One of my few regrets is playing first base as a kid.  Back in T-ball, when no one could catch, I got it stuck in my head that first base was the most important position on the field — if the first baseman doesn’t catch the ball, you don’t win the game.  By the time you’re 10, everyone can catch, so it’s no big deal, but I stubbornly stayed at first base anyway, right through my sophomore year in high school.

In the back of my head I knew it was stupid not to move somewhere more important, but I couldn’t help myself — and I think that’s when I developed my nemesis complex.  Growing up, I always had to have a nemesis, someone I secretly loved to loath — or maybe lovingly loathed — not quite the Newman to my Seinfeld, because there was a wellspring of admiration beneath all the mean things I thought about them.

A nemesis had to follow a few simple criteria:

1. They had to be a direct rival.
2. They had to be plausibly better than me.
3. They had to be aware of — yet utterly indifferent to — my existence.

My first nemesis was Jason Collins — one of the cooler kids, a tall power-hitter who really did belong at first base.  Even his name sounded like a real ballplayer.  He was the starter on our town’s Little League All-Star team, and I was his back-up.  I only saw him once since then, when I faced him as a pitcher in high school, and struck him out looking at a 2-2 cutter on the inside corner.  I’m sure he doesn’t remember me or that at bat.  But I do.

Next was Ben Giesselman, a fellow-nerd and first baseman at a rival high school.  In 5th grade we were the only two kids in town to have perfect scores on some standardized test.  Then in 9th grade we were 2 of 4 to win scholarships based on our PSAT scores.  I just Googled him, and I’m not surprised to see that he’s as much a nemesis as ever — apparently he has a B.S. in Molecular Biology and does research on photodynamic therapy at my alma mater, the University of Rochester.  If I didn’t bail on science to become your lowly poetry editor, that could be me.  He even has a buzz-cut in the wedding photo he uses for his Facebook profile…

By the time I reached college I switched to short-stop and became an English major.  I thought I was done with nemesii, until I met Lean Forward Guy.  I can’t remember his name, but he always leaned forward in his chair in the lecture hall, like he wanted a head start on absorbing all that knowledge.  I hated it, so I always called him Lean Forward Guy.  I wasn’t sure why I secretly loathed him — he cared more about literature than creative writing, and really wasn’t much of a poet.  But he got A’s and we argued in class, and there was something about him that always got on my nerves.  Then one day I needed a substitute player for my softball team, and he offered to fill in, but only if he could play — you guessed it — first base.

Now I live in Movie City, USA.  My least favorite director in the entire world has to be Michael Bay.  Let’s just say, as a literary person, I like a plot.  I hate quick cuts.  Even the best Hollywood explosions look fake.  I sat through three hours of Pearl Harbor.  And so on.  Michael Bay might be the Bizarro-Tim.  He owns two houses to my none, and drives a Ferrari while I walk to work.  He majored in English, but his product is loud and shallow and popular.  What’s the polar opposite of American Fractal, if is isn’t Coyote Ugly?  But I can’t really hate him — he seems like a nice guy, and he’s an animal lover…apparently he donated his Bar Mitzvah money to a shelter. So what if he’s hell-bent on remaking every classic horror movie for no good reason?

So in my softball league last week, who do we play against?  Michael Bay.  And what position does he play?  Yup.

It got me thinking:  Maybe there is something to this first base thing.

If I had to pick a nemesis in poetry — and I have — it’s Ted Genoways at Virginia Quarterly Review.  He’s a friend of a friend, and a few years ago that friend forwarded me a glowing profile of Genoways, praising all he’d done “at the tender age of 31.” And of course I thought, “What about all I’ve done at the tender age of 27!?”  Ted earns twice my salary, works with a budget ten times as large, sends writers overseas on assignment, and does it all in an office on a hill with a bearskin rug, apparently.  He’s a frequent contributor to Mother Jones.  I hear his car runs on biodeisel.  He excels at magazine design, has an uncanny vision, and is the kind of literary insider who actually wins awards, from book prizes to Pushcarts, and now a damn Guggenheim Fellowship.  As a nemesis, he’s more than worthy.

So the only question is — what position does he play?  I’ve only met Genoways once, and very briefly, at the AWP Conference several years ago, but one thing stands out immediately.  He’s huge.  He must be 6-6 and 250 pounds.  His hand is a catcher’s mitt.  I don’t know if he ever plays baseball, but at that size, there are only two positions he could play — pitcher or first base.  So I ask, which is it, Genoways?

Let me guess…