A line from a poet I’m fond of floated into consciousness as I clapped an ice bag to my left leg over the weekend.
‘I’ve gone back to the old ways of defeat,’ wrote Richard Hugo, ‘the softball field, familiar dust and thud.’
Tell me about it. We had invited friends to a morning of baseball and bagels in celebration of a birthday that fetches me the senior discount on Amtrak, among other perqs.
It wasn’t a serious game. Players switched teams, batted out of order and drifted in and out of the lineup to grab more food, chuck the baby ‘neath the chin or chat with late arrivals.
When we batted, though, we swung for the fences – ineffectually, in most cases. What’s tricky about slow-pitch is that the ball comes in so big and lazy that you can swing too soon and too hard and so corkscrew yourself into the ground while failing to make solid contact. Or at least that’s what happened to me.
Only one of us was in anything close to midseason form and since he’s the size of an NFL tight end, most of his shots sailed way over the centerfielder’s head.
Except for one.
That one was a screaming line drive hit right up the middle, which is where I, the pitcher, happened to be.
The ball ricocheted off my leg. Perhaps those of you who have never played the sport are thinking, good thing it was a softball. I have news for you. A softball is not soft.
It stung a little, maybe more than a little, but I walked it off, as we were encouraged to do in Little League.
Soon after, we took time out for the seventh-inning cake ceremony. In all of Sunset Park, busy with departmental cookouts and parents on playground duty, there was but one person with a lighter: Nobody smokes anymore.
Presented, on a baseball diamond, with a chocolate cake festooned with raspberries and one lit candle, I did what came naturally: I went into my home run trot, circling the bases so slowly that the candle stayed lit the whole time.
And then my leg began to throb. When I looked at it I noticed that the softball-that-was-not soft had implanted itself in my left calf. Or so it appeared.
A bag of ice materialized. My kind friends brought me a slice of cake. The author of the screaming liner was deeply apologetic.
A debate ensued: RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation) or ER. Since it was my birthday I was thinking more in terms of MICE: martini, ice (on the leg, not in the drink), etc., but that would have to wait until later.
One of my consultants warned that I could develop phlebitis.
“I thought you could only get that from flea bites,” I said, because when it comes to bad puns I am always in midseason form.
But when I got home, I looked up phlebitis, which led me to thrombosis and on to hypoxia, anoxia and embolism. Scary words. Worst-case scenario, a blood clot could go rogue and block traffic in some strategic body neighborhood, like, say, the lungs or the brain.
Call me a moron, but by temperament I am the opposite of an alarmist. Most seeming somethings, I assume, will turn out to be nothings. I’m usually right.
I thought back to my last softball injury: line drive to the cheek that time. A cheerful nurse told me I broke my face. But since they don’t put casts or splints on faces, the only thing to do was let it heal. Which it did.
If I go to the doctor, I decided, they’ll tell me to RICE, which I’m already doing, and skip the martini, which I was disinclined to do. So I figured I’d monitor and if anything disturbing developed, like a fever or serious heat in the affected area, I would reconsider.
Then I went out for martinis.
The next day, Sunday, a beautiful bruise bloomed on the affected area, mostly cabernet-colored shading to crimson and violet. But the swelling was down and I was able to climb the stairs unaided and when I went to bed, I slept.
Ditto, Monday. I walked to and from campus, taught my classes and slept well again.
On Tuesday, though, I realized I could send a photo of my Technicolor leg to my doctor’s office and see what they thought. They thought I ought to come in.
When the physician’s assistant asked me what happened I tried to sound like Vin Scully: “Swing and a line drive up the middle…”
Diagnosis: hematoma. In other words, a bad bruise. In other words, a seeming something that will turn out to be nothing.
Lesson I choose to ignore: that I’m too old for softball.
