All of us have our Bad Days, or Weeks, even, but Avery Mitchell was having what you might call a Bad Life. It seemed to start along about the Time he told his wife it was his Intention to Come out of Retirement to Pitch for the Padres. He was serious, it had been three years, and that was Good Enough, but the Padres, they really needed his Services, and it could only help the shrinking attendance at their Home Games, too. Once again, he was ready to take that Walk to the Mound.
But there was a problem here, see, one that for the Crap of them no one could get 'ol Avery to see. It wasn't that he'd been injured, like he'd had an elbow blown out or anything, and it wasn't that the Padres weren't actually doing that poorly, either. And it wasn't that all he'd done Athletically for the past three Years was sit around on the Couch watching TV eating Cheetos and smoking Salem Lights and Drinking Milwaukee's Best. All this was, as they say, peripheral.
No, the Problem, the problem was, see, that Avery Mitchell had never even played for the Padres in the First Place! Or any Other team, for That Matter. In fact, unless you counted his Very Early Years as a Tee Ball star in Scranton, PA, the man had never played any form of baseball or any other sport, in his Life.
But of this none of them could get through to Avery, who was on Workman's Comp after a little Accident at the Factory a few months back, and all he wanted to talk about was how it was gonna be the Bottom of the 9th and he was gonna strike out Derek Jeter in the World Series, and the Padres were gonna win, etc., etc. His wife finally got 'round to thinking it was Time for some sort of Family Intervention.
So it was a Sunday Afternoon and the In-Laws were there, and the Children, even, and Avery's Parents and his Aunts and Uncles, and he thought they were all over to throw some kind of Party for him to Celebrate his Decision. But then, they all went around the room and everybody was telling him just how Deluded he was, how he was hurting not only his Family but Himself, his future, and how he was hurting them, and the Whole Time he was just sitting there with his mouth all open like a Caught Fish, not that he got it, what they were saying, but that he just couldn't believe the Gall of them all, I mean, how Unsupportive! All these losers who'd never had a Dream in their lives but at least who had, on the Surface of it, affected to support his when he got around to having one, and it that was when he was 42, well, we All move at our Own Pace, do we not, and Damn, man, if they all weren't going about this in Entirely the Wrong Way, he was thinking. Well, to Hell with 'em, then. He'd prove them wrong. Somehow.
And he's by this time tuned them all Totally Out and their lips were moving and they were getting downright angry and he couldn't hear anything anymore save for the sound of the anger running thru his own Beating Heart, but yet the Seeds of Doubt had been Planted, though he knew it Not at Present (which is all we have in This Life, anyway), and he was thinking, was Avery, about a Time when for him and the Rest of the World all things were said to be possible, at least by people for Who it had always, from where he was sitting, at least, pretty fucking Impossible, and he had no memories of a Happy Home on Easter Sunday with Love all around, the green grass Dappled with Dew, he HAD, right then at least, an Generalized Impression of, What Bullshit! What a Lie, all of it, Hypocrites, Failures, the Suffocators of every Dream a Boy could ever have ever Had, THIS, his own Family! Well, you wanted me to know the Truth? I Know the Truth. And the Truth has no Comfortable Breathing Room in it for YOU, motherfuckers.
And all because he wanted to drive over to Spring Training. But Avery Mitchell, HE would Prove them Wrong.
Somehow.
— And, Dear Reader, this brings us to Crux of the Cross on which a Crucified Christ moans, I Thirst. The rest of what he's said to have said, we'll get to that, but THIS brings us to the Dubious Splendor of What God Has Joined Together, but in a way it all comes down in one of three hundred billion Parallel and Tesseracting Shrinking Dwarf-Star Illuminated Universes where Somebody we'll call Avery Mitchell (not his Real Name) wants to strike out somebody named Derek Jeter (not his real name, either) and just what in the 900 Billion Names of God do you think happens then?
I'll bet you know. Yep. I'll sure bet you do. But, like Everything Else, you'll just have to wait 'till Tomorrow to find out what They're gonna do.