I had decided to become a professional baseball player. I had bought a Louisville Slugger, a ball, and a first baseman's mitt. I asked my father to play catch with me one Sunday afternoon, but he refused. My mother must have overheard this conversation, because she called him to her room, where they quarrelled. In a little while, he came out to the garden and asked me to throw the ball to him. What happened then was ridiculous and ugly. I threw the ball clumsily once or twice and missed the catches he threw to me. Then I turned my head to see something-a boat on the river. He threw the ball, and it got me in the nape of the neck of the neck and stretched me out unconscious in my grandfather's ruined garden. When I came to, my nose was bleeding and my mouth was full of blood. I felt that I was being drowned. My father was standing over me. "Don't tell your mother about this," he said. When I sat up and he saw That I was all right, he went down through the garden toward the barn