It was 8:07 PM on a Friday night. We were talking on face-time. I was playing air guitar to Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” and she was making her peppermint tea. 8:16 rolls around and she burns her finger on stove and takes sips every minute or so to taste test her tea to make sure there is the right amount of sugar in her mug. I’m sitting on my bed and my brother, Sawyer is sitting on Parker’s bed, who is also another brother of mine. They are both on the top bunk and I can see the 9 year old corrupting the little mind of the 1 year old; Parker tells Sawyer to knock my jacket off of the railing which would fall to hit my head. I look up to see Sawyer, the one year old, looking over the guardrail looking at me with a shit eating grin. He reaches for me to take him off of the top bunk.

Sawyer looks up to the top shelf next to the bed calling,”basebah, basebah!” I look up only to see no baseball. Sawyer, with is stubby little legs, climbs down the stairs and sprints to the living room to get Kris, my step dad. Thumping up the stairs, Kris calls out to Sawyer, who crawled up the stairs surprisingly swift.,”Where is this baseball, Sawyer?” The little baby points to the highest shelf in the room. Kris reaches to the shelf to get the baseball for Sawyer. Two seconds after Sawyer gets the ball, he throws it out of the window and lands in the neighbors backyard which has a big ass two hundred pound dog in it. The dog looks just like the dog from ‘The Sandlot’. I think to myself,”Well, I’m screwed. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get that ball back.” The dog will brutally murder me, the neighbors an asshole, and even if I wanted to hop the fence, I couldn’t unless I wanted to be impaled and sliced open by barbed wire. This man was ready for the zombie apocalypse from what I saw.

Now there’s two problems. Number one, a broken glass window that I need to replace. Number two, Parker’s favorite baseball, signed by David Ortiz from the Red Sox, is being heavily guarded by Fido over there in that shit infested field. If Parker finds out that his baseball is gone, he will kill me. So that’s another issue. I give my friend Jacob a call so that he can come help me get this baseball back. Jacob and I have been best friends for about nine or ten years now. He’s the brain and I’m the brawn is what he always tells me. We’re both little guys that have had problems with bullies our whole lives but one day I said “fuck it” and punched a bully of ours in the face. He didn’t mess with us again. I think that’s why he calls me “The Brawn”. Jacob has always been really handy and innovative. He can make anything out of nothing; he’s super smart and sometimes it pisses me off when he uses big words that I can’t understand because it makes me feel like a dumbass. He shows up to my house exactly twenty three minutes after I call him and he has a big net, walkie-talkies, and a taser. I asked him,”What do you plan on doing with that taser?” He replies with,”That dog has got to be incapacitated so you can get the ball.” Shocked, I jump up to ask,”Why can’t we use a different way to get the ball?” and he says,”I didn’t have enough time to come up with an idea that would keep us completely safe.” At this point, I was about to piss myself because I know that I had to get the ball because Jacob isn’t fast enough.

We both channel the walkie talkies to 101.9. We go downstairs and onto the back porch to grab to twelve foot long ladder. We set it up to the fence and I climb over. The dog is lying down and hasn’t noticed me yet. I see the ball sitting in the worst spot, in his mouth. Scared out of my mind, I take out the taser from my back pocket and turn it on. I slowly creep up to the aggressive mut and he begins to wake. I try to keep my cool but I’m losing it and I hear Jacob’s voice from my pocket,”Stay cool. You’re almost halfway there.” I glance at him with an uneasy face and focus my attention back to the dog. As I stand five feet away from him, he stands and is fully aware of me and I say to myself, ”Oh fuck.” and I sprint the other direction to a couple of crates stacked against the fence. I leap over the barbed fence on to fall onto Jacob. He asks me,”Did you get it?” and I give him a frown. We come back tomorrow and try again and this time I didn’t wake him. I managed to get the slimy ball out from between his sharp teeth and floppy lips. Next thing I hear is a yell from Jacob and a shotgun being cocked. I grabbed the dogs bone and chuck it to the asshole neighbor and he flinches; I bought myself some time to get away. I get to the fence and I toss the ball over and get myself over. Jacob stares at me with his jaw to his chest. I pick up the ball to look for Big Papi’s signature and I couldn’t find it. Instead I find something greater that would give Parker a smile from ear to ear. This baseball was signed by Babe Ruth. The ball was covered in the dog’s saliva and I wipe it away with my shirt.

I see Parker come home from school and I quickly hide it behind my back. He’s becomes suspicious of me after I ask him”How is your day going buddy?” I’m not nice to him on a regular basis. He gives me a death glare and begins to walk away. I grab his wrist and he tries to punch me in the mouth but his little knuckles. I tell him to open up his hand. I place the baseball signed by Babe Ruth in his palm. He shouts with excitement and shows everyone in the house his new baseball. Somehow Sawyer gets his dirty, sneaky little hands on it and chucks it out the window again.