Suder

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So, I’m up at the plate in the top of the ninth and the first pitch is, I grant you, an honest-to-God textbook strike and the fat umpire’s backwards dance and that turn to the right he manages don’t offend me at all. And then the second pitch comes whistling in way inside and I hear that fat man in blue yell, “Steee-rike!” and I turn to catch the tail end of his routine and I just can’t believe it. So, I flip the bat in my hand like a baton, as is my custom, and step up to him, face to face, and give him the questioning eye.

There he is right in front of me, behind that foam-filled apron, and he yells, “Strike!”

“That was way inside,” I tell him, “I could feel it on my pants.”

“Strike,” he repeats and lets out this little shit-eating grin and I really want to hit him and I tell myself not to and turn away.

“Blind bastard,” I says under my breath.

And he says to me, “If you can’t—”

I cut him off: “Why don’t you go read up on the strike zone.”

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