A disgraced king walks off the mound, one hand hiding his soiled seat, the other shielding his eyes from the stadium lights searching for tears which threaten to fall. Two batters, 2 home runs. A crown left shimming in the dirt.
The former king, shut out from shelter by his daughters in the eighth, rides with deserting knights into the storm. The longest off-season he will ever know. He will spend winter in the hovel, holding a mock-trial for two pitches which exposed him beyond his days. The mighty redwood has fallen, chopped by Father Time and an underdog wildcard team who barely broke 90 games. He takes the bench and does not move. He knows his arm wanes like a moon, the crescent falling below the western foothills.
The fans file out. A traffic jam won't be worth watching the bloodbath. His jersey is flattened on the pavement for cars to roll their tires over. The 31 million a year witch, burned not only on the mound, but at at the mound at The Ravine, his home.
The wildcard underdogs snap their photo on the same mound where he lost it all. A technician reaches for the light switch and darkness falls over the field. A quiet car drives him out from under the bowels of the stadium. The mansion the king walks into is held together by other giants, once felled, slaughtered, and repurposed to serve other kings, to await a brush fire or the cold and sickly rot of insects and bacteria, and time.
The Ravine will make a man and unman him in the same walls. Some say that it is just a game, but The Ravine knows better, the game is a test, and it is brutal, and everyone loses.
The Ravine is ground carved by meteors, and an unearthly energy flows from its soil. A disgruntled fan might dig below the stadium and find burial grounds, unsettled vendettas, ancient wrongs that control the destinies of men who've dared to tread the field; ghosts rise up and move the infinitesimal finger mechanics on the leather, and a low and inside goes high and in the zone for a meatball struck like lightning over the gate, a shooting star which deposes thrones, which shows clear the limits of mortal bone, and how Time always goes undefeated in the game.
The Ravine is full to the brim of secrets. Soaked into the green are the many misplacements of lost fathers, of settled-for lives, abandoned hopes, failed love, emotions too terrible to shake outside the walls of The Ravine. And here they are emptied onto the shoulders of men whom we beg to perform inhuman acrobatics, navigate chess at 100 miles per hour, and master the grip of a sphere— that is to say the whole world— stitched with a crooked equator, fingers nestled at each of the tropics. And when they fail, they shake these fetters from their shoulders, the soil of The Ravine swallows them whole, pitchforks are lit, and effigies rolled over tire by tire in the parking lot, like tanks desecrating a statue of a despot.
The Ravine knows that evil comes here to be tried. And some men, cursed by ghosts below, personify the unspoken words meant for a father gone, for the once-promised life destroyed by a few bad genes, for potential ruined by circumstance, for the darkness searching for light, these men are a repository for the shattered emptiness of existence; they are the chip rails for an emotional investment in chaos— the infinite unseen variables that outcome are heir to—the tightened fists on an armrest which try to land safely a plane rocked by turbulence; the anguished mind leaping out into nothingness shouting “God Save The King!” for they know nothing else will.
And when chaos roars, we leave The Ravine feeling empty, robbed, broken, racked by gnashing. And yet we also feel righteous in what we knew all along, that the prophets and sages were right, that life is empty, stolen, imperfect, and full of suffering. God did not save the King, God has forsaken us and now someone must be sent to the guillotine that we may feel some nudge of control over the wilderness.
The Ravine holds blood, not emptied since 1988, and it holds grudges, and fears. This is what is meant by a pitcher “on the mound.” A mass grave ready to blow the sorrows of the world over the fence; the hill which raises kings and severs them, publicly, in two pitches, two stars shot into the yard, two bolts of lightning high in the zone, hanging fruit plucked out of thin air to be swallowed whole, the seeds spat out by your rival onto your headstone.
The Ravine rests for the winter. The great beast without reverence or hope turns its belly over to digest the charnel and carrion, knowing its place and service to the world.