as a child
i played ball for
our local moose lodge 
running, fielding, throwing 
i could have been
the say hey kid
of Chillicothe little league 
but i never swung
my bat
maybe it was some
sort of fear of failure 
or some other deep seated issue 
even Freud couldn’t analyze 
all i know is that
i went years without even
trying to make contact 
that metal Easton
sat on my shoulder so long 
they could have melded 
into one new cybernetic 
appendage
eventually i grew tired
of this self imposed 
routine of mine
so in the last game
in the last at-bat
of my little league career
down 0-2 in the count
i said to hell with it all
and i swung
on a fastball
straight down the middle 
oh how i wish
you could have heard the cheers 
of the crowd 
you would have thought 
H. Christ had come back for his encore 
but oh
how i wish you heard 
the silence 
as the shortstop grabbed the ball
and threw it to first 
and as the ump called me out 
as i was five feet 
from the base