Tommy Seleca was a handsome kid with a scorching fastball that left many a college batter drooling dumbfounded over the plate.
Then he got scouted.
Fast-tracked.
Thrown into the deciding game of the ALCS in the eighth fucking inning with a seven-goddamn-run lead—
And he choked.
On national television: run after run…
after run…
Each breaking Tommy Seleca down bit by bit, until finally he just lost it and broke down on the mound.
Finito for his MLB career.
He threw a mean fastball, but the problem was that Tommy Seleca had no fucking control.
That’s the last most ever heard of him.
What almost no one knows is that after Tommy Seleca got out of the mental hospital—he packed his stuff and went off to Japan, where he signed for a middling minor league team called the Ōkuma Redcows.
He wasn’t a great pitcher for them, but he was alright.
Learned to limit his velocity.
Was scared of it.
Until the night the Redcows hosted the neighbouring Futaba Toads, and all goddamn hell broke loose, and I mean hell because when that thing rose up out the water there wasn’t one eyeball in the ballpark not glued and pulsing, watching in abject terror its silhouette darkening the evening sky, rising like a fucking skyscraper in speeded-up motion, black reptilian scales consuming the milky moonlight, and we felt it lurch toward us, step by menacing step, each one an earthquake, each one forcing chills down our spines until we were frozen in place, dead silent, still, waiting, waiting…
When it reached land, the bleachers shook.
Fans started screaming.
It crushed cars and trucks, and metal warehouses down by the waterfront—
Alarms blared.
But nobody left the stadium. The game stopped, and we existed: in that surreal crawlspace between when it had appeared and when it would arrive.
Waiting.
It headed straight for us.
Some prayed.
Then—It was:
Looming,
a thousand feet above,
flared nostrils steaming, puffs of death-cloud propelled by an inner bellows, red eyes, massive limbs, gargantuan claws or paws or feet—
one descended onto the diamond, scattering the terrified players like so many pissants.
All but one:
And there he stood—the kid, Tommy Seleca, holding his baseball.
The monster roared, revealing hideous fangs.
The kid stood his ground.
Then pulled back his arm, and loosed a killer fastball!
It shot at the monster’s head—meanest pitch I ever saw!—before embedding itself (“My God!”) in the monster’s face, as Tommy Seleca, chest puffed out, began to grow:
expo-fucking-nentially:
Till he loomed big as the monster, and they lunged at one another, the monster pressing toward land and the kid pushing the monster back toward the sea.
Like modern-day Titans they fought—
And the kid triumphed, heaving the monster deep into the Pacific, and forcing it under.
Then he diminished.
When the fishing boat finally picked him up, he barely remembered a thing, or pretended not to.
But I remember:
I remember the night Tommy Seleca saved the world.