One More Out to Go

My nose was the last thing on my mind. It was the last inning of the second round of the Little League All-Star baseball tournament. With just one out remaining, I had what every pitcher dreams of having intact with the game on the line; a no-hitter. Any one pitch could do so many things, could end so many things. This next pitch could be it.

I had never read The Chosen by Chaim Potok and wouldn’t until I was a teacher entering my fifth year in the classroom. In the novel’s opening chapter, Reuven Malter, an Orthodox Jew, gets hit in the face with a baseball off the bat of Danny Saunders from a rival Jewish sect. The two boys hate each other in this opening chapter because the two teams hate each other, and well, that’s just what they’re supposed to do. Potok even implies that Danny somehow has control over the direction of the baseball off his bat and that he purposely lines it at Reuven’s face, shattering his glasses and putting him in danger of going blind.

What Potok is doing in a masterful way is using the physical impairment of Reuven’s eyes to trigger the spiritual growth he’s beginning to experience and “see” as the story unfolds. He and Danny both change, becoming best friends despite their religious differences. Reuven suffers tremendous pain in the hospital because of his injury, but had it not happen, the boys would have left the baseball field that day no better off than they were. Physically intact? Yes. Spiritually enlightened? Not even close. The walls of bitterness would have been even more impenetrable.

But the ball did manage to find Reuven’s face that day. Just like the ball managed to find mine so many years ago. It was a hot July day, and I was manning my position at shortstop. We were just days away from the start of the baseball tournament, days away from my potential no-hitter on the mound. The ball was hit in the gap between me and third base, and when I dove, it took a bad hop.

My face exploded in pain, just like Reuven’s does in the book. Blood rushed from my nose and everyone scurried around me. My coach squatted down and looked at my face, and I remember him saying, “I don’t think it’s too bad. I don’t think it’s broken.”

Mama showed up. I got in the car and checked myself out in the mirror. My nose was entirely shifted over toward my eye. Coach wasn’t a very good liar.

We went to the doctor. He told us that surgery would be the day after I was scheduled to pitch, so I knew then that I’d get at least two games under my belt. That was what I was hoping for, anyway.

“So it’s broken,” my mom said. “I guess he can’t play baseball.”

The only thing I was worried about was not playing baseball. I wasn’t even scared of the surgery. I was just hoping she wouldn’t bring up not playing, so I’d have a reason to play. You know, ask forgiveness instead of permission. I knew what the answer from the doctor would be. Season over.

“What’s the worse that can happen?” the doctor replied, as dry as he’d been from the start. “He can’t break it anymore.”

His answer was yes, I could play, and yes Ms. LeJeune, even the night before the surgery. He told me to go do my best and win. He even feigned a smile. As dry and uninspired as he was, the simple simplicity of his words has stuck with me for eighteen years.

He was right. I couldn’t break the nose any worse, even if I did take another ball off the face. Likewise, Reuven Malter in The Chosen couldn’t have felt any more pain and any more fear, but the tragedy was a necessary obstacle to a new and great opportunity. The lesson here is that no matter how many baseballs explode in our face on the field, no matter how painful life gets, there is always a doctor telling us to go win and go do our best. There is always a caring coach telling us no, it’s not broken, you’re going to be just fine.

And even when he’s lying through his teeth, there is still a message in the words.

Life is rough, and when trying times happen, the dragon tries to discourage us with full force. But we have to realize that the eyeglasses can be replaced, the noses and eyes will heal, and life around the bend will place us on the pitcher’s mound with one more out to go, primed and ready for glory.

More often than not, our writing is inspired by the bad parts of our lives, for example, getting smashed in the face with a baseball. This is okay some of the time. This week, let’s focus on the coach who told us to keep going. For many writers stuck in a rut, this is often the jump start they need.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.