#imwith28

After 20 years though, and after significant contemplation of what those in his adopted home^3 would refer to as “vergangenheitsbewaeltigung”^4, he’d found his way back to the team that had drafted him, the team he’d never wanted to leave. And with something like the recklessness with which he used to flail around the bases, Murph, back in the bigs, sprung through the tunnel and out onto the grass. 

There, as instructed, was young Hal Heidegung. Heidi. The Dane. The young hitting prodigy that was to be Murphy’s page^5 in these earliest days of spring. 

The Dane profiled like many a can’t-miss prospect before him. Plus-plus all around. But he knew it was the thing, which certainty produced equal measures of, outwardly, arrogance, and, inwardly, an intense fear of falling short of his potential^6. 

“No sunglasses,” the older man snorted. 

“Sorry,” Heidi replied, somewhat confused, as he stripped the glasses from his boyish, hopeful face and looked into the grizzled wisdom of Murphy’s. There the two stood, silently, locked mostly eye to eye excepting moments when the peculiarity of the exercise became altogether unbearable for the Dane, for the better part of the next 30 minutes. 

“Tell me,” Murphy intoned, having concluded he’d sized up the younger man. “Son, does the word ‘allgemeinbildun’^7 mean anything to you?”

“No sir,” said the page, swallowing hard and fidgeting warily, which visible discomfort Murphy made mental note of. No matter how common learning German was throughout the broader EU, the Dane had paid disastrously little attention to his studies, figuring that the odds of playing Major League ball were incredibly slim to begin with, as a Dane, and that devoting himself to the study of German really wouldn’t help matters much. 

“I have one job here with you, Heidegung. And it’s to teach you everything I know about hitting. You know how long I been hitting? How old are you?”

“Twenty, sir.”

“Twenty?! Du liebe Zeit! I been hitting since before you were born, son. Long before. And I did it damn well, too. Damn well. And do you know how I did it? Do you know how I hit so well, son? Here, have a seat.”

He motioned to the grass, still wet with dew or maybe it was the spray of the sprinklers, and the Dane looked at it warily as his teacher assumed the padmasana pose before him. As Murphy looked expectantly up at him, the Dane lowered himself to the grass, whereupon the dampness of the sod combined with his polyester-clad rear end in most uncomfortable fashion. 

“Better?”

“Well, truthfu--”

“’Gewinnen den pitch.’”

“Pardon me?”

“Gewinnen den pitch. Win the pitch. That, my boy, is allgemeinbildun about hitting.”

The commitment to simplicity was indeed a departure for Murphy, who, in his younger days, had reveled in almost encyclopedic breakdowns of hitting phenomena, his discourses on which topic proved exhausting, if not completely alienating, to even the most committed baseball enthusiasts^8, to say nothing of hitting prodigies whose prowess with the bat owed more to reflexes and musculature than academia. 

“Coach, I --.”

“Call me ‘Trainer’.”

“Sure. Trainer... I try not to get too wrapped up pitch to pitch. I keep my focus on the broader AB, and that works for me. ”

He didn’t know what “padmasana pose” was.

“Ach! Kümmere Dich nicht um ungelegte Eier^9!”

“...”

“What is life if not but a series of little moments from which to learn? A series of moments past that inform the present and create the future? And what is each pitch if not an opportunity to learn? May it not be said, more broadly, that in all things ‘da liegt der Hase im Pfeffer’^10?”

As a look of complete and utter confusion creased across his face, around this point a first bead of sweat, which heretofore had been collecting on Heidi’s forehead against the brim of his cap, betrayed him, and began to trickle down the sides of his face, which detail definitely did not escape Murphy’s attention. 

“It is one thing to say, ‘hit a home run,’ is it not?"

“...”

“Is it not?”

“Yes, Trainer.”

“And of course to hit a home run is to have had a successful at-bat, is it not?”

“Yes, Trainer.”

“But to have had a successful at bat is to have won a specific pitch in the at-bat, is it not?”

"Yes, Trainer, but --”

“In at-bats, as in life, may we not say Kleinvieh macht auch Mist^11?”

“...”

“Ach! Jugend wird auf den jungen verschwendet! Was it not so for me as well? Was it not the culmination of all my baseball tutelage, of the studious application of past moments to present that made it possible? What did I know then of the Schwarzwald? And still I hit home runs in 6 straight playoff games! Off of Kershaw, no less! Are you familiar with Kershaw? 

“Of cou---”

“So I ask again, what is life if not the sum of all small things? What then of the disposability of one J. Niese if J. deGrom had remained a shortstop? Or if not for the Cy Young campaign of R.A. Dickey which was turned into N. Syndergaard?” 

“He’s Danish!”

“It was not but so simple as to say N. Walker is this and our incumbent 2B that, any more than it was A. de Aza this and Y. Cespedes that. What then if F. Wilpon and B. Madoff had never run in the same circles, or J. Duquette had not dealt S. Kazm...”

Hours later, after the Dane had had a most prodigious round of BP and as the blazing afternoon sun gave way to dusk, D. Murphy, reclining in his seat back in the seclusion of the clubhouse, would allow himself a private delight. 

“Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund^12,” he said, a tumbler with cool lemonade and one oversized cube of ice swishing satisfyingly in this hand. Closing his eyes, he took a long sip of lemonade. He felt refreshed. “Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund.”

- A.F.O.M.G.

Notes & Errata

^1 From the German meaning something like “bringing good tidings,” which name referred to some time around P.M.T. 2035. 

^2 Who can say, really, when a ballplayer’s retirement is premature? Not singular were the talent evaluators who said his swing had lost its urgency, his eye its precision, and the less said about his glove work the better. More than anything, what gnawed at Murph was the question of what might have been if only he’d discovered the potency of Schwarzwald^2a wood earlier in this career. 

^2a That is, the Black Forest, a wooded region of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany. 

^3 Not insignificant though the temptation of returning home to Jacksonville, FL was, when he searched his heart and spoke to his Lord and Savior^3a, his only conclusion was that he wasn’t ready to hang ‘em up. 

In a frenzied bid to keep his career alive and broaden his cultural perspectives^3b (and as he’d come to appreciate in time, no small measure of torschlusspanik^3c, too, for that matter), Daniel Murphy had spurned the well-trod path through the Nippon Professional Baseball league in favor of a stint with Heidenheim Heideköpfe of the Baseball-Bundesliga in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The six batting titles in six years, the national adoration of Germany’s burgeoning baseball scene, the marital squabbles produced by his accepting a ~$5,000/mo. salary as he all the while continued siring an ever-expanding brood, all of it was in the past now.

^3a Which Lord and Savior had a not insignificant measure of influence on him then as now.

^3b The latter of which motivation he never came right out and said but when he really started to unpack the reasons behind his move to Germany, he could only conclude that it was a contributing factor.

^3c From the German cannoting something like the fear, usually as one gets older, that time is running out and important opportunities are slipping away. This, too, he never came right out and said. 

^4 From the German meaning something like the struggle to come to terms with the past.

^5 Team brass having concluded that Murphy’s significant European exposure would enable him to better connect with the baseball prodigy who hailed, however improbably, from outside Aalborg in North Denmark^5a. 

^5a Which region was known to locals as “Nordjylland.”

^6 Which fear, in Murphy, had eventually become full-on pain before his outright torschlusspanik acceptance. 

^7 From the German meaning more or less everything that any adult capable of living independently can reasonably be expected to know.

^8 e.g., David Wright. 

^9 From the German meaning effectively “don’t put the cart before the horse,” though not in so many words. 

^10 The German proverb here meaning “this is the cause of that”.

^11 German proverb meaning “Small amounts add up to something bigger.”