I was kidding myself. I could see that in the young man's eyes. He was a good fifteen years younger than me, strong as the hills and farms he'd roamed so recently.

I was too old to be playing ball at this level. I'd been too old the year before, truth be told. I wasn't agile enough then. An injury at first base in the first inning of the season's first game had put me in a knee cast. The knee, my left, still felt sore and weak, but it would grow stronger as I played. I hoped so. That's what the Spring is for, isn't it?

And so I stood in the left-hand batter's box waiting for the first pitch of the season. The coach watched, evaluating me, I had to admit, as much as the youngster on the rubber. I'd seen this wild man warming up. He reminded me of the Kiwi Olympics team we'd played a few years before. Most of them Maori, they were all big, exubberant and fierce. Likely they were actually their Olympics Rugby squad, taking it easy on us. Their pitchers were strong, inexperienced and wild. They'd pitched a no-hitter against us. We got eight walks, five hit-batsmen and scored seven runs without a hit and damned few foul balls. Duck and run! one of my team mates had called it.

This youngster wore a large square rodeo-belt buckle on his practice uniform, but he was humble about his inexperience, almost apologetic. Maybe he intended to go easy on the old man with the long aluminum bat.

He presented the ball, windmilled a blur of his right arm and sailed the dirty white thing high and outside. He had to be kidding me, pretending that he'd never pitched much before. His step was sure, follow through and balance perfect, his hands and crouch ready as a third sacker for anything coming back at him.

My bat felt too heavy, my feet wrong. Gingerly, I bent my knees as he presented the ball again. Then he delivered it. I strode forward to meet it.

This one was a little too close to me, off speed. I hit it hard, sharply off my right knee … and promptly fell wrong on my left. Both of them hurt like hell.

A second passed, then longer. I pushed myself up with my bat. As I did I glanced at the pitcher, saw him smirk and turn away, just too late. I walked around a bit to loosen my knee caps and ease the pain.

Back in the batter's box I felt strange, disoriented, as if something unusual was about to happen. Probably, it was only my unsteadiness.

He showed me the ball again, at his waist, then hid it in his glove and went into a powerful windup. His release was waist high and a milli-second or two later the ball was at my midsection, straight and true against my bat. In a direct line the solid contact sent it back to him, so quickly that he had not quite come to rest in his defensive pose. His hands were still a couple of feet apart when the ball flashed betweeen them and hit him solidly in his rectangular rodeo belt buckle. It fell at his feet. Thwack … dut. Or maybe it was thwack-dut!

It happened so fast. Maybe, because I was using an aluminum bat, it was thwanggg-dut-ggg. A straight line in, straight line out. Bang-bang. Bang-bang with a touch of red-shift.

The ball lay between his feet and he stared at it dumbly.

I walked away on weak legs feeling only the slightest bit of satisfaction. Damn, that had felt good. So solid. Such perfect timing. I still had that sweet swing, and this one had felt better than any of those long home runs, even the triple I'd hit off the vine covered Sarasota wall where Ted Williams and Dom Dimaggio played their Springs, back when I was only thirteen. But this one … it had a ring of Zen in it, a cosmic over-tone. Instant Karma.

Over the decades a new, more useful feeling has grown out of this incident. It has been forty years since I last tried to play ball seriously. I coached a couple of teams, but pretty much stayed away from the basepaths. Knees really are important. They healed nicely once I quit demanding too much of them. Now they ache when I walk too far or sit too long, or mornings when I try to swing out of bed. I put that sound on, that feeling, that memory – it is a salve which penetrates deeply and quickly into those jointed aches and pains. It neutralizes them.

The elderly, myth and legend (and history) claim, are jealous of the young and wish them ill. Me, I thank that nameless, cocky cowboy for his smirk and shock. I get to relive that moment every morning, sometimes several times a day as therapy, an injection of rightness in a wobbly world.