Perfect Emptiness
Jan 26 2010


You can’t fix your swing
and think,
he shook his head, despairingly.
Hitting coach as Zen master,
baseball
as practice.

He instructs about the mind
emptied,
on repetition
and muscle memory.
The strict discipline
of the strike zone,
indifference to fear.

A small spherical object
intersects
a long cylindrical one,
at 90 miles per hour
from 60 feet,
on a sweet spot
as big as a pencil eraser.
Perfect contact is effortless;
miss, and it’s bees in your fingers
a splintered bat.
You must follow-through, finish
coach intoned, his breathing slow —
like the cycle of existence,
enlightened bliss.

Contact hitters are made
sluggers born
— Ruth, DiMaggio
reincarnated.
Because the eye can’t move that fast,
and the mind
won’t stay still.
Filled
with its monkey chatter,
its flawed attachment
to outcome, to stats,
and all the distractions
a young man falls prey.
Like that pretty girl with the long blonde pony-tail,
left field stands
2 rows back.

They call the big leagues “The Show”
— the lavish club house,
travel, 1st class.
He can only hope —
a career minor leaguer,
talking trash on a bus
that smells of sweat and must,
buddying-up
in cheap motels.
But toeing the plate
under the blue-black dome of dusk
when the green manicured diamond
turns luminous,
it could just as well be Yankee Stadium
on a crisp October night.
When this philosopher of fouls and walks
slows down time to a stop
and suddenly sees everything
with spectacular unerring clarity
— the release, the spin, the speed.

A mighty swing.
Perfect emptiness.
Strike three.

So it’s a slow trot back to the dug-out,
listening to the usual boos and cat-calls,
rude allusions
to his maternity.
And another chance
to meditate on failure, the next at-bat,
on the future
and the past.

He tips his hat to the fans
and scans the crowd,
spitting artfully
trying not to be too obvious.
Hoping to salvage the day
with at least one major league catch
— left field stands
2 rows back.