The Seventh Inning Stretch

Marcus peeled the orange while sitting on the aluminum bleachers, his fingers stained with citrus oil. His son's baseball team was losing 0-7, and the other parents had stopped cheering somewhere around the third inning. Now they just checked their phones, faces illuminated by blue light, moving through the afternoon like a colony of the undead. Marcus felt like a zombie himself—these days, everything seemed gray around the edges. He'd been working sixty-hour weeks at the firm, sleeping in the guest room, nodding along while Sarah told him about her day, her voice fading into background noise. She'd stopped asking if he was actually listening months ago. The orange burst in his mouth, sharp and electric. For a second, he actually tasted something. Then his son stepped up to the plate. The kid had been in a slump all season, striking out every at-bat, but Marcus saw him adjust his helmet, saw the way his shoulders settled into something like resolve. The pitch came—high and outside—and the bat connected with a sound like thunder. The ball arced toward the fence, and Marcus found himself on his feet, shouting, his heart hammering against his ribs. The boy rounded second base, grinning like he'd just discovered something miraculous about possibility. Marcus sat back down, his hands still trembling. The world came back into focus. The grass was impossibly green. The sky was that particular shade of orange that only exists at five in the afternoon. He realized he'd been given a second chance, that some version of himself wasn't dead yet. He pulled out his phone and texted Sarah: 'I'm listening now.' Then he watched his son cross home plate and thought, sometimes, you get to start over.