prompt: miss, title: extra innings in misc. flash fiction

“I did it on purpose,” an old man in a rumpled windbreaker told a much younger man with a tape recorder and a notebook, in the back booth of Mudville’s Lazy Lunch Cafe, “I threw the damned game. I needed to tell someone before I died or… before there was no one left who’d care.” The reporter dropped his mug in the middle of an upward drinking motion. There wasn’t much left to spill, but the waitress quickly ran over with a rag to mop up the splash. “I’m sorry,” the reporter said to the girl, younger than either of them, then looked back toward the broad-shouldered man with a few whisps of brown left among his grays, “I’m sorry, Mister Casey, what did you say?”

Casey’s eyes couldn’t meet those across from him. “My wife was expecting. The… parent club made it clear no matter how well I hit in Mudville, they had no needs for a slow-of-foot slugger who could only play first base. They had a star there. Who ended up in The Hall, of course.” He sighed, still looking into his own coffee, un-spilled, untouched. “We were big favorites, almost all the heavy money was on us. A scary-looking dude in a real nice suit offered a huge number, kind of number I’d make in the majors in a few months but I was never going there.” He finally took a sip of his coffee, choking a little bit down. “All I needed to do was swing and miss.”

This was the biggest scoop the reporter would ever have. The kind of material that would go to syndication, maybe get in Sports Illustrated. He started scribbling feverishly, visions of his own meteoric rise swimming though his head.

This was all a lie, of course. Casey hadn’t thrown the at-bat. He’d failed fair and square, ignored two easy chances out of hubris, then swung out his cleats toward where he thought the third pitch was going but guessed wrong. Mighty Casey struck out cleanly on the day of the greatest disaster in proud Mudville’s sports history.

Casey had been a top prospect once, a local hero once, by his late middle-ages all he had was the legend of his epic botch in the biggest game for the highest-level team he’d ever played on. This kid had called him up, looking to write a human-interest story about its thirtieth anniversary and the Mighty Casey had decided there’d be more dignity in going down as a successful cheat than as an honest failure. All he could do now was hope this journo would have such stars in his own eyes, be as young and grasping as he’d once been, rush the story through and save Casey’s pride and relevance for his fading years.

The Mighty Casey had no idea if it would work, of course, but he figured he still had one last big swing like this in him. Maybe this last time, just for once, he wouldn’t miss.