By: Mike Rainnie

Sometimes when I’m sitting watching TV or idle at my desk at work my right hand grips an imaginary baseball.  I can feel it like it was really there. I haven’t thrown a baseball for at least ten years, and yet my body remembers those days when I held a ball, a lord of the diamond, standing on the mound with command of four pitches, the happiest I have ever been on this planet. In conspiracy with the catcher, we would plot enigmatic paths of flight that would baffle any hitter, once getting a lefthander to spin himself right off his feet in the batter’s box, falling on his butt in utter surprise and disgust. He did poke a cheap single to the opposite field on the next pitch proving the old adage: “Good pitching will always beat good hitting and vice versa.” The art of legerdemain, prestidigitation, and guile. Always made me smile when people said that baseball was boring—everybody loves a magic show!