A respite from life's cruel reality

Eddy's losing his leg, his left rear wheel. Eddy's my pup, too young to have hip problems, but does.

We tried to fix it with surgery.

The vet said, "I don't know what went wrong. It's just one of those things."

He tucks the leg up like a seagull now, stick-like, like a tree branch in winter.

My dad said, "Don't beat yourself up about it."

It's baseball season though, the season when light verifies spring's return and the Earth looks like it can breathe again. With that comes the belief that everything turns when the weather does.

But my, how the winter drags up here.

Bills still, but with pay cuts, jobs gone, friends gone.

SO I took a flight to Scottsdale, Ariz., unable to wait, eager to catch the final week of Cactus League games with some friends.

The sun was there, high in the desert sky as it was supposed to be and on the first day we played catch walking down Scottsdale Boulevard on our way to Giants Stadium, rising above the edge of the old town like the red rock of Arizona ringing the background behind it.

But we couldn't even get that right, lobbing balls short and long, skipping them off the sidewalk and chased them along curbs and into bushes.

We ignored it and made it to the stadium and tried to chase the false feeling of spring with $8 cups, but with each fill there was that sickly feeling of watching the money go because there was always that to worry about, too.

But with all that, baseball is a game weighed by constant failures, a game which celebrates the rare successes, and on the third day they brought in the kids trying to cleat out their reputations.

In the seventh inning of the final game the Giants were squandering an eight-run lead and their pitchers were already in the showers or back home, so with two runners on, not an opposing Padre out, manger Bruce Bochy motioned for any pitcher he could find.

He found a tall and gangly kid without a last name on the back of his jersey who ran out onto the mound and you could see his eyes darting across the stadium as his skipper talked to him because no matter what happened with the next three hitters, he was going to get a pat on the shoulder in the locker room and told he didn't make it.

The only thing you can take home is a job well done, and while he threw his warmups, I leaned forward in my seat like I was reaching for my wallet to watch.

I WANTED to see one small success before I went back home - one small success in a game recorded by statistical failure - before I returned to the cold and the wind and the rain. The kid's knees knocked as he kicked dirt from the rubber and he wiped his face with his sleeve. He rocked back for his first pitch and the batter laid off a fastball too tall, followed by a slider too low, but the third fastball cut the plate and the second slider the batter waved and missed.

"That's right," my friend said, thinking I was still reaching for my wallet. "You owe me a beer." The next pitch he zipped in and a few claps echoed across the seats.

"..." the friend said, which I didn't catch, but knew.

The kid fell behind the second batter and the crowd grew antsy as he walked off the mound to rub his sweat with his sleeve.

No one clapped, no one heckled, not even my friend.

Then he got back on the hill and rocked back and his front leg kicked high and sturdy, and he put every-thing into a fastball the hitter couldn't keep up with, and the ball fell harmlessly to center under the sun and when he got the first baseman on a full-count fastball to close the inning, I saw the white of his smile as he ducked into the dugout - back to the locker room - where the manager would find him with a pat on the back, happy with one small success in a game rooted in failing.

And we turned and went back home to wait for the beginning of the long season of sunlight, where there's a feeling of rebirth like a list of surgical specialists in your right pocket or the hope of a pup's toes touching fresh grass. Tom Hasslinger is a staff writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2010, or thasslinger@cdapress.com.