Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) Read Online Free PDF Page A

was sitting in my kitchen at two A.M . with my mom. Ever since I was little, she has always heard me whenever I’ve woken up in the night. We have this tradition: I pour us both some milk, she grabs some vanilla wafer cookies, and then I tell her my problems while we eat our snack. Meanwhile, my father and Samantha have always just slept right through everything.
    I secretly love those times. They’re comforting. I mean, the milk is cold, the cookies are good, and Mom is usually a great listener. Unless, that is, you’re trying to talk to her about a strange blanking-out episode her father had. Then she just shuts down.
    â€œYou don’t understand, Mom,” I said. “He totally froze. You know how he always says, Gotta get the shot ? That’s, like, his life’s motto. But he just sat there and let the eagle fly by.”
    â€œHoney, your grandfather has been shooting pictures for a long time. He knows what he’s doing. Maybe he just thought the light was bad, or the angle was wrong, or something.”
    â€œMom, he told me he’d been going there for thirty years, waiting for an eagle to fly by early in the morning. Then one does, and he doesn’t take a single shot? There’s something wrong. I’m telling you.”
    â€œPeter, people’s reflexes slow down when they get older. And your grandfather is seventy-eight years old. He probably just couldn’t react fast enough.”
    â€œNo, I saw his face after. It was like he wasn’t there, Mom. He just completely spaced out for, I don’t know, at least a minute. And then he was confused for a while, like he wasn’t sure what we were doing on top of the mountain.”
    â€œI don’t know. He seemed fine when you got home.”
    â€œHe didn’t seem fine. He gave me his cameras! To keep! He told me they were mine now. That’s not fine.”
    For a moment, Mom looked shaken by this piece of info. But then she said, “Oh, Peter. He was probably just trying to give you something to do with your time — you’ve been so mopey lately, ever since the … uh … Anyway, maybe he thought you could get some good use out of the equipment.”
    â€œYeah, he gave me the whole speech about finding a hobby or whatever. But I’m telling you, Mom: This was bigger than that.”
    â€œWell, we can keep an eye on him, honey. All right?”
    I nodded, and went back to my room. But I knew she still couldn’t understand. She hadn’t seen what I had seen.
    Mom didn’t know this, but my nighttime ritual wasn’t over at that point. Ever since my last baseball game, when I went back upstairs, I would turn on my computer and spend another hour or so flipping back and forth between a folder on my hard driveand a set of favorites on the Internet. It’s sad, really: All across America, untold thousands of teenagers were downloading music illegally, bullying other kids online, searching for sexy pictures, finding bomb-making recipes, hacking the Pentagon’s computers. Me, I always did the same exact thing every time. I would click into the “My Photos” folder and look through hundreds and hundreds of sports pictures my grandfather had taken of me since I was a little kid playing T-ball. The doctors had told me I would never pitch again, so I didn’t know why I was torturing myself, but there I was. Click! I’m six years old, running for first base with all my might. Click! I’m seven, looking very serious at the plate, facing a real live kid pitcher for the first time. Click! I’m eight, accepting the Player of the Year award. Click! I’m nine, ten, eleven, leaning forward on the mound, cool and composed, ready to mow down batter after batter.
    Sitting cross-legged on my bed with my laptop, I can feel the seams of an imaginary baseball against my fingertips. Sometimes, I even catch myself switching grips over and over again: four-seam