108 Stitches and Two Eights

My passion for fantasy baseball is evident. The work at UTRMinors has been strewn with enthusiasm since 2009. However, it started long before that.

Life's metaphors, memories wrapped inside a 3-inch diameter ball.

My brother kept all of his gear on a pitted wooden shelf in the back of dad's organized, yet chaotic garage. A shelf that held a vast surplus of various motor oils, window cleaner and mountains of buffing rags for his prized 1968 Buick Electra 225. A car so long that the tail lights nearly touched the closed garage door. A car that barely allowed me enough room to reach over and grab my brother's baseball mitt, and the worn baseball tied up inside of it.

"It's an old trick," Tracy said.
"You plant the ball as deep inside the webbing, then tie it shut with string."

Molding. Shaping. Safety. Security.

This was supposed to help morph the glove's pocket into a perfect cove, making the ease, and the art, of catching a baseball feel more complete, natural.

Catching a baseball is like life and the goals we strive for. We go after our goals because it feels natural. Reaching them makes us feel complete.

A baseball's countless scuffs aren't wear-and-tear. They are growth. They are scars. Badges of honor. Healing. They're memories.

A baseball's shape. Round. A metaphor of a life coming full circle. Like mine.

My days as a child up until today, baseball has always served me like a series of bridges. Necessary connections. That fresh break taking me from one land that built a memory to another that began a new one.

A baseball isn't a solitary thing. Just like us. It's got guts.

A core, multiple layers of windings, 108 stitches linking together "two cowhide number eights," I'd say as a kid. Just like all of us. A core held together by multiple layers with an outer skin. Intricate. Gutsy.

At times we look at life and want perfection. But think how life would be if everything was perfect. I aim to find the imperfect amongst the perfect.

This poem inspires me.

Tracy and I always joked about how we were so protective of that ball as if it was the only one we owned. The irony is that it was.

Just like life. Our only one.

And in a world striving to be perfect, there's nothing more perfect than the imperfect.





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