A little less than 320 feet away, the ball leaves Matt Waldron's right hand. All night, it has been ornery. It has misbehaved. The ball is Waldron's enemy. It's supposed to knuckle, and instead it rebels, skittering out of his hand like it's possessed by some force other than the pitcher's arm. The strike zone? The ball doesn't care for that. Tonight, it wants the backstop. It needs it. It will do any thing to get to it.
Matt Waldron is the only pitcher in Major League Baseball who even bothers trying to throw the bewitched knuckleball, and still it betrays him. By the time the bottom of the third inning arrives, the ball has run away again and again. It's scurrying past the catcher, walking a man, letting him take second base while it visited (who else?) the backstop again. And then just to prove its dominance, it walks a second man to prove the wild pitch never mattered anyway.
From center field, Jackson Merrill watches another Phillie enter the batter's box. In this case, it is Max Kepler. Merrill checks his little card, and it says to stay almost exactly in the center of center field, so he does. All game, Merrill has been bored. There is nothing for him to do. Fourteen batters have come to the plate, and only one has sent a ball to the outfield—but even then, it wasn't to him. It was to stupid left field. On top of that, he has only gotten to visit the plate one time, in the first inning, and he struck out. And none of the pitches he swung at were even in the strike zone.
Maybe he's mad. Maybe he's frustrated. Probably, he's bored. And so in center field, Jackson Merrill has been waiting, pacing back and forth in his brown Padres jersey, holding up his pointer and pinkie finger to signal that he knows there are two outs, watching the middle infielders to see if he will need to back up a throw to second. He's biding time. Or at least he has been, because now is his moment. It is here, even if he doesn't know it yet.
Jackson Merrill watches the ball leave Waldron's hand. He watches it, again, refuse to obey. It obstinately chooses to hang where it doesn't belong. It's a big meatball of a pitch served at 80 miles per hour to Max Kepler, who is grateful, and even delighted.
Merrill does not see Kepler's delight, or the care with which he gently drops the bat on the first base line. He does not see Waldron's agony, falling off the mound and whipping his head around to watch. Merrill doesn't see the crowd rising to their feet, or the runners darting around the bases. He doesn't see the future before him or the past, because all he sees is the ball.
The ball. The ball. His eyes stay on it as he runs toward the wall. The card did not betray him. He was placed well, but from the base of the wall he realizes somewhere inside his subconscious that the ball will be too far back, and there is nowhere left to run. His left shoulder is scraping against the green plush wall 401 feet from the plate. There is nowhere to go but up.
He pauses at the base of the wall for less than a second. He bends his knees. He jumps. His body is so long, like a cat. He extends his arm overhead as the ball plummets toward the ground behind the wall. His glove and his arm and his head and his shoulders and his scapulas are all above the outfield wall. Right as he hits the apex of his vertical, gravity begins to win, pushing him back toward the dirt of the warning track. The ball is here. The impact of it knocks his glove backward. He has it.
Three-run homer to straight-away center? I don't think so. That's Jackson Merrill's fuckin' ball.
It is the third out, so he tucks his glove into his arm and jogs back to the dugout. Nothing to see here, his face says. Just doing my job. There is no smile. No high-fives. No indication that he knows he's just snatched hope from the sky and stomped on it. The third base umpire wants to see the ball? Wants proof that you've destroyed the dreams of your enemies? Sure, here it is. It's nice and cozy inside the glove.
Only later, in the dugout, does Jackson Merrill give up the act and let a big smile stretch across his face while the boys slap him on the shoulder. It feels so good to be a robber.
