The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

14
Take One
ERIN HILL
A spindly-legged string bean, I stand in the batter’s box and the count is full. My local automotive-shopsponsored
team uniform is cheap and ill-fitting; my polyester shorts are scratchy and riding up; my red
mesh hat is boxy and unbroken. I look to the third base coach, my dad, for direction. Counting on the wild
inaccuracy of most fifth-grade pitchers, he tells me to take one.
I take a massive swing at a pitch high and outside for strike three.
As we walk to the dugout, Dad looks confused and I look embarrassed. I hate disappointing him (still do).
“What happened? I thought I told you to take one?”
“I did take one! I took a huge swing!”
“What? No, take one means take a pitch. Don’t swing. Make the pitcher throw a strike!”
“How was I supposed to know that??”
After ten years of baseball in the background of our lives, I’d somehow missed this jargon. I didn’t yet
know our family’s unspoken philosophy: take one – and then swing away.
***
Twice divorced, Grandma Doris lived alone my entire life. She didn’t go to church, but she knew devotion,
and her devotion was to the Cincinnati Reds.
At Grandma’s house: National Geographics on her built-ins, an electronic organ in her living room, an
adding machine in her office, gems in her jewelry box, a bar in her basement. Wall-to-wall carpet and air
conditioning and the kind of mid-century modern furniture we die for today.
THE UNDER REVIEW