Tom wasn’t certain if there was any type of world perspiration record, but was confident he had achieved a personal best. His effort was aided by the forty-odd pounds of fake fur and leatherette he wore as the Sandbat mascot. His family hated his part-time job, his embarrassed parents most of all.

After spending 38 years building Thompson Life and Casualty into one of the most recognized and profitable insurance firms in the region, Tom’s father could not understand why quietly living out the family legacy never seemed to be enough for his son. As Tom grew up, journeying from class clown to frat house hooligan to his current incarnation, the elder Thompson had secretly questioned his parenting skills on more than one occasion. And, on more than one occasion, these inward doubts turned outward and discussion became heated over which had actually failed.

Despite his father’s protestations, Tom loved his small time showbiz gig, loved being a perfectly anonymous center of attention. In the last three seasons he had developed quite a number of crowd pleasing bits of which he was quite proud. In fact, after last season’s addition of a T-shirt cannon and some preposterous inflatables, Tom found himself the envy of nearly every other mascot in the Southeast Gulf Coast minor league system. Admittedly not the largest of stages, Tom would often remind himself lightheartedly that even the San Diego Chicken had started somewhere.

Standing on a small platform near the 3rd baseline, Tom was scanning potential targets for his T-shirt gun. While he generally favored kids or the obviously hyper-spirited, he had found it got a good response from the crowd when he could manage to bounce one off the head of some inattentive loudmouth.

This inning though, he decided on a young couple near the top of the stands. They looked to be on a first date and the young suitor looked to be about broke and Tom wondered if a free souvenir might be the start of something bigger. Raising the gun to fire, he noticed a slight metallic taste in his mouth. Then, as he took aim and pulled the trigger, his left arm suddenly exploded with pain and fell weakly to his side, sending three beautiful arcs of rolled cotton into the on deck circle and visitors’ dugout. Finding it hard to breathe for the crushing pressure in his chest, Tom toppled backward off the platform. For a moment, both of his feet splayed cartoonishly in the air and the crowd clapped and cheered appreciatively for this bit of comic relief from the heat and futility of yet another poor showing by the home team. Tom hit the ground hard and everything went black. In all of this, only one person in the stadium knew what had actually happened.

And it wasn’t Tom.