Dreams

When I played on baseball teams as a kid, the best player on the roster could always dream about becoming a professional ballplayer. None of my teammates actually beat the odds as dreams are such longshots. Lacking baseball skills, my dreams had to be creatively unconventional but I had plenty of time to craft them while sitting on the bench. Maybe our star pitcher would be on vacation for the championship game and his back-up would collapse from the pressure while coming to bat with the bases loaded in the last inning of a tie game. I am the last substitute. Coach tells me not to swing and hope for a walk. After two strikes, I desperately twirl around as if trying to get out of the way of a curve ball but make sure it hits me in the back. We win. I am a hero. In the 1980 New York Marathon, Alberto Salazar and 6394 other runners are ahead of me. I am delirious, dreaming Alberto might take a wrong turn because a spectator with a big Carter campaign poster is blocking the official course directional arrow. All the runners are following Salazar the wrong way through the boroughs of New York. I take the correct turn. Without cell phones and with roads blocked off for the race, it takes forever for officials to turn Alberto around. He backtracks and is quickly chasing me down but I edge him at the tape. I win the New York Marathon. I am vilified for not stepping aside to allow Salazar to pass. Decades later I Blog about my ordeal in Nightmare, a post which goes viral. It gets twelve million views and nine “likes.” I dream about how good it will feel when I hit two million followers.