You Should Be So Lucky

by Cat Sebastian

The world is filled with people who could happily be alone, their solitude interrupted by occasional conversations with friends. Mark might, in fact, be one of them. But Eddie isn’t. You can see the words he isn’t saying bubbling away just beneath the surface; you can see every aborted effort to reach out.

He remembers what George said: it can be a beautiful game. And maybe Mark’s seen some of that, maybe when the sun is shining and the stadium smells like freshly cut grass, maybe when every play seems like a coalescence of talent and luck. The thing about baseball is that it’s slow, and that each game is, essentially, meaningless. That’s enough to make plenty of people stay away from it. But the glacial pace and the low stakes give you time to look at each individual component of the game and properly appreciate it.