One of a Kind

July 18th, 1946. Thomas. I can see his smile, every teeth in its place, everything were it should be. Until he got sick. But what I really want to talk about is his baseball mitt. A normal player would have had a normal, worn out, simple mitt. Oh! But not Tommy. He just loved his mitt. It was like his life.

Before I get really off topic, Tommy is my brother. Or was. Unlike most brothers, he was amazing. Not only was he smart, nice, and funny, but he was also patient. He never got mad at anyone, despite his fiery red hair. All the teachers kept telling my parents what a great kid he was. Oh! And he loved baseball. He was only a little kid when his friend took him to a baseball fair. The baseball fair had all kinds of activities, including a huge raffle at the end. With all sorts of “extremely special and unique” prizes. In order to win, you had to choose a number from 1 to 800. Tommy chose number 7. It was not the winning number but some of the other tickets won small prizes. Tommy won a baseball glove. While we drove home, I kept thinking it was the most ordinary, normal looking mitt I’d ever seen but he loved it and according to him, it was special. I remember how excited he was, how he yelled across the living room, how he bragged about his baseball mitt when he got the chance.

But unlike anything else, his mitt requires a deep, thorough description. First of all, Tommy was a lefty. So the glove had its own, unique quality that most of the other guys in his team didn’t have. Every day, before practice, he would look for his glove. It would be safe and sound, hidden somewhere in his perfectly organized room. Probably next to his other perfect stuff. When he found it, he would carry it with such care! Even though it was all tattered on the sides, some parts around the fingers and pockets completely worn out and the perfect dark brown color it used to have was all faded away, Tommy took care of it as if it were the newest mitt. When he got home from practice, he would again put it in his perfect room, next to his perfect things, somewhere in his neatly organized room.

As time went by, I started to see some words in the mitt. I know. That’s the kind of brother he was. Tommy would come up with the most strange, yet original ideas I’ve ever heard of. So it turns out that Tommy wrote poems. He copied all kinds of poems and wrote them all over his mitt. With green ink. I know. But I respected him. He was so unique. He was different from the rest of kids his age. And he was crazy about his mitt full of poems. I was so curious, and when I finally asked him why he wrote poems in his mitt, he told me it kept him busy in the field when no one was up at bat. At that time, I really thought he was crazy, but now that I think about it, it is pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, he was only 11 years old when he got leukemia. It was pretty bad, and that July 18^th, is a day I still recall. I felt so sad, and confused and furious; I punched all the windows in the garage. I really don’t know why I did it, let alone knew how I felt. But that July 18^th was the day when Tommy left me. All his pureness and innocence left me behind. Left me without his laugh, without his fiery red head. Only a collection of memories to never forget. Only a beaten up baseball mitt with poems written in green ink. But if you really think about it, both Tommy and his baseball mitt, were and will always be one of a kind.