Microfiction: The Particular Anxiety of Daniel Bard

Daniel Bard was sitting at the breakfast table, considering his spring-training performance with some anxiety.

“More walks than strikeouts?” he said to no one — as no one was there. “How is that even possible? I’m Daniel Bard. I’m noted for possessing what scouts and demi-scouts refer to as ‘easy velocity.’ I’m open-minded as regards the application of quantitaive analysis to baseball. Werner Herzog once used footage of my two-seam fastball as a metaphor for the destructive forces extant in nature, I think he said it was. I was recently featured as a centerfold in the New England Journal of Medicine, which I’m pretty sure is a unique honor. Many of Aesop’s fables are taken directly from my life — obliquely, if not explicitly. Though I was previously unfamiliar with the word, I intuited the definition of necromancy given its roots from the Ancient Greek nekrós (meaning ‘dead body’) and manteía (‘prophecy’ or ‘divination’). Recently, as a challenge to myself, I conducted a conversation with trainer Rick Jameyson entirely in iambic pentameter without him noticing…”

He continued in this manner for some time. When he stopped, he found that he was no longer at the breakfast table, but rather sitting in front of his locker… having already pitched four innings in that day’s game!

It’s at this point that the reader will ask, “Were they successful innings?” Ha! That’s a good one, guy! As if success were a real entity!