The Longest Inning

The text came through at 2:47 AM, glowing against my bedroom ceiling like a judgment. Marc was dead. Forty-seven years old, and his heart had simply stopped running the bases.

I lay there, my iPhone clutched in my hand, the blue light washing over my face. Outside, Boston slept, but I was suddenly seventeen again, standing in the cul-de-sac where Marc taught me how to grip a baseball. "Don't strangle it," he'd say, adjusting my fingers. "Let it breathe."

We'd been friends since kindergarten, bound by the kind of loyalty that teenage boys mistake for invincibility. But life has a way of pitching curves you can't see coming. After college, Marc got wrapped up in something—a multilevel marketing scheme, a goddamn pyramid scheme selling wellness supplements. I'd told him it was a scam. He'd told me I was too cynical. That was our last real conversation.

Three years of radio silence. Three years of me checking my phone whenever his name might appear, then pretending I didn't care when it didn't.

I got out of bed and walked to the window. Below, the city was quiet. Marc's sister had sent the message— brief, bloodless, asking if I wanted the old baseball glove we'd shared, the one we'd both signed inside the pocket freshman year, promising we'd play in the majors together.

I stared at the screen until my eyes burned. All those years, all that stubbornness, and for what? The pyramid scheme had collapsed six months ago. I knew because I'd googled him, drunk and lonely at 3 AM, and felt a sick little thrill when I saw the headlines. Now he was gone, and the last thing between us was silence I'd been too proud to break.

The sun was coming up when I finally replied: "Send it."

Some innings stretch out forever, and you never know when you'll get another chance to swing.