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The Missouri Review

Nonfiction | April 16, 2013

A Clean Break

Brad Wetherell

One month before I ran from the police with my mother, I threw a baseball for the last time. I was twelve years old, in the eighth grade, and I had been cut once again from the middle school baseball team. Surely this was a reflection of the coach’s poor judgment, not my skills, as I intended to prove that late spring by digging my toes into the batter’s box for the town recreational team. There, I would send red-laced balls arcing through the sky on such a preposterous trajectory that they would crane the necks of the opposing outfielders—from neighboring Connecticut towns—who, seeing how far they’d have to chase my blasts, would simply give up. Just drop their gloves beside them and take a seat on the grass, awed and frustrated by the fact that I was—would be—what they could only dream of.

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