By William Beachum

My jersey didn’t fit and I knew that I didn’t belong in it.

Baseball masquerades as a team sport, promising that everyone gets to wear the same jersey. The jersey is a prize — it’s a hallmark of belonging on a team whose only goal is to win. The team’s success rests upon the sum of its individual performance. The game requires you to understand that your individual achievement allows you to be supported by your team, and anything less than that leaves you vulnerable. If you detract from the sum, you are then asked to take off your jersey. I learned the stakes of this game very quickly.

I spent most of my early days “playing” baseball: not playing baseball at all and staying in the dugout. My parents wouldn’t be disappointed if I stayed on the sidelines and waited. They would simply be waiting for me to start. People still supported me when they were able to root for me — when they were able to feel like a part of my journey. That support was lost when they watched me fail and realized that I wasn’t who they believed I could be. My jersey was washed and placed neatly on my bedside, untouched by the shame that would stain it.

Waiting for the game to start felt so repetitive. I would feel the spit shooting out of the raspy throat of my friend’s dad as he read off the lineup for the day. I would focus on the wall of chest hair on the lip of his stomach that peaked out so I could distract myself. I would relish in the stiffness of the seat below me and settle into the delight of observing. I would watch the other kids get yelled at by their parents while I only had to rearrange bats in the dugout.

I treated most of my early childhood this way. I refused to play the game because I knew that I would be disappointed if I tried and I failed. There were rules of socializing that I didn’t understand how to follow and I didn’t understand how to win.

Eventually, the loneliness of sitting in the dugout became too much to handle. In the sixth grade, I decided that I should start playing the game.

I first played as an infielder. When you play in the field, you have no control. All of my power was held in the unwashed fingers of other insecure boys. I would let my cleats settle into the dirt around me, lock myself into place, and hope that no one would notice that I didn’t know what I was doing. The lack of control made the scene of the game feel so much more grating. I could hear the sounds of my coach’s sunflower seeds swimming around in his mouth — the gnawing and locking and cracking — more than I could hear the sound of my own breath. I could feel the tightness of my own pants, the chafing of my thighs becoming a constant reminder of my shame. I could smell that my jersey hadn’t been washed for a month because my mom hadn’t been around much. I was so uncomfortable. My jersey didn’t fit and I knew that I didn’t belong in it.

I watched each opposing player step up to the plate, hoping that I would not be given the chance to prove myself. I didn’t want to be known.

In baseball, if a player messes up in the field, that mistake can all be traced back to you — you can’t bullshit your way out of it. That mistake — the one time you turned your head the wrong way or took the wrong step — becomes an open invitation for your teammates to ridicule you. This pressure to avoid any opportunity for shame became the driving force of how I played the game. I would attempt to talk to others — try to match the pace of their words and the harshness of their jokes — but they always knew that I was wearing a jersey that wasn’t mine.

The key to their acceptance was your knowledge of the rules of the game: saying sorry, feeling comfortable, wanting less. Any deviance from those rules was shameful. To avoid that shame, that sickening feeling of unsafety, I would lock my feet into the dirt and hope that I wouldn’t be noticed. If it failed, I’d apologize, and hope that my dad believed in me less that day. Baseball, then, felt visceral in my subservience to the game.

I remember the day that I understood that the game wasn’t going to help me. As I was getting ready for a doubleheader at Kenning Park, I painstakingly slid into my baseball pants. I looked around for my jersey, wondering if my mom had forgotten to wash it. Sprinting around my house and landing in the basement, I saw my jersey on the floor with a giant rip on the left shoulder. It looked chewed and spat out, ripped apart by a force that wanted it to be ruined. All of the jerseys that came before it felt tied into its fabric. I had tried to fit into this jersey for so long that the structure of its being couldn’t handle my attempts to reinvent it. It felt so obvious — such a literal metaphor. I understood then that I wasn’t meant to play the game this way.

It was time for me to control the game I was playing, and I determined that I wanted to try to be a pitcher.

Being a pitcher requires you to understand exactly how the game is played and for you to exercise that power by stealing it from others. After spending so many years observing and understanding what it felt like to be powerless, I was angry enough to know the power of pretending. I started to apply what I had learned. I stitched the fabric of the armor I would create for myself: a new version of this jersey. 

I would step up onto the mound and feel the weight of the leather in my unwashed hands. I had been given strategies to win the game: fastballs, curveballs, and compliments. I had ways to understand who I was supposed to be and when — conversation tricks that made people gravitate towards me. But the tricks were more an exercise in maintenance. The real power was stepping onto the mound and knowing that I got to control how I want other people to play the game. The look of confusion in the opponent’s eyes was soaked in the knowledge that they wanted to know me. If I used the right devices and applied the right strategies, then I would finally be understood.

It became lonely after a while — not enough to distract me.

Perfectly curating how my jersey looked and how other people saw it became a form of ecstacy. I got to play as an individual and know that I controlled how my team saw me. Because I had control. I got to determine the rules of how I want to play.

I quit playing baseball shortly after. When you understand how frail the game is, it starts to lose its appeal. I realized that the process of constantly attempting to stitch yourself into something new is exhausting.

I don’t need to wear that stupid fucking jersey. ■