Little League Babe Ruth points as the nonexistent dramatic music doesn't swell.
He hits a home run over the Little League left field bleachers. The baseball knocks a fan in the forehead, kills him. That's before the fan's unborn child can grow up to jump into the time machine and warp back to kill not Hitler nor anyone at the Dehomag Corporation but some small-fry Nazi of no major significance in world history, so far as we understand it.
Further polluting the already polluted atmosphere, Little League Babe Ruth drives home from the stadium, ignoring the ten thousand cheers that sound like those in Baseball Simulator 1.000. The VHF/UHF handheld radio in his efficiency apartment crackles into action with a Bionic Commando-ish message, presumably from the teetering tower of the teetering West Seattle Bridge: "Dummy, you were supposed to hit the home run over the right field bleachers." Little League Babe Ruth grabs the gadget and spits back: "Hang on. I'm no longer with the Seattle Mariners. Nowadays, I'm with the Portland Diamonds." Radio statics a moment and replies: "Oops, we were actually trying to get Michael Jordan with the Birmingham Barons. No matter. Carry on."
The radio he wants, for a minute, to throw out the window, but instead he sets it into the charging cradle calmly. Little League Babe Ruth drinks some soothing herbal tea and goes to bed. Overnight, he dreams of buying a pirated Nintendo Wii from Japan for Gandhi, who scrutinizes the instruction manual and says: "I can't read this, it's all in Latin from the Roman Empire."
Little League Babe Ruth wakes after a good night's sleep, doesn't eat a sugar-laden Baby Ruth candy bar, and resumes working, telling himself and everyone else: "No matter, carry on."
This is the draft version of my flash fiction for Week Ten of this year, self-published on 13 March 2022.
Please see douglaslucas.com/fiction/flash2022 for information about this flash fiction series of mine, its international 4.0 BY-NC-SA Creative Commons licensing, how to send me comments and all the moneys, etc.