When we Knew the World Was Going to End

Written By: TMC

Posted on April 4, 2007

When the national anthem began, we stood as one, hats flipped off of heads, hands over hearts, eyes on the field where the President stood, and we really listened to the words again, after years of ignoring them, sipping on our beers and sneaking looks down the tank tops of the underage girls two rows in front of us and whooping like idiots when the singer sang about bombs and death. We realized how sad the song is, how we’ve come to celebrate death and savagery wrapped in a cloak of godliness. And we shed a few tears—but only a few because the last few days had wrung us dry—when we asked ourselves the inevitable question: is this the same kind of song they sing before their soccer games or camel races or kabaddi or whatever they do over there? Then we remembered again. We were sure we would always remember.

The air was still thick with dust and days-old smoke, a mist washing over us, curling into our nostrils and diving into our lungs. It was relentless; no matter how hard we coughed or how often we blinked, it was still there, coming, coming, always marching toward us, and we couldn’t help but wonder what we’d just swallowed—was that just dust from a broken cinderblock that rested on our seats? Was that ash from a burning car that fell on our tongues as we breathed open-mouthed so as to avoid smelling the death in the air? Was that our fathers, brothers, sisters, neighbors dusting our hair and following us home? The deathly fog hovered there, trapping souls as they tried to ascend; how long would they be stuck in limbo? How long would they hang there, obscuring our view of god when we looked to the sky?

The anthem ended and we realized we’d been holding our breath the whole time. When we exhaled, our breath whooshed down onto the field, enveloping the President, and he waved. On the big screen, he smirked and winked, doing his best John Wayne. He wouldn’t speak because there was nothing to say, but his cocky strut to the mound told us it was okay to smile again. It was okay to play, even if it felt wrong, because this is what we do—we play our games no matter what happens.

The pitch was on the mark, and it slapped the catcher’s glove so loudly that it seemed to echo through the city. The game was on, and suddenly, we were focused on every detail, every pinstripe and every blade of grass that bent under the wind. Which players trotted out to the field like it was just another day, and which ones strolled somberly, the weight of a nation on their shoulders? Which ones were missing?

We cheered when the leadoff batter struck out. It seemed right, somehow, that things wouldn’t come easily, even if the Hollywood script would call for a home run here. It seemed like nothing would ever come easily again.

We cheered when the second batter scrapped out an infield single, screaming to our feet when the umpire leaned in close and shot his arms outward like the wings of a jet, screaming SAFE.

We cheered for everything, for both teams. It didn’t matter who played or how well they played, as long as they played, and slid headfirst, and brushed guys back, and sprinted into walls for us. When the centerfielder and shortstop narrowly avoided a collision, we still applauded, but it was disappointing not to see the collision, to have them play out the violence by proxy. They had cheated us out of blood, out of the pain we’d been promised. If the benches had cleared, the bleachers probably would have cleared too, and we would have been in the middle of the mad scramble, biting ankles, ripping jerseys, stomping on groins, just to feel what it’s like, just to lose ourselves.

By the seventh inning stretch, we felt like we’d been through basic training. Our hoarse throats burned in the dry air and our muscles throbbed painfully. Jaws clenched sorely and fists balled, we stood to stretch, swelling and moving from one end of the stadium to the other, while the President stared down at us from the SuperJumboGiant Screen.

He looked too young to be in charge. He sang fiercely into a microphone, screaming “Take Me out to the Ballgame,” like he was a rock star. In his desperate screeching, he betrayed his fear; this wouldn’t work, and he knew it. Now we knew it too.

It hadn’t worked ten years before, after the Towers had fallen. For a little bit it did, but then we forgot, and got too busy to notice everything else was happening, and when we dropped our vigilance, forgot we were at war with an ideology rather than a people, they reminded us—they laughed at us for being dumb enough to think this war would ever end.

Three cities had crumbled—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, turned mostly to dust. Only in Philadelphia did the stadium still stand, and so we flocked there because they told us to flock there. And we watched the game because we were sure it would save us.

The song ended and the President waved. We booed him because he was afraid, because he couldn’t fix this, and because we wanted the game to come back. We wanted it back more badly than we’d ever wanted anything.

When the players started the bottom of the 7th, we roared and stomped our feet, the stadium shaking so violently that it must have been uprooted and to the next block, standing in one of the craters that now surrounded us. They pitched and swung and argued calls. They relayed their silly signals and high-fived, and they didn’t even seem to notice us. They didn’t notice anything but the game.

By the end of the 7th, the game was tied, and it remained tied through the 8th. In the top of the ninth—after a few wild pitches and a couple of home runs—the game had turned into a blowout. The home team—our team—needed four runs in the bottom of the ninth, or they would go home losers. It didn’t seem right that one team would be called a winner on a night like this; it didn’t seem right that the game should be allowed to end.

They made up one run after the first pitch, and then they scored two more a couple batters later. Standing, we begged them to tie it. When the next batter walked, the cheers were so loud that we didn’t even hear the ringing in our ears anymore. But the next batter singled, and we felt our hearts racing; if they both scored, it would be over, we’d have to go home, we would have nothing left. The next batter’s pop-up calmed us slightly, but still, we worried. Over the left field wall, we saw nothing at all, a ghost of a city we’d once called home. After the game, we would drive past the skeletal remains of the places where we’d lived and worked, and we would go carpet bagging between relatives’ homes until someone gave us a bed. One run wouldn’t save us, but it would do for now, it would forestall the drive, the loneliness, the despair. It would be better than nothing.

So we peered down through the sickening haze and watched as the batter dug deeply into the box, hacking the air with a few warm-up cuts so powerful that he looked like he was warding off some kind of spirit. Three straight pitches bounced in the dirt. The pitcher windmilled his arms as if to blame his shoulders. The next pitch found the strike. Then, another one bounced in the dirt, but the batter golfed it away. As soon as he hit it, the batter knew he’d won the game—outfielders jogged off the field and the batter trotted proudly around to home plate, where his teammates waited to mob him with head rubs, playful kidney punches, kisses. He greeted them with open arms and they rolled as one in the dirt.

Meanwhile, the ball he’d hit bounced high in the bleachers, landing in the hands of a high school boy in a red cap. He raised his arms triumphantly, and high-fived the man behind him. The man next to him tackled him, and the next man in the row jumped on the pile. We swarmed the group and the pile grew, the ball squirting out and bounding down the steps, our group fractured into a million pieces now, while people shoved thumbs in eyes, tripped women down stairwells, crushed hands beneath their boots. The ball had disappeared, but the scramble continued, limbs flailing until they were either broken or too tired to swing anymore. We were deaf to the screams and blind to the blood; whatever we did was nothing compared to what they’d done. Rolling in the bleachers, we coated ourselves in the dust and pressed it into each other’s wounds. We pulled at the boy’s hair and clawed at his throat; we bit deeply into his skin and tore until his blood ran warmly over our tongues. He cried and we didn’t care, because we were too busy crying ourselves. We choked beneath the weight of the fog, and we knew then that the world was going to end.

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