The Baseball Journey: A Friendly Game of Toss

The baseball traveled through the air in its familiar low arc, and it began to wonder about the meaning behind its rather small existence. These two had been throwing it back and forth for the last half hour, trying with little success to convince themselves that they belonged in the major leagues. The baseball chuckled at the thought as it went pounding into the small one's thick leather glove at a measly 68 miles per hour!! You call that a fastball?, it thought as the big one bellowed a yell of approval.

"How fast do you actually think that was, I mean really. It certainly wasn't 98, but I'm sure it had to at least be in the low 80s!!", said the big one with an air of smug contentness and a stolid belief in his personal abilities. This made the baseball cackle even more violently as the small one managed to miss an incredibly poor attempt at a knuckleball, despite the pressure of the small one's fingernails digging into its skin, and went skipping over the lush grass before coming to a rest under a line of small evergreens at the side of a small, rather squat ranch house.

It was still sitting there 3 minutes later after the big one forced the little one to run after it because he certainly wasn't going to run after it. The baseball could have cared less, really, for it was content to have a small respite from the cycle that these two insisted on having every time they managed to get together. Still, since it had been stowed away for the last several months in a dank old box with naught but the odd creature or two to keep it company it was quite glad that it had finally been allowed to enjoy nature in all of its strange complexities.

"Man, my arm is completely dead!", said the big one while throwing the ball back to the small one in a high descending arc which allowed the baseball to bask in the warmth of the sun as it went slightly above the canopy of the great oak tree. This really puts it all in perspective, it thought as it crashed down through several layers of leaves and branches into the outstretched glove of the small one. The baseball felt the glove curved around it and it resigned itself to the fact that it was about to be stowed away once again. The small one pulled the glove off of his hand and stuck it, baseball and all, underneath his armpit. Ewwwww.

The two walked slowly and with matching swagger as they both applauded their ineptitudes, or so the baseball believed. If you were good enough for the majors, maybe I'd at least get to travel to one of those great ballparks you two speak about all the time, it thought with a trace of a disgruntled tone. The baseball mitt was thrown into a large plastic bin, passing through a thin layer of webbing that had until very recently covered the majority of the baseball's home (!).

"Hey dude, you wanna go to the beach tomorrow?", the big one asked just prior to slamming the door shut on the suddenly lonely baseball. Well, I would certainly like it, thought the baseball as it sat in the glove unable to do much of anything but reflect on its own inadequacies.