The Legendary Catch by Colin Gee
My sister was badgering me about our father Clive Rawlings, the same Clive Rawlings who struck out fifteen for the Milwaukee Braves on the 4th of July 1972 en route to a perfect game. Clive’s wife had passed away the previous year and he had taken to moping around his very large and empty house and drinking before lunch. He was going to be seventy and my sister was really worked up so I went by the house on a Tuesday morning and was sitting there with her with my cranberry juice listening to this hulking angry old man berate the state of the neighbors’ lawns when in toddled Larry Siegel. Larry Siegel of course was the Braves catcher who caught the perfect game for my father the 4th of July in 1972 and, Jesus, Larry was like a thousand years old.
Hey yeah, Clive, been a long time, he grunted with what could have been his last breath, through toothless gums.
What are you doing here, Siegel? demanded my father, tensing to strike from next to the sideboard. Do I need to send my family away?
Larry tottered slightly in surprise and my father shouted, Or how about a drink?
No thanks, mumbled Larry. His face got red and he leaned against the counter and said, Clive I’ve been thinking about that line drive.
What line drive, growled Clive Rawlings, eyes darting around the room. Off my sister and myself. The framed photographs on every single wall.
The one Willy snared off the carpet to save your perfect game in the top of the eighth, coughed Larry. We both know it bounced into his glove. You and I both saw that he trapped it.
Bullshit, screamed my sister, leaping to her feet and pulling a VHS tape from her oversized handbag.
I saw it and so did he and so did everyone in the gosh darn stadium, Larry said, pointing to my father, and I think myself, or fifty thousand phantom spectators.
Well that’s just the game it is, spluttered Clive Rawlings as he turned back to the mahogany sideboard and steadied himself on it with his glass. Happens every day in baseball!
Anyway, sniffed Larry Siegel, looking at me, and he shuffled right out again.
But my sister already had the game up in grainy color on the big TV and she slowed it to a crawl as William Goldstein dove head-first into the centerfield turf and the baseball…
Oh my God, she whispered. It’s true.
Why do you carry that damn thing around with you everywhere? my father demanded. How about you look at the one where we win the goddamn pennant?
But my sister was already running down the sidewalk, weeping loudly. I picked up my cranberry juice and went to the closet to look for that other tape, a notorious 1-hitter.
Colin Gee (X: @ColinMGee) is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette. Poetry and play in Left in the Lurch with DUMBO Press. Novel Lips with Anxiety Press. Stories and novellas in The Penult with LEFTOVER Books.
