Three Strikes Against Memory

The baseball diamond glowed under floodlights that seemed too bright for a Tuesday night in middle age. Marcus sat in Section 214, seat 12, checking his iPhone for the third time in as many minutes. No message. Not that he expected one — not after three years of divorce and silence.

'You're missing it,' Sarah said, nudging his elbow. She was twenty-five, with the kind of optimism that made him tired. 'Batter's up.'

He watched the player step to the plate. The kid couldn't be older than twenty-two, swinging for fences Marcus had stopped reaching for years ago. The pitch came — a curveball that broke late and low. Strike one.

His iPhone buzzed. A notification from work: 'Q3 projections revised downward. Bull market officially over.' The irony tasted like stale beer. He'd spent twenty years chasing bulls, real and metaphorical — the literal ones during that brief phase in his twenties when he'd thought rodeo riding would fix whatever was broken inside him, and the market bulls that had defined his career since.

'You okay?' Sarah asked.

'Just remembering,' Marcus said. 'My father took me to games like this. He'd drink too much and talk about how life was just baseball — you swing, you miss, you swing again. But he died before he ever got his hit.'

The batter swung again. Strike two. The crowd groaned in that collective voice that sounded like every disappointment Marcus had ever collected.

'What happened to the bull riding?' Sarah asked, surprising him. She'd been listening after all.

'He died,' Marcus said, then corrected himself. 'The bull won.'

His iPhone lit up again. This time it was his ex-wife: 'Emma asked about you. She wants to know if you're coming to her graduation.'

The batter connected — a line drive that sailed into the outfield stands. The crowd roared. Marcus watched the ball disappear into the darkness, thinking about all the things he'd swung at and missed. The bull he'd ridden for eight seconds in Colorado. The marriage he'd thought would last forever. The daughter he'd seen six times since the divorce.

'Marcus?' Sarah's hand covered his.

He looked at his iPhone, then at the field where the batter rounded third base. 'I need to make a call,' he said.

Some bull markets end in crashes. Others end when you finally decide to swing for something real.