The baseball bat story comes from the Prologue to Tangerine. In it, Paul and his family are packing up their belongings ahead of their imminent move to Tangerine County, Florida. With his brother Erik acting like a jerk as always Paul has a sudden flashback to a traumatic experience he had when he was younger.

One day, Paul was riding his bike down the street, when suddenly he was chased by a masked man in a car waving a metal baseball bat out of window. Paul manages to dodge the man, who smashes Paul's mailbox in with his baseball bat. Terrified by the experience, Paul dashes into the house and tells his parents what's just happened. He's convinced that the man in the car with the baseball bat was actually his brother, Erik, trying to kill him.

But Erik's sitting at the kitchen table, where he's been doing his homework. So Paul's parents say that he can't have been the one chasing Paul. Instead, they suggest that Paul must've been seeing things on account of his bad eyesight. However, we get the impression that there's something strange going on here, an impression given added credence by Erik's subsequent behavior throughout the rest of the story.