The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

57
A Baseball Story
CLAIRE TAYLOR
My father remembers feeling like the ball was traveling in slow motion and he was frozen in place. My
mother remembers it was Father’s Day; every dad through the gate was gifted a pair of boxer shorts. My
brother remembers watching old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the waiting room while eating a
Whatchamacallit candy bar. My sister was too young to remember anything at all. And I remember
thinking, in the split second after the ball smashed into my cheek, “Wow, that hurt. I should probably cry
now,” and then I burst into tears.
The June 21, 1992 meeting between the San Antonio Missions and the Wichita Wranglers was halted
somewhere around the third or fourth inning when a foul ball rocketed into the stands behind home plate
and collided with my seven-year-old face. I had bent down to take a sip from my oversized soda and when I
lifted my head back up, a ball was flying toward me with such alarming speed that neither my father on
one side of me nor my brother on the other, baseball glove already on his hand, had a chance to reach out
and prevent the impact. For a moment, the entire stadium was stunned into silence, and then just as
suddenly, the air was pierced with the sound of my scream. There was blood. Confusion. The stitches of
the ball formed a bruised imprint on my cheek. Later, a doctor would tell us that another inch higher and
the ball could have blinded my left eye permanently.
My dad scooped me up and carried me down through the stands, past the hushed crowd with their palms
covering their shocked mouths. Out through the silent stadium to the parking lot where we piled into our
car and drove straight to the hospital. I recall sitting in a hospital room with ice on my face. I recall taking
X-rays, the weight of the lead apron. I recall feeling outraged that my brother and sister got to eat candy
bars and watch TV while all of this was happening. After the hospital, we went to a burger joint whose
name I can’t remember but whose booths I can still picture in my mind as if I were sitting in one right now. I
ate french fries that I squished flat between my thumb and forefinger to make them thin enough to push
through the thin opening of my sore, swollen jaw. At some point that summer, a baseball arrived in the
mail for me, signed in blue marker by all of the players on the San Antonio Missions. Every inch of the ball
is covered in illegible signatures. It is an unsightly, worthless token that I have nevertheless continued to
carry with me from place to place throughout my life.
Sixteen years after this incident, I married a man who collects autographed baseballs. For a while he
attempted to collect the signatures of every living Hall of Famer, which is how we came to have signed
balls from Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Al Kaline. We have balls signed by members of the 2006
ISSUE 4 | SUMMER 2021