You are the contest winner, so let me know who you’d like a custom baseball card of, and an email address. You can send that info to tips@pitchersandpoets.com.

The day dawned dully and smelled of the salt and grease and bacon from the motel’s shabby restaurant – more greasy spoon diner than the kind of 3-wannabe-4 star brasseries which grace the lobbies of hotels where those in the bigs get to stay. But this is double-A, and the already-too-old-at-26 centerfielder – who had the wheels of a Mercury as a late-round teen draftee – sat alone in the naugahyde-covered booth and waited for the regular crowd of first-ones-at-the-park, last-ones-to-leave-the-clubhouse teammates: the live-armed lefty perpetually a few whiskers away from gaining command of the strike zone; the snake-bitten second baseman who though slick with his reliable glove is prone to falter whenever the top brass watches; and the surly catcher with the creaky knees and the falling-far-and-fast batting average. He’ll never make it, and he knows it like a retired priest knows an obscure Psalm. It just never quite makes it to the front of his mind.

The elevator finally lets out a tinny buzz of a ding, and the three teammates step from the lift to join him in the café. They share the lukewarm contents of the plastic pot of coffee left on the table, a careful tip, and a taxi to the park. They won’t return to the old hotel for nearly a dozen hours. To while away the interim they’ll dress carefully; send a few text messages; watch a little ESPN, autograph no baseballs, and work diligently – professionally – on their swings, their delivery, their wheels. (They are professionals, after all, which leads one wonder: how good would your average banker or insurance agent or dental hygienist or fast-food worker be if he or she spent similar time and attention on their profession.) Later, around dusk, the four professionals will take the field to entertain a handful of the small park’s most devoted denizens. Probably in another meaningless win or meaningless loss. And then they’ll update their individual statistics, and hope to catch an important eye.