Conditional Reality

The baseball fell out of the sky, punched through the roof, and landed with a thick clump of dust on the coffee table. We stared at it. That looks like the baseball that Irving Soldering hit over the fence off of Felix Cratching’s sinking curve in the bottom of the fourth back in nineteen fifty eight in that Pacific League game that was called on account of rain, said my uncle. I think you are right, said grandpa, and as I recall they never did find that ball. Nope, said my father. Until today. Yup, we all said. Until today.