Battle Fatigue by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online Page B

was not when Karl Moltke showed up. Instead he came along in the spring after I made my comeback.
    I owed my new standing to the correct application of my two pinkies. It had started during baseball practice. Mr. Bradley watched me at bat and then called me over. “I told you what your problem is,” he said while his fingers kneaded the sinew in his damaged shoulder as though he were looking for something lost in there.
    I knew the problem. He had been telling me all spring. I gripped the bat too tightly and it choked my swing. I tried to loosen up but every time the pitcher stared at me, my fingers tightened.
    â€œThat’s why they stare at you like that, Joel,” said Mr. Bradley, still searching through his shoulder.
    â€œI can’t help it.”
    â€œTell you what you do. Hold your pinkies out.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œJust try it.”
    He had me swing the bat with my little fingers pointed out and suddenly my swing felt so easy that when I connected with a ball it just leaped off the bat into the air to the far end of the park and beyond.
    I have become a home run hitter. I have more home runs and a better batting average than Donnie LePine. Of course he is still a better fielder and a better base runner. But everyone loves a home run hitter. I am going to get a varsity letter, a big orange letter that you sew on the pocket of an ivory-colored buttoned sweater. There are twenty-five team members and twelve varsity letters. I have never gotten one. Tony Scaratini always gets the one for my position. But maybe not this year.
    We have a good team this year because Mr. Bradley finally realized that Rocco Pizzutti is not a third baseman. Mr. Bradley stood on the mound, fingers working his shoulder, and said, “Come over here, Rocco.” He turned him toward home plate and told Stanley to hold up a mitt. Then Rocco pulled back his left arm and threw.
    Stanley screamed and dropped the glove in pain. And that was it. Rocco has become a pitcher. No one can hit him. No one even wants to be standing there when he throws—not the batter, not the catcher, not even the umpire. If the catcher misses and the pitch hits the backstop fence it gets stuck there, wedged in the chain links.
    This is my first winning team and my hitting streak is one of the reasons why. Mr. Bradley smiles at me and jokes with me. All my teammates want to be around me. Girls want to be around me, though Kathy still thinks I’m creepy. Suddenly Susan Weller is talking to me and not just neighing and spitting. And I notice that she doesn’t look a bit like a horse. She looks very nice.
    I enjoy my new standing. Of course I will have to learn soccer and get a lot better at basketball if I want to maintain this position all year—like Donnie, who has varsity letters in all three sports.
    I might write about this in my diary. For my birthday my parents gave me a red leather book with a strap across the pages that locks with a small brass key. Every few weeks I carefully unlock the book, examine its blue-lined empty pages, and just as carefully lock it up. I do this over and over again. I have for months now. But I’ve been thinking that I might write about events. What Fidel Castro said that day. How the astronaut training program will someday send the first men to space—if the Russians don’t get there first and make the moon Communist. How Ted Williams hit three home runs in the same day for the Red Sox. I have become an enthusiast for power hitters now that I am one. And who else is there to root for, now that the Dodgers are gone?
    Or I could use this diary as an imaginary friend to talk to about the things I can’t talk to my friends about. Like my fear of nuclear war or the shape of Susan Weller’s no-longer-horselike body. Maybe I should write about sex. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I am not going to talk to anyone about it.
    I don’t know how to write a diary.
    The