Jude Wilson stood by his apartment window and gazed down on the little town in France. He sipped his piping hot juniper tea as he watched people meander from shop to shop and children play on the sidewalks. Basketballs, bouncy balls, soccer balls, kick balls, and every other kind of one could imagine bounced through the streets.

“Why must all balls be round?” he wondered, “Doesn’t anyone ever get tired of seeing and playing with spheres? What this tired town needs is something new. What if there was a triangular ball or a trapezoidal ball or, wait! I’ve got it now!” he spun around in his excitement and gazed into space as he basked in the brilliance of his new idea. “A square ball!” he laughed gleefully. “A square! A cube! A box! It will have six faces, and four sides upon each face, meeting at eight different vertices!” He bound like a deer over to his drafting table and retrieved a pencil and paper.
“Blueprints! I need blueprints!” he exclaimed as he scrawled viciously on the paper. After several hours of drawing, crumbling, and tossing, Jude had arrived at his final draft. Kicking his heels together, Jude ran to meet Mike at his workshop. Mike was from the States and could build anything from a baby bottle to a full blown castle.
“Hello Mike,” Jude called from the open doorway. Mike turned from his latest project, an ice sculpture for some lucky girl’s dream wedding, and smiled at his old pal.
“Hey there Jude. What can I do for you?” Jude smiled mischievously and extended his blueprints to Mike. Mike accepted the plans and studied them. “I think I might be able to help.” Mike finally said. Days of work passed as Mike and Jude worked on the project together. After a long week of labor, they had completed their task.

‘Behold,” Jude proclaimed dramatically, “the first square ball.” Mike and Jude marveled at it together.
“It’s magnificent!”
“It’s amazing!”
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Mike and Jude turned at the sound of the new voice. They were both surprised to see that it was Edgar Thorpe, the best baseball player of the Arizona wranglers.
“What are you doing here?” Jude asked, star-struck.
“I’m here to pick up my fiancé’s ice sculpture for the wedding. I’m getting married,” he stated proudly.
“And she’s already making him run errands,” Jude whispered jokingly to Mike.
“Anyway,” Edgar interrupted, “I’m flying back to the states for a game in a couple weeks. If we win this, we win the championship title. That baseball, as peculiar as it is, might be our ticket to winning.” Jude held up the square ball. What a day this was turning out to be.
“How would you like to throw the first pitch?” Edgar asked. Jude’s mouth fell. Mike slapped him on the back and laughed.
“He’d love that,” Mike answered. “He’ll be on that plane with you without question.” Mike rolled out the finished ice sculpture and handed it off to Edgar.
As Edgar left, he said, “That baseball might just make you world famous.”
Sure enough, Jude was on the plane to Chicago two weeks later, flying First Class. However, to Jude, First Class was no different than second. Okay, so he received a second bag of peanuts, but a plane ride was still a plane ride. Who cares what part of the plane you’re sitting in? To assure that he didn’t seem rude to Edgar, who had arranged the whole thing, Jude tried to act excited only to get the same response over and over: “Get used to it. This is how world famous people travel.”
Before long, they had arrived in Chicago and headed straight for the baseball stadium. Jude marveled at the sight of the stadium. That one building made his little town of France look like a child’s preschool diorama. Edgar led Jude to the Wranglers’ locker room where he met all of the players.
“You ready to throw that first pitch on National TV?” asked Larry Martin, the first baseman.
“Oui,” Jude replied nervously.
“Good to hear it. Billy here is going to hit that pretty pitch out of the park. Right Billy?”
“You know it,” Billy, a tall fellow, replied cockily.
A siren rang. “That means it’s time to head out,” announced Edgar. “Let’s go, boys.” They all emerged on a green field, lined with tangerine orange dirt.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Arizona Wranglers!” the announcer called. “They will be playing the California Sharks for the championship title! And let’s give a warm welcome to our guest of honor Monsieur Jude Wilson all the way from France!” Jude waved from the pitcher’s mound as the crowd chanted his name trying to fake an awful French accent.
“Jude has given us the honor of being the first to use his invention for the first time ever in a live game. What is that new invention you ask? It’s the square basebaaaaaaaaaaaall!” The announcer elongated the last word, drawing more cheers from the crowd. As cocky man wearing an Arizona Wranglers hat ran out onto the field and handed Jude the ball. Jude focused his attention on Billy standing over home plate in his batter stance.

‘Make this good, Jude,” Jude said to himself nervously. With all of his might, he lobbed the ball toward Billy. The crowd hushed for what seemed like an eternity. Everything moved in slow motion. The ball looked as if it was on the right track from the crowd’s perspective, but Jude had an entirely different point of view. The ball’s vertices spun, giving it the appearance of an airborne ninja star. It was travelling far too high and far too over to the right. It was heading straight for Billy’s face!
“Look out!” Jude yelled desperately. But it was too late. Before Billy could react, the ball hit him square in the face (no pun intended). Billy writhed on his back clutching his eye. Jude watched in horror. Parents in the stands covered their children’s’ eyes to shield them from the gruesome sigh. EMT’s immediately rushed onto the scene, put Billy on a stretcher, and wheeled him away. Jude stood in the center of the entire stadium mortified. Every eye turned to him, and a giant “BOOOOOO” erupted from the crowd.
Jude sat in his apartment, drinking his juniper tea as he watched reruns of Tom and Jerry in French. A week ago he had received a call from his lawyer saying that Billy was not going to press charges because he figured that Jude had suffered enough. Though Billy would have to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life to cover the empty socket, he didn’t seem hostile toward Jude.
“The Arizona Wrangler’s are petitioning to have face guards put on baseball helmets in the big leagues. In a way you’re helping to prevent another accident from happening,” his lawyer said.
Jude sighed, “Well, Edgar was right. I did become world famous. I’m known everywhere as the guy who made the Arizona Wranglers lose, before they even started the game.”