Ghost running from the sidelines

We used to play baseball in the pasture behind Eddie Simpson’s barn.
The pasture nominally belonged to a bay horse, which I think was Eddie’s, but really don’t remember for sure all these years later. When we took the field, the horse relocated himself to a position under a pecan tree in deep, deep right-centerfield where he tail-switched flies and stared at the trucks on the highway a mile away. No one ever hit a ball as far as the pecan tree, so the horse was able to ignore us until we’d get tired and go off to trade baseball cards.
The pasture was knee-high in weeds and littered with horse droppings, but it was a place of memories waiting to be made. The days were long and good, playing ball and hanging out with Eddie, McSwain, Jimmy Gunnels, Travis, Ray Moore and Dale Baird. And Eddie’s brother, Gary, who was in a wheelchair.
We got lots of home runs when the ball got lost in the weeds or skipped through the fence into the pasture across the road. We seldom had more than one ball at a time, so when we lost it, we’d all turn out, swatting the broomweeds with our gloves and scuffing tennis shoes through the weeds.
McSwain once tricked Jimmy Gunnels by pretending he couldn’t find the ball in short left field. Jimmy was rounding second, but went into an easy trot when he saw McSwain throw down his glove and frantically start kicking the weeds. When Jimmy turned toward third base, McSwain picked up the ball and ran him down from behind, tagging him a few feet from the rock that was home plate.
Gary often kept score for us, marking down the runs on a paper laid on the arm of his wheelchair.
Gary could walk when his family moved to Fitzhugh. He lifted his thighs high, as if walking through water, and he concentrated on putting his feet down firmly each step. It was difficult, but he could walk to the front of the room when Mrs. Duffer handed out papers.
By the time the willows budded in our fifth-grade year, he was in a wheelchair and no longer came to school. Muscular dystrophy had robbed him of the ability to walk, and he gradually got weaker and weaker.
I didn’t know he was going to die soon. If he knew, he never talked about it. In fact, Gary never said anything about his condition and never complained. Never cried. Never said how much he wished he could throw and run the bases with us.
There weren’t many kids in Fitzhugh, so we usually had only three or four players per side and often encountered situations in which a player would still be on base when his next turn at bat came around. What to do — stay on base and skip a turn at bat, or go bat and miss a chance to score a run?
That was quite the conundrum until someone — I don’t recall who — came up with a good solution, which we called ghost runners.
Ghost runners were imaginary extensions of yourself. If you were on base when your turn at bat arrived, you could go take your hacks and leave the base populated by your ghost runner.
If you got a hit, your ghost runner could advance the same number of bases you did. Say your ghost runner was on first and you got a double. Your ghost runner would go to third. Get a triple and your ghost runner would score.
Ghost runners could also make outs. If your ghost runner was on first and you hit a grounder, the fielders could get a force out by tagging second with the ball before you got to first.
Our problem solved by the ghost runners, we were free to enjoy long day after long day of baseball, running the bases and chasing balls while the bay horse swished at flies and watched the trucks on the highway.
It was years before I could look back down the rope of time with wisdom enough to realize the greater context of the boy sitting to the side in a wheelchair and the life that he lived quietly through the ghost runners of his mind.