In 1968 Vic Hauser batted a .203 average in the last season of his career, while playing for the Columbus Catfish in the minor leagues. And for those of you who don’t know anything about baseball stats, well, let’s just say that .203 in the context of Vic Hauser in the last season of his life means that he should ponder a career change. He gears himself up that entire last game, convincing himself that when he is at the plate for the last time, he is going to hit one—the big one. The one that gets him out of the minor leagues. The one that does like big hits do, and turns everybody’s head up to the sky like the cumulonimbus tower of a surprise storm cloud. He strikes out—doesn’t even get close to the ball. He looks down at his sun-wrinkled knuckles as he waits at the bus stop and realizes that he is clenching his hands. He notices because his arthritis has set in (not that the pain bothers him). His knuckles are white. Vic looks up from underneath his Stetson as the Chattaoochee drifts by and squinches his nose and eyes.

When he is finished, back on that warm day in April, he sets the bat down carefully near the dugout, puts his rear end on the aluminum bench for the last time, endures the pats and sympathies of his teammates, and finally completes a thought that has been occurring to him for the last four years: his life is over. Victor’s father agrees several hours later in an argument over dinner: “You have to want it, Vicky. You have to want it. That’s all right. Ya’ just didn’t want it.” God damned dead son of a bitch. Victor’s wife certainly agrees six months later when she leaves what little shell of him is left in the armchair from which he watches the Braves and other boys. In fact, most of the fans there that day, familiar with the team, all of them watching a beautiful clear blue day pretty much come to a similar conclusion: that he didn’t want it—that he choked—though they thought of him as big time in Columbus.

He still signs autographs in his hardware store. At the wry age of twenty-four, Victor Hauser was done. What had been a rumor among them about a bad elbow is now a fact and a spectacle to stare at when they think he’s not looking. They mill out of the stands glancing at him with puzzlement as he shakes the hands of the players of the other team with his stern chin stuck right out. He looks back on their missing confidence with resentment—resentment of the pity he perceives, resentment of the sorrow, until he blinks and realizes that there is no pity or sorrow for a baseball player, but just an old man who’s almost always found down by the river walk.

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