The Next Unassisted Triple Play
It is 2018. I am watching the Cleveland Indians versus the Houston Astros on ESPN 13 (El Trece), in Virtual Experience. I am positioned as the second base umpire. The Astros are up 3-2 and batting. There are runners on first and second and no outs. The count on the batter is 1 and 2. I am two thirds of the way through a hot dog with no condiments, which are no good in Virtual Experience. Their rival, Tangent Experience, has great condiments, but the hot dog has parts that taste like Pigeon.
The sky flicks blue to red, and my hot dog disappears. My wife has rung the Virtual Doorbell.
I told the Virtual guy that I wanted to keep my concessions during doorbell rings. "Just the sky," I told him. I mute the game.
"Honeydew," she says (god knows why), "can you check for imperfections in this leather?"
I think: Fuck, check for imperfections. It's fucking hard to check for imperfections. Ah, well...
I turn Virtual Experience off. The back of my brain tingles. I get up off the couch and go into the kitchen, which is not hard because the couch is in the kitchen. A roach runs across the apartment floor. I pull a rubber band off of one of the rubber band hooks, and, without thinking (right before my brain thinks, "Don't think!"), I shoot the roach dead.
They still make rubber bands like they used to.
"Honeydew," comes a call from the bedroom.
In the baseball game, now broadcast in Regular Experience, the Astros batter lines a shot through the cranium of the Cleveland pitcher. CRACK-sploosh! The shortstop picks the pinkish ball out of the air and steps on second, the runner just a few feet off the base, agape at the mound and the headless man next to it. The shortstop walks over to the runner near first, who is slouched with his hands on his knees. The shortstop tags him.
It was an unassisted triple play. The first since 2007.
The sky flicks blue to red, and my hot dog disappears. My wife has rung the Virtual Doorbell.
I told the Virtual guy that I wanted to keep my concessions during doorbell rings. "Just the sky," I told him. I mute the game.
"Honeydew," she says (god knows why), "can you check for imperfections in this leather?"
I think: Fuck, check for imperfections. It's fucking hard to check for imperfections. Ah, well...
I turn Virtual Experience off. The back of my brain tingles. I get up off the couch and go into the kitchen, which is not hard because the couch is in the kitchen. A roach runs across the apartment floor. I pull a rubber band off of one of the rubber band hooks, and, without thinking (right before my brain thinks, "Don't think!"), I shoot the roach dead.
They still make rubber bands like they used to.
"Honeydew," comes a call from the bedroom.
In the baseball game, now broadcast in Regular Experience, the Astros batter lines a shot through the cranium of the Cleveland pitcher. CRACK-sploosh! The shortstop picks the pinkish ball out of the air and steps on second, the runner just a few feet off the base, agape at the mound and the headless man next to it. The shortstop walks over to the runner near first, who is slouched with his hands on his knees. The shortstop tags him.
It was an unassisted triple play. The first since 2007.
posted by JMH | 10:15 PM
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