Parents and friends in the stands clapping as they rise to their feet.  Teammates were yelling their voices hoarse.  My coaches had a firm stance on the baseline looking at me with an impression of confidence, but hiding hopeless eyes behind their shining shades under their ball caps.  There were runners on first and third base, who were cautiously taking their leadoff steps with unsure looks on their faces, eyes locked on to the baseball laced between the pitchers fingers.  One too many steps-they’d  regret their extra step away from the base.
I, the slim five foot tall walking tree branch, was approaching the plate with a blank expression on my face, but a mind travelling a mile a minute.  I felt  so many people rooting for for me, I wanted to be alone.  I wasn’t thinking of the nail biting baseball game to my left, I was thinking about the cheering people behind me. Coaches, teammates, and people in the were erupting with screams. All of them were  screaming toward the nervous batter 20 feet away from  home plate.  I couldn’t think of a reason they wouldn’t scream.  This game, was the championship game.  It was coming down to the last inning, of the last game, and the last out.  I would be the deciding batter of the game: either I would be the last out for the Mike’s Auto Body baseball team or the spark that ignites my team’s comeback from our 2 run deficit.  I was just standing there, postponing my warm up time, thinking about how nice it was to be alone outside of the dugout fence, in this white circle sprinkled on top of the dirt.  There, I could just slowly swing my hips back and forth lugging my hefty red and black aluminium bat, as if I was a jelly fish waving back and forth with the waves of the ocean, having no stress in any part of it’s body.  
Everyday, at my house, I would encounter some sort of stress.  I would be surrounded by intimidating unknown faces at my house, whether it was from people visiting from the sandbar on their pontoons or from neighbors that always felt foreign to me.  I put on a good show of friendliness sometimes, getting even the grumpiest of people to admire my happiness.
Never the less, I was never respectfully alone.  I would hide myself in random rooms around my house my unfinished house that only contained the sound of silence,  listening to the scampering feet stomping the floor looking for me.  I would soon be found by my mother or relative wanting help or introducing me to yet another stranger.  Going to bed was a safe haven to recap my day as well. Even though I shared a room with my brother, being under my blue and white checkered bed sheets, was as close as “alone” I could get.   Even times at my team’s baseball games, I was always with crowds of people who would unknowingly put peer pressure on me, expecting me to feel a  certain way about something.  To me this was all so familiar and annoying.  I didn’t want to be around this constant chatter of conversation, I was always being judged on my repetition of humor, flexibility, or just someone thats decent to hang out with.  At times when I was surrounded by people, I felt I was back in 8th grade, sitting down in the back of the room in my  oral communications class waiting to be called on.  I would sit patiently,  rehearsing my joke or remark over and over and over in my head.  Then when I was finally called upon, I would be overflowed with adrenaline, struggling to coordinate my mouth to say the right words, resulting in me saying a goofy, unorganized sentence.  People would turn the other way to hide the their stumped faces or look down to hide their grins. 
Instead of in a circle of people, I was in the warm up circle.  There would be teammates behind me spitting out info on the pitcher or semi-encouraging chants,  but usually my own thoughts blocked them out of my head.  I remember,  I was humming my favorite little custom made chant to myself as I walked to the plate.
“Ope time to go to work” was a classic saying always made me grin.

Behind the grin was a small chuckle, I was thinking of how funny it would to announce my line to my teammates. 
I never told my teammates, always shaded by past moments of awkwardness filling in the long pauses, instead of expected laughter.  The only times I remember me talking to myself were moments that were supposed to be incredibly stressful.  It was a nice window of solitary to peek through every so often.  I could imagine a place to just think about myself and my actions, not worrying about others opinions or thoughts they unknowingly put in my head.
Seeing the red laces of a baseball spin past one another  each time I went to bat, was one of the most frightening and relieving things to see.  Of course there’s always a little shiver of the chance of the ball hitting you or not, that wasn’t the scary part for me though.  I’ve been hit before and surprisingly, I was more relieved than hurt. As an experienced baseball player, each time I saw a pitch when batting, my mind raced to different alternative endings for each pitch. Maybe I would crush the ball with a “cut” so strong it made the ball ooze out juice.  Maybe, I would strikeout to a ball so high it could touch the bill of my blue batting helmet cover in logo stickers, a ball so low my past golfing outings couldn’t help me locate the ball.   I somehow only thought about the end result of the at-bat rather than how I would perform during the play.  Having to walk back to the caged dugout with an embarrassed face and yet another group of people, was the worst feeling of batting. That feeling of sadness was the worst part of batting for me.  Just like I was in the lineup at the time. I didn’t want that.  No baseball player does.

I finally walked up to home plate, checking my stance by staring down at the black outline of the plate an inch away from my toes.  I’ve been told by coaches before what was the right way to stand in the batters box, but they couldn’t stop my natural habits of swinging a baseball bat.  I laid the spongy inner handle of the bat on my right shoulder and watched the pitcher carefully.  He was dressed in a baby blue, white lettered jersey, with a giant logo centered in the middle of a Sports Bar that had sponsored them.  It contrasted the red, black lettering of my team’s jerseys, giving off a day and night difference between teams.  I saw this color contrast in the crowd as well.  Most of the parents were standing clawing the fences with their fingertips, while some sat in their seats waiting for the pitch.  I couldn’t stop wondering what other people were thinking was going to happen.  I could predict that they were probably wondering where  the ball was going to be end up: in the outfield or behind the plate?  Will the  infielders do their job; making an easy out on a ground ball?  While I was zombified by my own  imagination, I was instantly woken by the call of a pirate toned ump yelling “Strike One!”.  I turned my head and saw he was behind the squatting boy covered in a darker shade of blue armor,  imitating the usual squat of a frog.  I didn’t even see the ball, not even moving an inch from my “loading position”.   The crowd died down from it’s usual intensity down to a volume where simple conversations could be heard. 

I stepped out of the box and got a hold of my head. 

“I just want to be on base, and stop thinking so much about this baseball game”. 

I mentally set my own outcome.  I was going to make contact with the ball, run down the chalked baseline, and be safe on first base.
I stepped back up to the plate, the pitcher had the same windup and leg stretch the pitch before.  I knew that was his setup for his fastball pitch.  Once I realized it was probably going to be the same pitch I “let it rip”.  The ball didn’t pass the front black line of the plate, I felt like I had just cut the ball in half.  It looked  like I just fired a rocket out tennis ball machine on high to the second base bag, pulling in the center fielder to field the ball.  A solid base hit. It was the fastest I’ve ever ran to first.  I wasn’t in a hurry, just excited.  Every base hit to me was time to just relax out at first base, so when I did have the chance to run to 2nd base I rarely took it.
I felt kind of bad inside, but luckily it was covered by a smile when I stopped at first.  I wanted to hit that ball so I wouldn’t have to go back to the group on the bench, I hit it to be alone.
At first base my coach approached me and asked “Why didn’t you round for 2nd base?”.  My answer was naturally immediate

“I don’t want to go home just yet, coach”

I worried that both our minds clicked on the same problem when I said that.  He must have understood my answer as going to the home plate, but also could’ve related it to my actual house. He did have prior knowledge on how busy my life was, noticing me missing half our games.  Either way he recieved my answer, both perspective could’ve been true at the time.  Going to home plate would lead me into yet another group of people, compared to going home to unfamiliar faces making me feel uncomfortable.  My coach just gave a strange nod and slowly stepped back to the baseline.
Even when I turned around to look at my teams excitement, I was still thinking about what I had just done.  I could take a breather,  I  knew this was the time I needed to  be away from people  and talk to someone who I needed to know, me.  It’s kind of ironic, from that at- bat I realized I’m more of an independent person when crowds of people were depending in me.  I does sound weird, but it helps me with important things, like this memoir.  I’m was using my solitary time to correctly replay my memory of this moment, instead of telling a story to my mother, then having her piece together my thoughts into a story.  All these anxieties of pressure and thoughts needed some way to be relieved from my head.  Don’t get me wrong, I love having friends, family, and fun in groups. It’s just there needs to be times where I love just me as a person.