Brian Gotta

Below is a passage from my youth sports novel, Hanging in There:

That night Ted dreamed he was trying out for the Teen League. But instead of the high school field, he was trying out on the middle school field, and it was full of jagged rocks, and broken bottles. The coaches were pitching softballs underhand to him and when he tried to explain that he was supposed to be trying out for a baseball team they ignored him. Ted’s neck was sore, and he couldn’t swing the bat well enough to even hit the softballs coming in. He looked up in the stands and there was Duncan, wearing his Reds uniform, laughing at the whole thing.

Ted woke up and slowly came around. He realized he had been having a bad dream, and that none of it had actually happened, except his neck really was sore. Then he saw the reason why. The entire night he had been sleeping on his ball glove instead of his pillow.