Strange dream

I am sitting in the dugout of a Triple-A baseball team, talking with players and coaches and I hear on the PA: “Managing today is (garbled, but my name in the dream)."

I turn to the manager. “What?”

He said, “You’re managing today.”

“Me? Why?”

The manager had been thrown out.

“How can you have been thrown out? There hasn’t been a meeting at home plate!” For whatever reason, he had been tossed.

So I am struggling with the lineup card; I don’t know the players. Somebody hands me yesterday’s lineup card. The manager says, “You don’t want *** hitting leadoff.”

The dream shifts to another inning. The usual starting catcher is standing in front of me. He is not in uniform. I say, “Where TF have you been?”

“The judge sent me to jail.”

“What? Why?”

“I got arrested for running away from the orphanage.”

“What? How could you be in an orphanage?”

“You know.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t know. Anyway, go get in uniform.”

As he turns to leave, I say, “What’s the judge’s name and number?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. Go get in uniform.” Somebody on the bench tells me the catcher is 16.

“How can we have signed a 16-year-old?” I ask. Then: “Well, when we win the pennant, especially when we’re in the series against the International League, that judge will look foolish.”

I then tell the players about my aneurysm, of the surgery (doctors slicing my face from above the hairline to below the top of my ear, peeling back the skin, using a doorknob cutter to cut a hole in my skull , repair, putting the skull plug in place, waterproofing it, using wire to hold the plug in place, stapling together the incision flaps).

I say, “Most people when I tell them that, say, ‘God must have a plan for you.’ I say that if he does, I don’t know what it is. So maybe God’s plan is for me to manage this team, and if that is the plan, then I’ll do it to the best of my ability.”

Woke up.