business lot behind the hedge is the homerun marker.  If you hit a car it’s a grand slam no questions asked. 

It’s also the place where Jasmine and I make out for the first time in the rain against a dumpster and then a park bench. 

Lacing up my shoes I get nervous farts, the kind that feel like razor blades and boiled broth.  My glove smells damp under the flexed and reckless leather. 

I catch everything that comes my way, every blinding fly, line drive, a even a grounder I lay out for a double play.  I’ve hit every bag for the cycle save a homerun, a single to shallow left, a bunt for a double, and a triple that is momentarily lost in a pine tree. 

In the top of the eighth I kick aside a condom resembling a banana strap on my batting gloves and take the plate.  I take a strike.  I take two balls.  On the fourth pitch the ball carries out to far left center.  I approach first in a languid jog knowing full well it’s gone. 

But as I’m rounding first I watch Katie Bell still running brashly against the risen wind, finally leaping, and dragging the ball from the shadows of the sun, falling gracefully into the hedges.