Three Strikes and a Golden Retriever

Marcus stood at the plate, the baseball bat slick with sweat. Thirty kids watching from the bleachers — Jessica with her perfectly Glossier-highlighted cheekbones, Ryan being way too loud, the whole social hierarchy of sophomore year condensed into one terrifying inning.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Probably his mom again with another text about the vitamin D supplements she'd bought. "The coach said you need more energy for tryouts," she'd insisted that morning, practically force-feeding him the giant orange pills.

"Stee-rike three!" Coach Miller bellowed, and Marcus walked back to the bench, face burning. This was it. The defining moment of his high school career, and he'd choked.

Welcome to being sixteen.

Later, sprawling on his bedroom floor surrounded by a tangle of HDMI and ethernet cables, Marcus stared at his streaming setup. He'd been secretly building a gaming channel for months — "GoldenBoy_Games" had exactly forty-seven subscribers, mostly cousins and his dog Buster, a golden retriever who currently snored loudly beside him, tail thwapping against the cable box in that adorable, oblivious way only dogs could manage.

"You tried your best," his little sister Maya said from the doorway, and Marcus snorted.

"Best doesn't make varsity, Maya."

Jessica had slid into his DMs after the game though. "You looked good out there," she'd sent, and Marcus had spent twenty minutes overanalyzing three words and a single emoji.

His phone lit up again. A notification: "GoldenBoy_Games — +12 new subscribers."

Weird.

He opened the app and froze. Someone had clipped his baseball fail — the swing, the miss, the walk of shame — and it was trending. Comments were flooding in:

"lmao this is literally all of us"

"the way he just accepts his fate 😭"

"his internal monologue in that walk back to the bench must be NO thoughts head empty only vibes"

Marcus stared at his screen, Buster lifting his head to whine softly. The video had ten thousand views. Fifteen thousand. People weren't laughing at him. They were relating. The comment section was a collective hug from the internet, everyone sharing their own stories of striking out — in sports, in relationships, in just trying to figure out who they were supposed to be.

Jessica's name appeared in his notifications. "Can we hang this weekend? ;)"

Marcus looked at the snoring dog, the mess of cables, the vitamin bottle on his desk. Some days you strike out. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.