Billy Tourniquet tried his hand at pool and pinball. He rode the rails and clipped coupons. He worked with migrants up and down the California coast. He completed a plumbing program. Got certified too! He learned about fiduciary matters. He handed out beer to homeless people. He sang in midnight Christmas church choirs. He befriended young ladies and they trusted him and so they drank coffee together, at fast food restaurants, outside. They watched people. They talked.
But there was one thing Billy Tourniquet couldn’t do. He couldn’t dance. He took all the courses too…..courses in Tango, Polka, Samba, Salsa, Hip-hop, even break dancing, but he was too stiff. His back hunched. But then over at the bazaar, the Climkin’s weekly bazaar beside the horse stables, he bought a mystery box and inside were baseball cards and there was a crescent moon that night. He studied the backsides of the cards and learned about the acronyms – ERA and HR and SB and he got smitten and did some research and the wick ignited into a flame and soon a baseball forest fire in his mind. He hit up used book stores and bought baseball books and read about shifts and reserve clauses and Ted Williams and the more he read, the more he got that wanderlust. The locals said it was on account of there beings no clock in baseball and the the potential for a ball to travel into outer space.
Billy walked along the highway shoulder with crows waiting to pounce on road kill and those crows weren’t afraid of Billy and Billy wasn’t afraid of the crows and one of the crows said something soft to Billy and he felt encouraged so he walked and walked and walked some more. He toured towns and took a vow to keep on moving until he reached a baseball diamond and there were plenty of golden McDonald arches and Pentecostal churches and traffic lights and then finally, there were was a diamond and that very night a game and he watched one batter, the number nine hitter peruse the infield before stepping into the batter’s box and then he hit the ball where there weren’t any fielders and Billy listened as a few members of the crowd, older gentlemen all said, almost in unison, “that a way Wee Willie, hit ‘em where they ain’t.”
That very same night, Billy Tourniquet wandered into the woods, picked up a stick about the size of a baseball bat and before stepping into the imaginary batter’s box, he impersonated that batter, that number nine hitter. He perused the scene. He stared at the trees and birds and squirrels and then he stepped in and took a few pitches and then poked one between short and third and then he ran and when he reached what he thought was first base and the umpire signaled safe, Billy rolled his hands around in a circle and hopped on one foot and then jumped up and down and as he did, he felt pleasure on the bottom of his feet and the sensation lingered; it moved like acupuncture jolts up his spine and into his mind and he thought about trades and free agents and suicide squeezes, but he didn’t want to commit suicide. He wanted to bat again and there was no shortage of sticks for bats and space for a field so he batted again and again, for both teams, inning after inning, rolling his hands around in a circle and hopping on one foot and jumping up and down after every at bat.
brewers baseball and things 