On the day of the big game, I got up and ran five miles to limber up, as I always do. But this day was different. This day was special. This was the day the teams would be chosen from amongst the best players in the prison, two teams that would play against each other and vie for the right to play an outside team which was coming all the way from New Jersey to play against the prison.

This was a big honor. The team from New Jersey was good, and it would take a very good team to beat them, as we knew from years past. I play pitcher, and I gave it my best for the try outs, but I wasn’t quite good enough to make the “A” team. It was a disappointment, but I was placed on the “B” team. We weren’t expected to win.

The afternoon tryouts completed, we went back to our units for count and then reported to the softball field in the evening after dinner.

Thunderclouds built up on the horizon, and the smell of freshly-mown grass was sharp in the air. Slanting late afternoon sunlight made everything sharp and clear. The stands were full of heckling prisoners and the crack of the bat rang out in the air. We were racing against the coming rain, and the innings went by quickly.

“You’re a bum, R—!” Someone good naturedly shouted from the stands when I walked a batter in the fourth inning. “Book of stamps says you can’t strike out the next three in a row!”

I ignored the heckling and concentrated on my pitching. Dust from previous plays hung in the air of the infield, giving a golden nimbus to the ball as it described its arc toward the plate. Crack! The batter ripped into it, a line drive right to my head. I threw up my glove to protect my face, and – smack!! – the ball flew right into my glove.

The crowd in the stands roared its approval, and poured out onto the field. The game was over. We had miraculously won. And I would be pitching against the visiting outside team! This was a very great honor indeed.

That night, lying in my bunk in the dark, I reflected upon the day’s events and the course of my life in general. I had been in prison for fifteen years. I realized that I didn’t know any longer what was important in life. A prison softball game was just a flurry of dust in the scheme of things, and I shouldn’t attach too much significance to it. Yet this was my world. I had done the best I could that day, but was it important? Probably not.

Yet in two years I would be released. In two years I would again be free. Maybe then I would find things that were important, and the hollow, aching core of me would be filled. I listened to the sounds of the crickets, remembered the sharp crack of the bat, and fell asleep with the hope still alive in my heart.

Only two more years…

WR is serving a seventeen-year sentence for a drug crime.