Chapter 10: Their Grand Slam

“We want to show you something, Frank,” I said as my husband stood beside me next to Frank Li's hospital bed, “You brain has to heal and it will take some time. Are you ready to have some fun?”

He looked at me and his spirit smiled.

So we put him in a field, laid him on his back and he looked up at the multiple gray clouds all varying in hue and moving ever so slowly to the northeast threatening rain.

“Remember, Frank,” my husband said, “Listen to him.”

“Let me hit a grand slam just once!” he was saying to Them.

“Hey, Frankie,” someone yelled in the distance, “You're up!”

“Just let me know You're with me somehow,” he said, “Like a single raindrop on my face,” he said so softly only he could hear it.

Then he felt a raindrop hit him on his left cheek. So he got up and the pitcher pitch one way outside and then one way high.

“Don't walk him!” someone yelled from the outfield. “Roger is up next. Frankie can't hit. Why walk him, Dummy?”

The next one was right in his zone and right down the pipe. He swung the moment he saw where it was going to be. His swing was late, but he put all of his power into it. The ball was high and long easily clearing he tall brush in right field. He dropped the bat and ran as fast as he could for first base as he watched the ball fly, high, long and fair. He was at first, then second, then third base and soon he was racing toward home, but everybody was cheering! He ran across home and looked back just in time to see a big kid he didn't know come back from the swamp behind the brush in right field. And his teammates were screaming, “Yahoo! Yahoo!” over and over again.

He thanked Them for what They had done.

“It's a grand slam, Frankie,” Roger yelled in his face and he grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

“I remember that!” Frank Li's spirit said, “It was the bottom of the ninth and the bases were loaded. They didn't just give me a grand slam. They made me the hero of the game. We won four runs to three! And I thought I was the greatest baseball player in the entire world, headed for the minors at least and probably even the majors too.

But the truth was I wasn't much good at baseball. I was nearsighted in my left eye and far sighted in my right. And for one thing that made my depth perception all messed up. It wasn't just a miracle. It was the nicest thing They had ever done for me.”

Back at the game, “I still want to be able to do that on my own,” the boy said as he took the field for the next game being chosen last again as usual despite his amazing grand slam, home run. “Do that for me?” he asked, but sensing They had other plans he walked for right field.

“Yahoo is a corruption from the real name of God,” Paul, a preacher's son said to him, “How in the world did you hit a home run and win the game. And not just a homer but a grand slam even! It's like a miracle! It is a miracle! You should be yelling your head off. I would be!”

“I just asked Them to let me hit one. I didn't ask Them to load the bases first. That was just a bonus!” the boy told Paul who felt like a friend of his already though he had never known him before.

“By 'They,'” he said amazed and with his eyes wide, “Do you mean, God? He's three in one. Is that what you mean by 'They?'”

“Is it okay to call God, Them?” the boy asked.

Paul thought a bit and then said, “I can't see why not!” Then Paul shouted Yahoo as loud as he could several times. It's a miracle!

“You were on the losing team last time, Paul!” some kid the boy didn't know said, “What are you doing?”

“I don't care!” Paul said, “It ain't every day you see a miracle. Yahoo! Yahoo!”

“I'll never forget Paul for that!” Frank Li said in his mind and the EEG showed its first activity in a day at least. “But Paul went blind because of an accident when an airplane door hit him in the side of the head. He doesn't remember me anymore.”

“It wasn't all bad, was it, Frank?” my husband asked, hoping it would cheer him up.

“They were always good to me,” Frank said, “You don't know how many times I went back to that little memory when I was depressed and times were really hard.”

Actually we did, but I never said anything and when my husband started to, I shook my head and he looked back at me and smiled.

“God really is an entire team if you need him to be, too,” Frank said, “What is Their real name? I never knew!”

“'They,' is fine with me too,” my husband said, “And you probably couldn't pronounce Their real name anyway. And I don't say it out of respect for Them just in case I make a slip or something. And it's best to just let it be that way until you get where They are what with the way the world is in your time.”

Frank Li looked amazed to actually realize it at last. That was the only time he even called Them that when he talked about Them for many years to come. But his Christian friends never believed he knew Them personally anyway, even when he called Them, God. He never really understood that most of them were just pretending they knew him anyway until he was in the coma.

“Why did Paul have to go blind?” Frank asked next.

“That's between him and the one he called God,” my husband said, “Don't you think?”

“Their not tattletales or gossipers either one, Frank Li,” I added.

Frank felt bad for he realized he had always managed to do both at times in the past. So he looked up and asked Them to forgive him for even asking and for ever having ratted on anyone let alone gossiped about others.

Then he thought, 'I never lied about anyone when I did, did I?' And he felt a lot better.

“Everything,” he said to us, “Even a little kid's baseball game can be an object lesson, can't it?”

I don't know about my husband, but I was impressed.

“Did you ever see Them, Frank,” my husband asked him.

“I saw a vision of Them once,” he said, feeling ashamed to even be talking that way, “And They helped me imagine the Light once. I even hear Their voices sometimes. But that ain't the same as seeing Them. Besides everything I've ever saw is like a message from Them, ain't it?”

“You will see Them one day,” I promised.

“I can hardly wait!” Frank said.

“They are the same way about that event as you are, Frank Li,” I said.

“Do you want to see more, Frank?” my husband asked.

“Sure,” he said absentmindedly because he was just then realizing that They want Them to see him as much or more than he wants to see Them in the first place.

“Ready, Frank?” I asked and his mom noticed a little more activity on the EEG monitor for just a moment and was filled with hope he would come out of the coma soon.

“I love you, Frankie,” she said, but he couldn't hear her yet and when she realized that, she stood up and took his hands in hers and held them to her face. “I was just remembering how much you loved to play baseball with your friends. You had so many back them,” she said with joy, “I'm proud of you, Son.” Then she sat back down and in a few minutes she quietly drifted off into a one of her many naps, smiling a short time later as she dreamed of better times when her Frankie was a normal kid who wanted to make the big leagues in spite of what his older brothers told him about what actually was the case of his abilities.

And I remembered he had always thought he could do anything he wanted if he stayed at it long enough and kept trying.

His dad's words, “Just keep at her, Frank, you'll get her,” came back to his mind just as I remembered his undying faith in himself. He did amazingly well even when he was in an episode of mental illness. And I shook my head to think what a little encouragement from even his dad meant to him. It was impossible for him to really hate his dad even when he got old enough to know what his dad really was.