The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

2

8 a.m. Oh that boy. He did it. Yes, he did. Saw his own hand open, the dice fall, Hard John swing. Out! Unbelievable. The boy with the magic arm. Couldn't happen. But it did. And will happen again. And again. A new day. A new age. Glorious, goddamn it, glorious!

9 a.m. Awake again. More or less. Daylight filtering opaquely through the sheet over his head. Thoughts of phoning Zifferblatt at the office. Won't be in, dad. Yes, a little Under the weather. Flu maybe. Chapped lips. Double entry fatigue. Cancer of the old intangibles, Ziff baby. Wasting assets. All washed up. But, no, feeling great. Just great. Still under the spell. Zifferblatt would hear the health, smell the secret laughter. Don't kid me, Waugh. You're finished. Thumb up, out of the game, off the team, out of the majors. You can't do that, Ziff. No vested authority. Waugh, we are amortizing you, wiping out your book value, man, closing the ledger: OUT! But then the boys trot out on the field. Ingram. York. Tuck Wilson. McCamish. Patterson. Hard John. They don't say anything. They just give old Zifferblatt the eye and—PFFFT! — he disappears.

10 A.M. Up from the depths. Hoo boy, best night's sleep in several epochs, though maybe a little hung over. Dreams forgotten but a vague remembrance of massive and exhausting heroics. Reluctantly, he cracked the shell, broke out, slippered his feet, smiled at Hettie's mumbling protest, staggered to the bathroom to cancel accumulated liquid assets, wash up, gargle, assess resources and liabilities in the glass, and stir the cosmos with a creative wind or two. Then back in the egg to dream awake awhile, replay that whole impossible beatifical game, feeling goosey with the grace of it. Damon Rutherford. Yes, it was on, the great new thing. You could feel it with that first pitch. He laughed at old Pappy Rooney kneading his tortured stomach; sooner or later, Rooney, there's some things you gotta accept. Ahhh, shee-ft. It'd cure that stomach trouble. I can live with it. Incorrigible bastard. What're ya gigglin' about, Hettie muttered. All those perfections and connections, he said. She grunted and grinned, then slipped away again with a soft snore. A new Rutherford era. On the brink of a new Rutherford Era in the UBA. What about it, Barney? I don't know. Maybe. Wait and see. Right now, we've got the flag to think about. Bancroft was always cautious. But perceptive, too, and open, even if he was a born pessimist. He thought about things. A new Rutherford Era. It could be, it could happen. Maybe it was the extra drive that second sons seemed to have. The first son, Brock II, had come up in Year XLIX looking great, but after a fair start, he petered out. Brock's boys had to be pitchers, of course. Nevertheless, Bancroft had sent young Brock back to the minors, had trained him to play first base. There was glory in being a first baseman, too. But when he returned in Year LII, after hitting three home runs in his first two games, he faded away to a.147, made seven errors in a half season of play. What's the main difference between them, Barney? I don't know. I had the same initial feeling about both of them: you know, chips off the old block. You mean chips off the old Brock, don't you, Barney? Yeah, heh heh, chuckles around. And they both had something extra the old man didn't have, a kind of elegance, you might almost call it. No offense to Brock, but he was always more open, more one of the boys. Sure of himself, but as though he'd had to prove it somewhere along the way. A kind of self-made man, you mean? Mmm, something like that. The boys were different. But, Barney, what has Damon got that young Brock lacked? Well, you know how second sons are. When they're still kids, they always have to try a little harder. And something else: you can't say Damon's brighter, but there's something up there that's, well, different; he's more responsive somehow. Yeah, I think I know what you mean, Barney — it's like some guy said up in the press box, all he said was: He knows, and everybody seemed to know just what he was talking about. Barney Bancroft nodded in understanding, gazed thoughtfully off.

11 a.m. Hettie came around at last, lit up a smoke: mingling of aromas generally pleasing to his nostrils. Old Mom looking a bit haggard in the honest morning light, but a freshening was taking place, or so she said and said she was grateful. And it was probably true, he knew how she felt. Didn't seem to come from live coals, that smoke curling up, more like from old ashes, but there was still a lot of life there, a lot of possibility. They laughed about the night's games. Doubleheader. Doubleheader, hell, that was a world series! Chortling, she padded off for a moment, leaving a chill in the sheets. In the interim, he tried considering Hard John Horvath striding to the plate once more, two down, Damon one out from grandeur, but Zifferblatt's fat frown again intruded, making Henry restless. What was it doing out? Terrible storm maybe. No public transportation. Millions dying. Image of himself trapped on flooding streets. Hettie turned on faucets, making suitable water noises. Cities crumbling, whole populations getting washed out to sea. Zifferblatt apologetic: Didn't mean for you to get out in that, Henry; sorry. Too late to be sorry, Ziff, you can't apologize to a drowning man, we're through, I've had it. Hettie returned, slipping in with fresh odors and comforting warmth, though her feet were cold. He suggested going out for breakfast. But she was afraid, didn't want the separation, not yet, pulled him over on top of her. No pitches left, he protested, arsenal all cleaned out. Didn't matter, she said, just stay like that. They talked about time and people and history and how everything seemed to flow confusedly together. Here they were warm, two bugs in a rug, two fish in a blanket, and it was peaceful. Her body made subtle liquid shifts under him, seeking total attachment. Baseball was a lot better game than she'd ever guessed, she admitted. All those wild pitches. What'd he call that surprise one? Oh yeah, a sinker. Hee hee! a real beauty! Well, that's right, the kid had a bag of tricks, all right. Secret, though, was control. Power and control, that was Pappy Rooney's theory. Drive one on the fists, then throw one outside, mix 'em up, but always right where you want 'em. Control. A batter don't go up and swing from his butt on a pitcher like that. You take a short stroke, you don't swing a yard on him. In and out, speed, now and then a curve, change-up, in and out. Oh yeah, said Hettie. In and out. Pitch and catch. Great game. Of course, that wasn't really the truth about baseball. She made it sound easier than it really was. Mom in a protected crouch, holding up her big padded womb, Dad delivering the pitch, winging it in there, time after time. Looked easy. But she forgot about the batter, not to mention all his brothers. Standing there in the box. Frustrating old Dad by poking his own stick out there in the way. Of course, the old man wasn't alone: the other seven were in their places, out there behind him, backing him up, protecting Mom's chastity and the way things were, putting down that rambunctious boy with the big rebellious bat. But they don't always hold him off. Junior explodes one off his piece of lumber and the whole shebang is in trouble; can send the old man to the showers and upend the whole damn system. Of course, just getting his bat on it isn't enough, he's still got to make the full circuit, and it's a long run around there, lot of ground to cover, and a lot can happen on the way, but he hopes, and the minute he leaves it that old home plate starts exerting a tremendous pull on him, and the good ones, on the good days, they do get around there, they do make it back. But how, Henry, what kind of pull, you mean like this? That's right, and he's gotta keep driving, keep moving, stay awake, stay alive, no letting up, stealing what he can, digging in, grabbing for every inch, around and around, and maybe, Hettie, just maybe — but they say he can't do it, and damn it, he must, he will! Oh, come on, come on, Henry, here, come on home! Yes, and they're pulling for him, Hettie, and he rounds second, he's trying to stretch it to third, but I don't know, it's still a long ways to the plate, no, he just can't make it, not this time, and the second baseman, he's got the ball, and he's gonna — No, no, I got it, Henry, I got it! come on! come on! keep it up! Behind his butt, she clapped her cold soles to cheer him on. Yes, he's pushing toward third now, yes! and he's picking up, yes, that's it! he's hard to stop now, he's churning, he's pouring it on, and he's around third! on his way home! but they've got him in a hotbox! wow! third to catch! back to third! hah! to catch! to pitch! catch! pitch! catch! pitch! Home, Henry, home! And here he comes, Hettie! He's past 'em! past 'em! past 'em! he's bolting for home, spurting past, sliding in—POW! Oh, pow, Henry! pow pow pow pow POW! They laughed softly, hysterically, flowing together. She let go her grip on the ball. He slipped off, unmingling their sweat. Oh, that's a game, Henry! That's really a great old game!

So that was how and why it was that Henry showed up that Wednesday at the offices of Dunkelmann, Zauber & Zifferblatt, Licensed Tax & General Accountants, Specializing in Small Firms, Bookkeeping Services & Systems, Payrolls & Payroll Taxes, Monthly, Quarterly & Annual Audits, Enter Without Knocking, somewhat after the lunch hour, and there was just no doubt that the third-named and last-surviving of the firm's partners, Mr. Horace (n) Zifferblatt, Fiduciary Expert and Adjutant of Minor Industry, had his dander up. Of course, he had his reasons. Zifferblatt was a militant clockwatcher, and Henry's record of late had been none too good. And then there'd been that disturbance back during the last pennant scramble when Henry, distracted, worrying about injuries on the Keystone pitching staff, had posted to the general and subsidiary ledgers of one firm the journal entries of another. Whole quarter's worth. So: might as well expect the worst. Still, in spite of his lifelong reverence for hard work and dependability, and that letting-the-team-down guilt he'd always suffered after such lapses, today he found he just didn't care. No, Henry walked today in a perfect vault of well-being, crystalline and impenetrable, and there was nothing the wrath of Zifferblatt could do to crack it.

Following ablutions and purifications, he and Hettie had hustled out for noontime breakfast, full-blown $2.25 platters, big No. 7 on the coffee-shop menu, the kind of farmer's breakfast that pasture-keepers like Stan Patterson and Witness York liked to put away, with extra cups of coffee along the way. Odd day outside: clear one minute, pouring the next— they'd had to sprint the last block under a sudden cloudburst, had piled into the coffee shop laughingly wheezing and snorting like a pair of. ruttish nags, hot for the feedbag. Hettie had played old-time country music on the juke to accompany their celebrations, and one of them had caught his imagination; like the cloudburst outside, a whole new Sandy Shaw ballad for the UBA had poured suddenly out of him. Nothing to it. Everything came easy today. He'd explained to a curious Hettie that songwriting was a kind of hobby. No, no luck so far, he'd lied. In the UBA, after all, they all sang Sandy's songs. Funny thing about both country music and baseball with its "village greens": they weren't really country, not since they got their new names anyway, but urban. Kid stuff, dreams of heroism and innocence, staged by pros and turned into big business. The "New York Game" they called the old town-ball version, and borough born and bred it was and is…

Its early in the mornin' and I been out all

night,

Bad times with my woman and I'm tryin' to git

right,

I stagger into bed but the boss calls my name,

He says, git out on the field, we got a im-portant

game!

PLAY BALL! (My head? s a goddamn balloon!)

PL AY BALL! (Go 'way, don't come back soon!)

PL AY BALL! (That's what the umpire said…)

PLAY BALL! (But, boys, I just gotta stay here

in bed!)

Well, I'm stretched out on my cot there like an

old tomcat,

I got such a hangover that I don't know where

I'm at,

I'm dreamin' 'bout that woman when the boss

busts in the door,

Throws water on my head and dumps me out

on the floor!

PLAY BALL! (Oh no! git outa my mind!)

PLAY BALL! (Cantcha see I'm damn near

blind?)

PLAY BALL! (That's what the umpire said…)

PLAYBALL! (Gawdamighty, I wish I was

dead!)

Wisely, Hettie had asked no further questions about the who or wherefrom of Damon Rutherford, though, on parting, she did with a Hettie Irden wink say that if ever that hoy had a new pitch he wanted to try out on an old veteran, he'd find her wanning a stool at Pete's. Warming the bench, Henry had corrected her, then had pointed out she had not yet witnessed sliders, spitballs, screwballs, knucklers, or the turnover fast ball, not to mention the duster, or "purpose pitch." Hoo-eee! she'd whooped at the list, and: Purpose? What purpose?

Bean ball, high and inside, force the batter back, drop him to his knees, the pitch Toothbrush Terrigan was famous for, touch of meanness that could turn a game into a general free-for-all. Oboy, that's for me! she'd cackled, then had sent him off with a whispered: Tonight!

Well, he'd have to see. For the moment, he spread open ledgers before him on his desk to look busy and thought about line-ups for the next round of games. Let's see, the league-leading Knickerbockers had lost yesterday, so that closed the Pioneers up to just two games behind. Too bad he couldn't pitch Damon against the Haymakers again tonight; that'd finish Pappy Rooney off forever. Who then? Had to save the Ace, Mickey Halifax, for the upcoming series with the Knicks, so he'd have to go with one of the Regulars. Drew McDermott maybe. Idly, he summarized sales receipts, one eye on his boss Horace Zifferblatt, who paced in a flushed pout inside his glass cage of an office. Didn't come out, though. Henry didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad one. Probably bad.

One thing was troubling him, and he realized he had to face up to it: Damon Rutherford meant more to him than any player should. It had happened before, and it had always caused problems. For example now: Damon had already pitched over sixty innings, and he had the best earned-run average in the Association. To be classified an Ace the following year, a pitcher had to pitch a minimum of eighty innings, have one of the ten lowest ERA's in the league. It was the same with hitters: the top twenty-four batters of one season were the Stars of the next. These ratings gave them slightly better odds with the dice, gave the game more continuity. There were always a few changes each year, of course, as some of the Stars and Aces fell, usually at least a fourth of them, and newcomers moved up to take their places, but this was perfectly natural and desirable — what in fact made room for guys like Damon Rutherford. All right, here it was, just midseason, still thirty-seven games to go, and they might suddenly start hitting him. The smart thing would be to baby Damon through the remaining fifteen or twenty innings he needed, pitching him against weaker teams, using him in one-inning relief stints in which, according to the rules, he would pitch as an Ace, so as to make sure he made that all-important leap next year, without which no great career was possible. Otherwise, pitching him regularly, the bottom could suddenly fall out. It had before with other bright young Rookies, many times. So why shouldn't Bancroft do it, why shouldn't he baby him? Because Barney Bancroft didn't know what Henry knew. He didn't know about the different charts. He didn't even know about Aces and why it was the good ones often stayed good over the years. Of course, he must have sensed it, they all did: that peculiar extra force that these great players seemed to radiate. Take the Haymakers' Hamilton Craft, for example, now in a miserable slump, and yet Rooney couldn't pull him from the line-up yesterday because he somehow felt that Craft was the best man he had — he was right, but he didn't know exactly why. It was the same when a man fell from class: you could feel it, though sometimes it was hard to believe it, and you kept using the man anyway, waiting for him to bounce back. But what could you feel about Damon Rutherford right now? Only that he might be the greatest pitcher in world history, and how could you bench a man like that? No, Damon had passed up Ace Halifax, was clearly the bellwether of the Pioneer staff, the number-one starter, and unless he showed some signs of losing control that Bancroft could recognize— and even then Barney might rightly prescribe more pitching and not less — then he'd have to pitch at least another ten or twelve games. And could Henry sit idly by and watch the kid get powdered, lose hope of becoming an Ace? He had to. Oh, sure, he was free to throw away the dice, run the game by whim, but then what would be the point of it? Who would Damon Rutherford really be then? Nobody, an empty name, a play actor. Even though he'd set his own rules, his own limits, and though he could change them whenever he wished, nevertheless he and his players were committed to the turns of the mindless and unpredictable — one might even say, irresponsible — dice. That was how it was. He had to accept it, or quit the game altogether.

Someone, he noticed, was bulking by his desk. Henry looked up, expecting the worst, but it was only his friend Lou Engel. Zifferblatt seemed busy at his desk, working his mouth as though chewing a cud. "Henry!" Lou whispered, one eye Ziffward. "Have you been sick or… or something?"

Henry felt an impulsive urge to explain, to tell Lou about the perfect game, but it would have taken too long and Lou probably wouldn't have got it anyway, so he merely said, "No, no! Feel great, Lou! Just great!"

Lou looked unconvinced. "Let's talk after work," he said. Ziff reared his head, and Lou hurried clumsily down the aisle toward his own desk, kicking over a wastebasket along the way. "Oops! awful sorry!" Poor Lou.

At times, it was true, Henry longed not only to talk about his game, but to have somebody to play it with him. Often, especially during the long routine stretches with one team way out in front, or when continuity and pattern dissipated, giving way to mere accident, he felt the loneliness of his game, longed for an equal with whom to reminisce, to judge, to plan. He had invented alternate schemes for playing the game which would allow for two proprietors or more, and had hinted at the game when talking with Lou, but Lou didn't seem to have quite the right feeling for projects like that. He preferred to play chess or collect stamps or listen to classical music. Of course, now there was Hettie, and the other player didn't have to be an equal, after all. No, there was the possibility of some new arrangement based not on two competing and antagonistic equals, but rather on the relinquishment of certain, let us say, feminine powers and duties, the creation of a kind of vice-proprietor, as it were. But Hettie was probably too unconscious. Whatever she did, it would have to be pretty simple.

So I'm out on the field and the sun is mighty hot,

And I'm thinkin' 'bout all the goddamn troubles

I got,

Next thing I know I'm sawin' 'em off at first

base,

And this guy gits a hit and comes and stands on

my face!

PLAY BALL! (I'm gonna split if it's all the

same!)

PLAY BALL! (What the hell is the name of

this game?)

PLAY BALL!

"All right. Where were you this morning, Mr. Waugh?'* Just when he least expected him, there he was: Horace Zifferblatt.

And what could he say? Playing baseball between the sheets with a B-girl? Celebrating Damon's Day in the UBA? He smiled. Looking more carefully now at his work, he saw that he had entered a whole list of figures in the wrong column. In pencil, fortunately. Zifferblatt reared before him, fidgeting in a cold yet incensed quiver, thumbs rammed into the snake-skin belt of his black-and-gray striped trousers, his third and grayest chin beetling neatly over the hard knot of his purple-and-cream tie. Henry knew he should wait until the man had gone, but he didn't. He got out his eraser and went to work.

"Is something wrong, Henry?" The shift in name was not necessarily a good sign. Ziff, he knew, was watching him erase.

Henry had to admit that the more carefully he figured the percentages and tabulated the records of his Association, the more mistakes he seemed to make here at work, and though he knew he shouldn't really be bothered by the fact, nevertheless he still suffered from that professional pride of computational infallibility, and so no doubt he was blushing now. He brushed eraser crumbs from the ruled paper and surveyed his work. He supposed that the whole office was watching them now, but he really didn't know what to tell Ziff. He saw Damon Rutherford down in the locker room, one foot up on a bench, lacing a cleated shoe, saw him feel a foreign presence, saw him straighten up, tall, lithe, self-composed, a look of amusement commingled with compassion arching his young brow, saw him turn to look down on this little fat man, standing there in confused rage, heard him say: "How's that, fella?"

Zifferblatt rocked back on his heels, blew out his cheeks in genuine astonishment. "Waugh!" he squeaked. "I want you to come in and see me first thing tomorrow morning—first thing! You hear?" The man rotated, and head bulled forward, stumped off to his private office. Henry watched him, then returned to his books. Lou dropped by cautiously, but Henry waved him off; couldn't Lou see he really didn't care?

He transcribed the misplaced figures into the right column, but once that was done, he couldn't seem to keep going. His mind kept drifting back to his kitchen table. Big night tonight. He still had to post all the action of the forty-seventh games, then write it up in the Book. Plenty to talk about. Terrific pennant chase developing between the Knickerbockers and the Pioneers, with the Pastimers and last year's champs, the Keystones, not far behind. Patrick Monday's new political party. Though, with Damon's no-hitter, he was less excited about that now; it seemed less necessary. Still, the seed was sown. Monday probably fretting about the new league mood. Wait and see. Also there was the developing slugging contest between the Knicks' Walt McCamish and die Pioneers' Witness York. Signs of a new Rutherford Era. What a season! The big story tonight, of course, was the perfect game. The boy with the magic arm. The man who knows himself. Phrases and headlines floated through his mind. Return of the Pioneers. Hopes soar for first pennant in twenty-four years. Have to remember that interview with Barney Bancroft he had in bed this morning. What about Damon's consecratory romp in the sack afterwards? Sure, why not? Somebody's virgin daughter. Maybe the Knicks' manager Sycamore Flynn had a daughter he could use. Only one? Hell, a whole stadium full! Line 'em up! Boy with the magic shortarm!

What was he doing here? He had to get out, get home! He looked at the clock: 4:21. Couldn't even wait nine minutes? Couldn't he play the horseracing game he kept in his desk drawer, for instance? He couldn't. He glanced toward Zifferblatt's office: bent over the books. Well, it would be a hard pill for the old man to swallow, but that was tough. Henry closed the books, put them away, stepped over to the hat-tree for his gray felt, raincoat, and black umbrella, and left the office. On the move. Come on, boys, let's take the field. Lot of pepper now. As he passed Ziff's office, he caught a glimpse of the old man's gray head jerking up to glare at his early exit. Well, too bad, but how could anyone take seriously, after all, a man named Horace Zifferblatt? Once in the elevator, going down, he was able to forget about work altogether. He was headed for home, returning to his league and all its players, to the Book and tonight's big story, and there weren't any Horace Zifferblatts there.

Outside, it was raining again, nostalgic fall evening, and Henry, as he stepped along under his umbrella, found it pleasant to muse about the origins. He'd always played a lot of games: baseball, basketball, different card games, war and finance games, horseracing, football, and so on, all on paper of course. Once, he'd got involved in a tabletop war-games club, played by mail, with mutual defense pacts, munition sales, secret agents, and even assassinations, but the inability of the other players to detach themselves from their narrow-minded historical preconceptions depressed Henry. Anything more complex than a normalized two-person zero-sum game was beyond them. Henry had invented for them a variation on Monopoly, using twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four boards at once and an unlimited number of players, which opened up the possibility of wars run by industrial giants with investments on several boards at once, the buying off of whole governments, the emergence of international communications and utilities barons, strikes and rebellions by the slumdwellers between "Go" and "Jail," revolutionary subversion and sabotage with sympathetic ties across the boards, the creation of international regulatory bodies by the established power cliques, and yet without losing any of the basic features of their own battle games, but it never caught on. He even introduced health, sex, religious, and character variables, but that made even less of a hit, though he did manage, before leaving the club, to get a couple pieces on his "Intermonop" game published in some of the club literature.

And so, finally, he'd found his way back to baseball. Nothing like it really. Not the actual game so much — to tell the truth, real baseball bored him — but rather the records, the statistics, the peculiar balances between individual and team, offense and defense, strategy and luck, accident and pattern, power and intelligence. And no other activity in the world had so precise and comprehensive a history, so specific an ethic, and at the same time, strange as it seemed, so much ultimate mystery. He had started out by selecting eight teams from baseball's early days in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and supplying them with rosters of twenty-one ballplayers each. Marshall Williams. Verne Mackenzie. Fancy Dan Casey. Barnaby North. How clearly he remembered the stars of that first year! He even recalled the precise results of those first games, how the Beaneaters won their first six games in a row and never gave up the lead, beating out the Keystones by five full games. If he tried hard enough, he could probably even remember the exact scores.

Of course, the abrupt beginning had its disadvantages. It was, in a sense, too arbitrary, too inexplicable. In spite of the almost excessive warmth he felt toward those first ballplayers, it always troubled him that their life histories were so unavailable to him: What had a great player already in his thirties been doing for the previous ten years? It was much better once a kind of continuity had been established, and when new players had taken over the league who had their whole careers still ahead of them. It was, in fact, when the last Year I player had retired that Henry felt the Association had come of age, and when, a couple years ago, the last veteran of Year I, old ex-Chancellor Barnaby North, had died, he had felt an odd sense of relief: the touch with the deep past was now purely "historic," its ambiguity only natural. Luckily, all the first-year records had been broken. And soon there would be no more living veterans born before Year I.

The rain tumbled like gentle applause on his umbrella. Under it he walked, skirting the puddles, dry in the deluge, as though glassed in under a peaked black dome. Hunched-up cars pushed through the streets like angry defeated ballplayers jockeying through crowds on their way to the showers. Henry waited at a corner for a red light. Offices emptied out, filling the streets. A policeman in a slicker stood stoically in the thick of the traffic, blowing his whistle and jerking his arms like a base coach urging a runner on. The light changed to green and Henry crossed over to his bus stop. Green. Slicker. Cop. Cop* per Greene. Might try it. Have to jot it down when he got home.

Everywhere he looked he saw names. His head was full of diem. Bus stop. Whistlestop. Whistlestop Busby, second base. Simple as that. Over a storefront across the street: Thornton's. He'd been looking for a name to go with Shadwell, and maybe that was it. Thornton Shadwell. Tim's boy. Pitcher like the old man? Probably. But a lefty. Will he play for the Stones? No. Unless the old man gets sacked this year. His Keystones were in a slump. Manager of the Year last year, in trouble this. Life was fast and brutal. More likely, Mel Trench's Excelsiors will grab young Shadwell up. Outstanding prospect.

Henry was always careful about names, for they were what gave the league its sense of fulfillment and failure, its emotion. The dice and charts and other paraphernalia were only the mechanics of the drama, not the drama itself. Names had to be chosen, therefore, that could bear the whole weight of perpetuity. Brock Rutherford was a name like that; Horace (n) Zifferblatt wasn't. Now, it was funny about names. All right, you bring a player up from the minors, call him A. Player A, like his contemporaries, has, being a Rookie, certain specific advantages and disadvantages with the dice. But it's exactly the same for all Rookies. You roll, Player A gets a hit or he doesn't, gets his man out or he doesn't. Sounds simple. But call Player A "Sycamore Flynn" or "Melbourne Trench" and something starts to happen. He shrinks or grows, stretches out or puts on muscle. Sprays singles to all fields or belts them over the wall. Throws mostly fast balls like Swanee Law or curves like Mickey Halifax. Choleric like Rag Rooney or slow and smooth like his old first-base rival Mose Stanford. Not easy to tell just how or why. Or take Old Fennimore McCaffree. He was "Old" the year he came up to play third base for the Knicks. And not just because he'd got an unlucky throw of the dice on the Rookie Age Chart and started in as a thirty-year-older, but because that was simply who he was: Old Fennimore. Scholar and statesman. Dark. Angular. Intense. Sinewy. Fast. Tough. Year XIX. Same Rookie year as Brock Rutherford. Fenn got overlooked in all the other excitement that year, but in XXI he stroked out a.371 to cop both the batting title and the year's Most Valuable Player Award. Determined man. But still Old Fenn. Now, just inquire of poor Woody Winthrop, who till then had been the perennial third-base All Star selection, and who, in fact, if Henry remembered rightly, had himself in that Year of the Rookie, Year XIX, won the MVP Award, if that was Player A he was getting eclipsed by. No, friends and voters, that was Old Fennimore. Shrewd, relentless, cool, reliable Fenn. When you scored against the Knickerbockers in those years, you even felt a chill just crossing third under Old Fenn's glare. Then, suddenly, he was not just old, he was too old. Great playing record, but too brief to be sure of making the Hall of Fame. And for Fenn there was no halfway house in history. A spectacular career as manager might be enough more to do the trick, he figured. So he talked Woody Winthrop, by then the champion Knickerbockers boss, into quitting his job to enter Association politics, while he himself, wily Old Fenn McCaffree, took over as manager of the team Woody had built. Something of a bastard, but he won ball games, and that was what counted in baseball. Twelve years, six championships. And so he did make it: Hall of Fame. And now he was even the UBA Chancellor. And whom did he succeed? Woody Winthrop. Looking back, it seemed all but necessary. Strange. But name a man and you make him what he is. Of course, he can develop. And in ways you don't expect. Or something can go wrong. Lot of nicknames invented as a result of Rookie-year surprises. But the basic stuff is already there. In the name. Or rather: in the naming.

The bus was late. Due to the bad weather probably. He might as well have stayed at the office. But no, he'd enjoyed this moment. It had given him time to think. Prepare his mind for tonight's activity. Exciting year, LVI. Years from now, he'd look back on it with the same nostalgia he was feeling now for Year XIX.

"Henry!" It was his friend Lou, trotting flatfooted through the puddles, holding his hat, coat undone and flapping in the rain. "Henry!" lie called again, but then couldn't get his breath to continue. The bus came. Henry smiled at Lou, squeezed aboard. "I… guess (wheeze) I'll… ride along," Lou gasped, and intruded his bulk.

The bus was jammed, they had to stand. People jostled, rammed them moistly toward the rear. Rain drummed on the roof. If skyscrapers were penis-prisons, what were the buses? the efferent tubes? The driver barked orders. Passengers protested at the shoving. Lou was the biggest in sight, so everybody turned their darkest looks on him. A woman complained about getting elbowed, and though it wasn't Lou's fault, he tipped his hat in apology, dripping water from the brim onto the evening paper of a man sitting next to them. The paper spoke blackly of bombs, births, wars, weddings, infiltrations, and social events. "You know, Lou," Henry said, "you can take history or leave it, but if you take it you have to accept certain assumptions or ground rules about what's left in and what's left out."

"How's. . that?" squeaked Lou, wrinkling up his nose. His breath was still coming in short spasmodic gulps, and one gulp broke his question right in the middle. Lou oughtn't run so hard with his weight.

"History. Amazing, how we love it. And did you ever stop to think that without numbers or measurements, there probably wouldn't be any history?" He asked it that way for Lou's sake. Really, he was thinking the thoughts he always thought on buses and subways, drawing the old comparisons — why, he wondered, at such an inherently joyful moment, was he feeling so melancholy? Was it the rain? or maybe the unspoken recognition that Damon Rutherford, wonderful as he was, would someday have to hang up his cleats like all the rest? Maybe it was only because this was Year LVI: he and the Association were the same age, though of course their "years" were reckoned differently. He saw two time lines crossing in space at a point marked "56." Was it the vital moment? Silly idea. It would probably get better next season. "At 4:34 on a wet November afternoon, Lou Engel boarded a city bus and spilled water from his hat brim on a man's newspaper. Is that history?"

"I… I dunno," stammered Lou, reddening before the sudden distrustful scowl of the man with the newspaper. "I (wheeze) guess so."

"Who's writing it down?" Henry demanded.

"Henry, listen, what's the matter? (Wheeze.) What was the point of that row with Mr. Zifferblatt anyhow? Where were you this (wheeze) morning? And where were you going in such a rush? Why, you left nine (wheeze) minutes early, did you know that? I had to run five blocks" — here his voice broke, and he had to gulp for air again—"almost to catch up to you. What is it, Henry? Can I help somehow? Is (wheeze) something wrong?" Once he got his wind, it came like a gale.

"No, no, like I told you, Lou, everything's fine, just fine. Wonderful, in fact." His stop. He stepped down, and Lou clumsily followed. Henry was impatient to get home, to look at that box score again, but he waited for Lou, who had no umbrella.

"I just don't understand you anymore, Henry!" Lou protested. There was an awkward silence as they walked along under the drumroll of rain. "Look, Henry, I got an idea, why don't you come along with me tonight? I found a new place, Mitch's Bar and Grill, great steaks—"

"Sorry, Lou, I'm busy tonight."

"That's what you always say, Henry. What do you do? I don't understand. Look, I got an idea—"

"Not tonight, Lou." They were at the front door of Diskin's Delicatessen. Maybe tonight was the night to show Lou the game. Yet, damn it, somehow he felt jealous of that perfect game, felt an uncommonly strong wish to be alone this evening, and besides, Lou could spoil it. His questions were almost never the right ones. "Some other time. I may want to go out and celebrate soon, in fact."

"Celebrate. .?"

"Would you like to use my umbrella, Lou? the rest of the way?"

"No, thanks, Henry, I catch a bus on the next corner and it's… but, but listen—"

"Say, Lou," Henry interrupted as he turned into the doorway of the stairs leading up to his apartment. "Is Mitch a first or last name?"

"Mitch? You mean the…? First, but…?"

"What's his last name?"

"Porter, I think."

"Mitch Porter." Henry collapsed his umbrella and stood at the edge of the rain, listening to the name of Mitch Porter. Might make an outfielder. Or a good third baseman. "We'll have to try it sometime. Good night, Lou."

Lou sighed. "Night, Henry." His friend Lou looked dismal in the rain, hat brim adroop, eyebrows soggy, and if it hadn't been for the recording of the perfect game that awaited him, Henry would have relented, would have taken leave from the Association tonight and gone with Lou to Mitch's Bar and Grill, try to cheer him up. And, yes, someday, no doubt about it, he'd have to show Lou the game. If he didn't get it, so what? At least let him have his chance.

The stairway always had a certain smell that quickened Henry's pulse. Like hot dogs and beer in a ball park. Probably came from the delicatessen, but in any case it always made Henry take the last ten or fifteen steps on the run. At the door of his apartment, he was often grabbed by mild panic, felt the fragility of this thing he'd fashioned: a fire, theft, even a hard wind… he drove the key into the lock, turned it, stepped inside.

But on the kitchen table, everything was in order, just as he had left it. Scorecard of the game, final entries scrawled a little excitedly perhaps. The dice still showed Hard John Hor-vath's grounder to third. In a sense, it was still that moment, and if he wanted to savor it or if he got occupied with something else, it could go on being that moment for weeks. And then, when things got going again, would the players have any awareness of how time had stopped? No. . but they might wonder how all the details of that moment had got so firmly etched in their minds.

Of course, there were other games yesterday. The lowly Excelsiors had risen up to knock off the league-leading Knickerbockers, 6-to-2, trimming their edge over the surging Pioneers to two games. The Pastime Club, riding a winning streak, had edged the Keystones in the ninth inning, 4-to-3, to tie that team for third place and give troubled Tim Shad-well another white hair. And, in a second-division free-for-all, Winslow Beaver's Beaneaters had nailed Wally Wickersham's bumbling Bridegrooms deeper into the cellar, 12-to-8, both teams using five of their six pitchers in the hectic course of the game. The first thing Henry did after hanging up his hat, coat, and umbrella, was to bring the Team Standings Board up to date. The Board, which years ago Henry had constructed with removable wooden name-slats and numbers, hung on the wall behind the kitchen table. When he was done, it read:

Then he put on fresh coffee and switched on the light, a hundred-watt bulb with a green metal topee, painted white on the underside, that hung directly over the table. Next, he got out the binder of running pitching statistics for this year, filled in the details from the forty-seventh round of games. Henry had the forms for these statistics, like all his forms now, printed up for him by a small-job printer. There was room on each form for a full team of six pitchers, and there, with little marks that ended up looking like railroad tracks, he recorded their Games Pitched, Complete Games, Games Won, Games Lost, Shutouts, Strikeouts, Walks, Hits Allowed, Innings Pitched, Earned Runs Allowed, and Special Remarks. There were spaces for writing in, at year's end, the Won-Lost Percentage and Earned Run Average.

The coffee was done, so he poured himself a cup, returned now to the table to post the day's batting statistics. These charts were larger, had room for a full roster of twenty-one players (pitchers had batting averages, too, of course, and a couple of pitchers in UBA history had, in spite of the odds against them, hit their way into Star categories and become right fielders in the course of time), contained such information as Games Played, At Bats, Runs, Hits, Doubles, Triples, Home Runs,

Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, and so on, with special columns to record Injuries, as well as Most Valuable Player points, awarded after each game. Room, too, for end-of-season Batting and Slugging Averages. As for injuries, these occurred with a dice roll of 3-3-3 on all nine of the basic charts; the dice were then thrown again to obtain the details of it from the special Injuries Chart, which included everything from a hit batsman who, uninjured, took his base, to multiple injuries that sometimes kept ballplayers out of the line-up for several games, or even the season. It was every manager's headache and it was probably the worst way to lose a pennant, to have your Ace nursing a chip in his elbow or your Stars hobbling around in casts, but it was a crucial part of the whole game, and though Henry always felt a twinge of remorse when it happened, he was pleased with that detail in his system.

Finally, the dullest job — recording of fielding statistics. The trouble was, all these averages stayed pretty much the same, and worth was a hard thing to judge by them. Incompetent ballplayers just didn't make it up to the big leagues in the first place, and as for the competent ones, a couple percentage points here or there didn't tell much of a story. He had managed to bring a little color and pattern to them with small subtleties worked in over the years, such that brilliant fielders took more chances, made fewer errors, had a better chance of throwing out base runners from the outfield or setting up double plays, but except for a handful of unusually flashy glovemen, he couldn't keep his mind on it. He had thought of giving them up altogether, they took a lot of time and didn't seem worth it, but there were all those fielding records already established, and what would they mean if they had no challengers? Besides, it was, as Sandy Shaw knew, the third part of the game: "… Pitchin', catchin', swingin', out on the field all day!" So he had stayed loyal even to this, the most wearying part of his game.

This done, the posting of all statistics from the day's play, Henry turned to the job he enjoyed most — writing it up in the Book. He'd begun the logs in Year IX, feeling the need by then to take counsel with himself, though even before that, he had been writing up uncommonly exciting moments on loose sheets of typing paper (glad he did; these later got bound in). Now it consisted of some forty volumes, kept in shelves built into the kitchen wall, along with the permanent record books, league financial ledgers, and the loose-leaf notebooks of running life histories. He seemed to find more to write about, the more he played the game, and he foresaw the day when the number of archive volumes would pass the number of league years. He always used a standard-size record book, three hundred pages, good rag content for durability; he kept a shorthand point on his fountain pen and never used anything but permanent black ink, except when he underlined or boxed in extraordinary incidents or insights in a draughtsman's red ink. On the title page of each volume were the volume number and these words:

Official Archives

THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION

J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

Into the Book went the whole UBA, everything from statistics to journalistic dispatches, from seasonal analyses to general baseball theory. Everything, in short, worth keeping. Style varied from the extreme economy of factual data to the overblown idiom of the sportswriter, from the scientific objectivity of the theoreticians to the literary speculations of essayists and anecdotalists. There were tape-recorded dialogues, player contributions, election coverage, obituaries, satires, prophecies, scandals. It provided a kind of league's-eye view, since functional details of the game were never mentioned— team analyses, for example, never referred to Stars and Aces except metaphorically, and, intentionally, erred slightly. His own shifting moods, often affected by events in the league, also colored the reports, oscillating between notions of grandeur and irony, exultation and despair, enthusiasm and indifference, amusement and weariness. Lately, he had noticed a tendency toward melancholy and sentimentality. He hoped he'd get over it soon. Maybe he could do a piece on next year's upcoming rookies, boys like Copper Greene and Thornton Shad-well and Whistlestop Busby, something to spring his mind forward. He often did that: forcibly reversed his mood by a story inappropriate to it. Like the time, following a siege of minor illnesses which had left him in a deep gloom, when he had told the story of Long Lew Lydell's rape of Old Fennimore McCaffree's spinster daughter in the Knickerbocker dugout in front of five thousand wide-eyed spectators. Lew married the girl eventually, under political pressure, since the Legalist Party, which McCaffree headed up, could abide no scandals, and, so they say, he was even tamed, though whether by Fanny or by his own political ambitions, it was hard to say. Henry smiled, remembering. Sandy had a song about it…

. . For believe it or not,

Though Long Lew had a lot,

Fanny had never had any!

Might have started a new Association pre-game warm-up ritual, if they hadn't threatened Long Lew with expulsion from the league. Poor Fennimore! A lesser man would have sunk away into the earth. But not Old Fenn: here he was now the Association Chancellor and his son-in-law was a party bigwig. New elections coming up this winter, but it looked like McCaffree would be reelected. Raped daughter or no.

Henry spread open the current volume of the Book, read over the previous entry, considered this one. He wrote out a few possible lead sentences on scratch paper, but none appealed to him. He stood, poured himself another cup of coffee, carried it back to the table and stood there, staring down at the open Book. He rarely copied box scores into the Book, since they all got kept in each year's manila folders, but today it seemed the right thing to do. All those zeros! He decided for the zeros he'd use red ink. Zero: the absence of number, an incredible idea! Only infinity compared to it, and no batter could hit an infinite number of home runs — no, in a way, the pitchers had it better. Perfection was available to them.

Damon Rutherford. Rutherford. Henry was sitting now, gazing through the steam off his coffee toward the League Standings Board. He recalled that vision of the boy, standing there on the mound, one out from immortality, and not one twitch or flicker. He saw the women screaming, offering themselves up, watched the surge of adoring masses, saw Damon pitch the ball out to that little kid. Who was that boy? Someday they'd probably all find out. The reporters tried to interview Damon directly, of course, but he told them he had nothing really to say. Was he excited about what he'd done? Yes. I mean, really excited? Yes. What was the secret of his success? No secret. But that pitch — how was it…? what did he do…? Nothing, just threw it. Hey, Damon, what did Ingram say when he came out to the mound? Nothing much, just helped me relax. Helped you relax! Laughter around. Damon smiled. Say, I guess your Daddy's proud, hunh? I hope so. Did he come to see you pitch? Yes. What did he tell you afterwards? Good game.

Henry paced the kitchen, his mind on several things at once. He poured what was left of the coffee, put another pot on. Rain splashed on the window. Getting dark already. Should be moving on, he had work to do yet tonight, but he decided first to get out the archive volumes from the Brock Rutherford Era. Yes, he was definitely calling it that now. He thumbed meditatively through those old Books, taking notes, soon found himself reliving those great years of the Pioneers as though they were happening today. Pugnacious little Frosty Young, whistling and catcalling around second base, making those picture plays: the Demonic Duo they called Young and his shortstop-buddy Jonathan Noon. And five-by-five Holly Tibbett running the bases splay-legged: ho ho! look at him go! Loose-limbed Mose Stanford hitching his baggy pants, stuffing a loose shirt-end under the belt, spitting sleepily on his hands, and shoes unlaced and socks drooping, whacking out another game-winning double: led the league in doubles five straight years, an all-time record! And Toothbrush dusting Gus Maloney— on the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart — and setting off the greatest fight in UBA history, not only all over the diamond, but even out in left field where the Haymaker relief pitchers charged out of the bull pen to gang up on Willie O'Leary! And through those years, out in center field, the Old Philosopher, brilliant Bamey Bancroft, floating with that unruffled grace, pulling impossible catches out of the air, pegging the ball home on the fly. A whiplash hitter and the fastest man in the UBA in his day, Barney was the last of the great Pioneers to leave the scene, was in fact the oldest active player in world history, hanging on to his Star rating until the age of forty-five, retiring finally in Year XLIII to become a Pioneer coach and eventually their manager. The Man Who Couldn't Quit.

Year XIX: Year of the Rookie. Five eventual Hall-of-Famers in the crop. Not only the Pioneers' Rutherford and Young, but also shortstop Sycamore Flynn of the Bridegrooms, now the Knickerbocker boss; the Knicks' own great Fennimore McCaffree; and the phenomenal Edgar Bath who that year pitched his first game for the Keystones, eventually leading them to an upset pennant win over the Knicks and Pioneers in Year XXIII. "Well," said Bath, "we were lucky that year, but we were good, too. We had—" No, wait: Henry checked the deceased lists; yes, Bath was dead, thought so. Jake Bradley came up in XIX, too, to play second for the Pastimers. Didn't make the Hall of Fame, at least not yet, but a great UBA personality.

One thing that struck Henry was the optimism in his own style back then. Even a kind of jauntiness. He'd changed. He couldn't write like that now. Not even if he had the- kind of story he'd had that year. Brock's great rookie season. Election of Fancy Dan Casey to the Hall of Fame just before it began. Fourteen different records broken. It was die year they formed up the first real political parties, the semi-official Individualist Party, later called the Bogglers (from Barnaby North's great speech in XXIV), and the Legalists. And it was the year the ever-impotent Bridegrooms, led by the great Woody Winthrop, who took the batting title and the MVP award, rose up to snatch the pennant from the long-time UBA powerhouse, the Haymakers and the Knickerbockers, and the surging exuberant Pioneers! — the only year in all Association history that the Grooms finished first! After XIX, it was the Pioneers' league: nine pennants in fourteen seasons, and only once as low as third. Henry remembered how he himself had wearied finally of the Pioneer domination, and how, secretly, he had rooted for any and all challengers. Of course, he hadn't interfered directly in any way, and yet the Pioneers must have felt, somehow, his resistance, and in ways not really visible, he had probably in fact made it harder for them. And yet, there they were, year after year, right on top, and Brock Rutherford, the winningest pitcher in baseball, was right on top there with them. Once he lost his Ace status, he didn't stay on long, just two years, and Henry was glad for him: it was painful to see an immortal going clumsy. With Brock gone, the Pioneers collapsed, finished higher than seventh only twice during the next fourteen years. Henry graphed all this out, studied it over a fresh cup of coffee. The Brock Rutherford Era. He called down to the delicatessen and asked Mr. Diskin to have Benny bring him up a couple hot pastrami sandwiches and more beer.

Holly Tibbett was the guy who loved pastrami and beer. Of course, he loved everything edible. He was always eating. "You remember how he used to keep a pastrami sandwich next to his belly, under the guard, to nibble on between pitches?" "Do I remember!" Brock said with a grin. "I used to aim at it!" Still a husky guy, hair cropped short, graying a little maybe, dressed in a plaid wool shirt and wash pants, a bit fuller around the middle now. "Ever hit it?" That was Tim Shadwell, broad grin on his face. "Once. But I had to throw when he wasn't looking." Gabe Burdette laughed: "I remember that! He was arguing with the ump. You nearly laid him out!" Now Frosty Young and Jake Bradley were laughing, too, Young himself an umpire now and getting the hell he gave so many years. And Jumpin' Joe Gallagher and Willie O'Leary. "I heard about that," Bradley put in. "The funny thing was to see old Holly run," Gabe said. "Only catcher I ever knew who walked the same silly split-ass way no matter whether he was wearing his guard or not." "You tellin' me" Bradley laughed in that soft ironic way of his, leaning on the bar. Amber light gleamed off his pate, but his shirt was a dazzling white. "It used to put me in a pea-green funk every time I saw him come charging up at me from first! It looked like he was going every which way at once!" "And standing still at the same time!" Frosty put in. "Yeah, that's right, he wasn't very fast." They all laughed to see old Holly Tibbett huffing and puffing toward second base, where bald Jake Bradley waited in a mock funk. Jake poured a round of drinks. Gabe Burdette told again the story of the clam chowder. They'd all heard it before, but they all wanted to hear it again. They stood at the bar, seven aging men, laughing to think of their old friend Holly Tibbett, who had died finally, not of gluttony, but of a brain tumor. While nostalgic music thrummed out of the jukebox, Cabe told how Holly, who avoided women with the same shy intensity with which he sought food, got talked into visiting this broad they all knew, who, they told him, made the best clam chowder in world history. So he wouldn't get suspicious, Gabe and Frosty went with him. They were just sitting down at the table, when the girl, who had been put up to it, spilled the whole mess in Holly's lap. Gabe and Frosty asked the girl if she could clean the pants a little, maybe run over them with an iron. She said, sure, and before Holly could argue (and anyway the pants were scalding hot), they'd got him into the bathroom and the pants off him. That was when, after they'd slipped out with the pants, that the girl hollered out, "Eek! my husband!" — and Brock, wearing glasses and a false nose and mustache, came storming in as the irate spouse, discovered Holly in the head and went for his gun. "My pants!" Holly screamed, but then Brock let fire a salvo, and out the door old Holly shot. "He looked just like something out of an old movie!" Gabe howled. They were all laughing. Jake Bradley had tears in his eyes. Frosty ran up and down in the barroom, imitating splay-legged Holly Tibbett in an old movie. Brock chased him down the street, firing shots into the air. "Just mention clam chowder to Holly after that!" Gabe cried. Brock's laughter boomed out over the others, free and resonant. "Those were the days!" Jake said. Old Holly. Their laughter dwindled. They found themselves sighing, staring wistfully into their glasses. "Another round, Jake," said Brock softly.

Henry had hardly noticed when Benny had brought the sandwiches. One of them was already gone. He looked at his watch: eleven. He closed the Book, ate the other sandwich, washed it down with beer. If he stepped along, there was still time for one round of games before turning in. He wrote out the eight line-ups, making a couple strategic changes here and there, considering each team's needs. The bottom teams, for example, were already beginning to develop for next year, while the ones near the top, fighting it out, still had to stick with the best. Unusual season, though, in that all of the teams were pretty close.

Things went routinely through the forty-eighth game of the fifty-sixth season in the UBA. The Knicks shellacked Mel Trench's Cels, and hung on to their two-game lead. The second-running Pioneers knocked off the Haymakers again, and Pappy Rooney's ulcer got worse. The benighted Bridegrooms upset the Beaneaters, and Cash Bailey's red-hot Pastimers, led by Virgin Donovan and Bo McBean, took their third straight from the Keystones, last year's champions, to move into undisputed possession of third place. Henry brought the Team Standings Board up to date, logged all the statistics, wrote up a routine report of the day's play in the Book, punched open another can of beer. It was only 2:30 and tomorrow — today, actually — would be a light day at the office. Well, there was that tiresome matter with Zifferblatt, but he could take care of that. Besides, to be honest with himself, the idea had been dogging him for the last two or three hours: He wanted to see Damon Rutherford pitch again tonight!

It wasn't the recommended practice to start a pitcher after only one day of rest, but it wasn't against the rules. Besides, there was an extra day of travel in there, as the Knickerbockers came by train from the Excelsiors' Flint Field to Pioneer Park. And that was the other thing that was exciting him: the Pioneers were up against the league-leading Knicks in a three-game series that could ultimately decide the outcome of the entire season! Already, phrases for the Book were flashing through his mind. He drank down the beer and opened another, took a couple minutes to quell the rebellion of his kidneys, and then, with the premonition of a great impending drama driving him, he sat down quickly at the table and wrote out the starting line-ups. He decided to start rookie pitcher Jock Casey for the Knicks to make the game an even match, although secretly he knew — in fact, he hesitated, admitted it out loud: "They should start their Ace southpaw, Uncle Joe Shannon."

Knick manager Sycamore Flynn fended off the criticism. "I'm saving Shannon to pitch against Halifax." And he was right. With a two-game lead, the Knicks could risk losing the first one, and still, by bearing down with their two Aces in the last two games, come out of the series better off than they went in. In any case, there'd be no further concessions, if in fact that was one. It was Damon's job, and he wouldn't like it if he didn't think he was doing it by himself. He emerged from the locker room with that same incredible poise, that same effortless calm. Autograph hunters, mostly kids, jammed around him. He signed a few scorecards, smiled at the other youngsters, then moved on toward the field. "Hey, Damon!" a young boy hollered. "Can I have the ball today?" And all the others picked up the cry.

The hometown Pioneer fans went wild when he appeared on the field to take his warm-up pitches. Manager Bancroft fretted about that a little, but he saw it didn't seem to affect Damon any. Barney really needed this game. He wondered if he'd done the wrong thing sending him in again so soon. The crowd was shouting: "Rutherford! Rutherford! Rutherford!" over and over. Henry tried to sit, but he was getting pretty excited himself. He swallowed down some beer to take the tension out of his throat. "Go out and win one for the old man, son." Who said that? Why, that was old Brock! Yes, there he was, sitting in a special box seat over near third base, up behind the Pioneer dugout. In fact, Henry realized suddenly, it must be Brock Rutherford Day at Pioneer Park!

Henry leaped up, paced the kitchen, sat down again. Yes, that's it! Of course Damon had to pitch! Over in the special bunting bedizened section, Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree, gaunt and black-suited, was shaking Brock's hand. Oh boy, the Pioneer fans were raising the roof! Yes, Brock's day, and they were all there with him: Gabe Burdette and Willie 0' Leary, old Mose, Surrey Moss, who'd lost his hair and grown him a belly since the last time Henry saw him, and there was No-Hit Nealy and Birdie Deaton and Toothbrush Terrigan and Jonathan Noon, still the stringbean he always was, and Gus Maloney and Jaybird Wall and Seemly Sam Tucker! They piled in there, shook hands, clapped shoulders, waved at the crowd, laughed at each other's paunches. "Hey, look! there's Long Lew Lydell! And Cueball McAuliffe! And Jake Bradley, blinking in the sunlight! Hey, Jake! set 'em up! And Bruiser Brusatti! And Chadbourne Collins, old Chuckin' Chad! All those great guys from all those great teams!"

His birthday maybe. Why not? Henry checked: he was, let's see, came up in XIX at — Henry's heart leaped and he nearly spilled his beer! Incredible! Brock Rutherford was fifty-six years old!

He paused — but no! the boys rolled in and it was alive! and there was stirring music and stunt-flying and skywriting over the Park and fireworks and flowers for all the ladies. Somebody noticed it was going to be a duel of dynasties: Jock Casey came from a noble line, too — went way back to Year I and the great Fancy Dan Casey. Henry hadn't been too happy about bringing Jock up. He was getting tired of the name Casey, and wasn't all that interested in having yet another one. But there'd always been a Casey in the UBA and habit had got the best of him. Jock wasn't a Fancy Dan, but he was a fighter and always good for a surprise. Played the game his own way, threw everything except what the catcher ordered, got along with no one (or so Henry supposed, because now that he thought about it, he couldn't recall the kid's face), and still kept winning ballgames, anyway more than he lost, was a big factor in the Knicks' flag drive. Well, now he was glad he had done it, brought a Casey up, the last touch to a great day, turned it into a history-making event no matter who won or how.

Chancellor McCaffree opened the special ceremonies with anecdotes from Year XIX, his own rookie year as well as Brock's, and ex-Chancellor Woody Winthrop, a bit doddering but still a fine old gentleman, told how old Brock nearly kept him from winning the batting title that year, and then there were more introductions and more presentations and thundering ovations and cameramen scuttling over the scene like a troupe of hopped-up monkeys; and then out came the opposing managers, Barney Bancroft and Sycamore Flynn, and arms over each other's shoulders, they told what it meant to be a part of the Brock Rutherford Era, yes, they called it that, in front of everybody, the Brock Rutherford Era — spectacular! ecstatic! It was a day to forget your cynicism, boys, your sophistication, and shed a respectable tear or two! It was more than history, it was, it was: fulfillment!

Over the loudspeakers came the announced line-ups. For the league-leading Knickerbockers:

SS Scat Batkin (Rookie)

2B McAllister Weeks

1B Matt Garrison (Star)

CF Biff Baldwin (Star).

RF WaltMcCamish (Star)

LF Bran Maverly (Star)

C Chauncey O'Shea (Rookie)

3B Galen Musgraves

P Jock Casey (Rookie)

And for the hometown and second-place Pioneers (incredible ovations, almost impossible to hear the announcer):

2B Toby Ramsey (Rookie)

LF Grammercy Locke

3B Hatrack Hines (Star)

CF Witness York (Star)

RF Stan Patterson (Star)

C Royce Ingram (Star)

SS Lance Wilder

1B Goodman James

P Damon Rutherford (Rookie)

And then the game was on. Henry hastily jotted down the details of the pre-game ceremonies for later inclusion in the Book, then excitedly got the game under way. Frosty Young, Brock's old teammate and fellow rookie, and today the home-plate umpire, brought the ball, brand-spanking new and glowing white in the sunlight, over to Brock, and as all Pioneer Park — indeed the whole baseball world — roared its approval, Brock pitched the ball out to his son, waiting on the mound. Frosty jogged back behind the plate, adjusted his mask and guard, and squatting behind Pioneer catcher Royce Ingram, "PLAYBALL!" he cried.

Bancroft, feeling edgy, too much spectacle maybe, decided to baby Damon today. If he got in any trouble, he'd pull him out. Lot of reasons. Too little rest. Too much pressure. And he didn't want him to get knocked around in front of the collective history-maddened eye that was on them, in front of his old man on his biggest day. Of course, he grinned, forcing himself to relax, to sit down, looking out there toward the kid on the mound: who said he was going to get in any trouble?

Trouble! The first three batters to face Damon — Batkin, Weeks, and Garrison — all struck out! Oh my God! call out the cops! there's gonna be a riot! hold those fans back there! eight more innings, folks! hang on to your hats!

Casey, caught up in the unbelievable fever of the moment, pitched like his old forebear himself, giving up a walk to Pioneer lead-off man Tobias Ramsey, then mowing down the next three. In the Knickerbocker dugout, fighting manager Sycamore Flynn clapped his players in off the field. "Now, let's hit this kid!" he barked, but he didn't know if he really meant it or not.

"Oh, goddamn you guys!" he shouted, shouted the stands,

the Pioneer players, at the Knicks. Don't bust it up! Take it easy!

"Nothin' to it, Damon baby! Buncha pansies!"

Sure, pansies! All Damon had to face in the second were three of the most formidable sluggers in all baseball: the Knicks' all-star outfield of Baldwin, McCamish, and Maverly. Bancroft sent a relief pitcher out to the bull pen — no, he didn't! Easy, boys! Easy, Barney! Here we go: throw! Hah! Well, anyway, Biff Baldwin didn't strike out: he popped up to catcher Ingram. Then McCamish lined out to left and Maverly sent a dribbler down the third-base line that Damon fielded himself — easy throw across the diamond to James: out! Henry, whooping insanely, danced around the kitchen, then— FSSST! — punched open another can of beer.

Say, wait a minute! He looked it up: yes, Damon Rutherford now had a string of twenty-three consecutive scoreless innings, just sixteen short of the world record, a string of seventeen hitless ones, only six short of the record, and a fantastic run of fourteen perfect innings, two shy! Think of it! At least two new world records were riding on this ball game!

"Okay, let's bring 'em in there, boys!"

"A little pepper now!"

"Come on, Stan baby, pop it outa the park!"

"Send that Casey kid back to the minors!"

"Let's dock Jock, Stan baby!"

Again the first man up for the Pioneers, strapping Stanley Patterson, drew a base on balls. Casey was clearly nervous.

"Hit him! Hit him! Hit him!" they shouted from the stands.

The old Pioneers drank from hip flasks and clapped to get a rally going.

"Knock Jock outa there!"

"Kiss her clean, Royce baby!"

"Let's chase Case to the showers!"

"Wait him out! That ain't Fancy Dan, that's Gawky Jock!"

But Ingram and Wilder looked at third strikes, and Goodman James grounded out, third to first. The dice roll for James was triple ones, which, under the right circumstances, was a triple play, and which, in any case, led now to the special Stress Chart.

Oh boy! As if things weren't already wild enough! Referral to the Stress Chart always woke Henry up — now it made him sweat. Damon was pitching to rookie Knickerbocker catcher Chauncey O'Shea. Anything could happen. Two or three back-to-back home runs. A fight. Errors. Row with the umps. Impatient and reluctant all at the same time, urged on by the shouts from the fans and the players, Henry threw the dice: 1-1-1! three strike-outs at once! Or rather: three in a row! another perfect inning! the fifteenth straight! one away from the world record!

The bleachers were in an uproar! It might be the greatest pitching duel of all time! The old-timer Pioneers and other players from the past were out of their seats. All but old Brock. He sat like a country gentleman, leather jacket open, grinning affably, hands folded between his knees, leaning slightly forward.

"Rutherford! Rutherford! Rutherford!"

Henry, though, had a strange tingle in his spine. His mouth had gone dry, and his heart, he knew, was racing. Damon's throw of triple ones, the second set of ones in a row, had brought the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart into play! This was the only chart Henry still hadn't memorized. For one thing, it didn't get used much, seldom more than once a season; for another, it was pretty complicated. Stars and Aces could lose their special ratings, unknowns could suddenly rise.

Rain could end the game, a drunken fan could crack a player's skull with a pitched beer bottle, a brawl could break out, game* throwing scandals could be discovered, epidemics of flu or dysentery could ravage a line-up. But as he got out the chart to look at it, Henry could see only one line:

1-1-1: Batter struck fatally by bean ball.

And the first batter facing Jock Casey in the bottom of the third inning was the ninth man in the Pioneer line-up: Damon Rutherford!

Henry was on his feet. He paced to the refrigerator, to the stove, to the sink, back to the table. He slapped the back of the chair with his hand. Incredible! He tried to swallow, couldn't. He went to the refrigerator, opened it. No more beer. Maybe Bancroft should pull the kid, repent of this crazy game, send in a pinch hitter. Don't be an idiot! No one on base and the boy's got another perfect game going. One inning from the world record.

Of course, come on now, relax, there was only one chance in 216 that he'd throw a triple one. He could just as easily throw a triple six, for example: that was a line drive that struck and killed the pitcher. Was that what it was? Not just a duel of dynasties, but a real duel, a duel to the death between Jock Casey and Damon Rutherford? He saw the sun beating down, saw the sandy space of sixty feet and six inches between the rubber and home plate, saw these two great rookies facing each other, lean, expectant, saw the breathless masses, waiting for this awful rite to be played out.

But no, of course not, they couldn't know. They could feel the rising tension, the terrific stress, the moment's ripeness, but that was all. Only Henry knew. The triple ones stared up at him from the tabletop. He looked away, tried to think of rain or flying beer bottles. Couldn't. No clouds in the sky. Delirious fans, but no malice there. Far from it.

Of course, think now, it never happened before, why should it now? You're getting worked up about nothing. He could throw a 3-4-6, for example: triple and a steal of home plate. Win his own ball game.

But, damn it, could he risk leaving him in there? No, somehow, he had to get him out of there! He sought for some excuse. Something Bancroft saw in the way the kid was exercising the bat as he moved toward home plate? A kind of slump or twitch in his pitching shoulder? Why not? look close, Barney! But who could he sacrifice in his place? Tuck Wilson? Rawlings? And listen! what if he pulled him and then — as had always been the case — Casey threw an ordinary number? The second no-hitter, which could smash nearly all the records in world history, would be out the window… and all for nothing. He rinsed his cup out at the sink, poured himself a cup of cold thick coffee, saw how his hands were trembling. And what about Damon, getting jerked from the game like that, what would his attitude afterwards be? What would he make of it? There was more than one risk here.

Henry returned to the table, leaned over his chair, studied the line-up. Some mistake… batter overlooked? He went over each throw. No, that was how it was: Casey pitching to Rutherford on the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart. There's nothing to be done about it, he said to himself. Play it out. He sat down, drank cold coffee, put the cup on the table beside him, reached for the dice.

But then, suddenly, he remembered old Brock Rutherford up there in the stands, up there where all the bunting was, up there with all the old Pioneers from the Rutherford Era, and all those other great stars, all of them sitting up there, cheering up there, on this, Brock Rutherford Day at Pioneer Park, full of joy, aware of no peril, just the excitement, this great game, wonderful boy, yes, shouting for young Damon to get a hit, and Henry leaped up and paced the floor again.

"Let's get a rally going, Damon boy!"

"Them ain't Knickerbockers, them's bloomers!"

"Put some wood to it, sonny! Kill that bum!"

And there was ragabag Jonathan Noon yelling for a hit, clapping his hands, on the move, never still, just like in the old days, "Come on, boy!" and everybody picking it up, Gabe Burdette howling like an Indian, Jake Bradley slapping his bald head — how small he looked outside his bar! — and that old clown Jaybird Wall pulling off his suit jacket and flapping it around and around like a flag: "Hot damn, son! Give her a ride!"

Henry clapped his hands over his ears. He stood over his chair and stared down at his papers, at the scorecard, and at the three dice, gazing up at him, through him, as though with fearfully constricted pupils. Brock was eating a hot dog. He was joking with old Mose Stanford there beside him. Something about his own abysmal batting record. Then he finished the hot dog, took a drink of Coke, and leaned forward in all his ignorance to cheer his son on.

Damon had stepped out of the batter's box. He was knocking the dirt out of his cleats with his bat. He glanced up at the stands, saw his dad there. Maybe he looked at the dugout, too — yes, he looked at the dugout, just in case, and Bancroft… did nothing, he smiled at the kid. And Damon looked away, stepped back into the box, worked his shoulders, set himself, fixed his steady gaze on Casey.

Henry snapped up the three dice from the table and worked them around in his perspiring hand, but he couldn't sit.

Couldn't swallow, couldn't think, could hardly focus on what he was doing. He wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. Get it over with, he said. Casey stepped up on the rubber, took O'Shea's signal, shook his head. Shook it again. Then he nodded.

The dice felt sticky in his hands. He got a plastic cup out of the cupboard. A glass fell and broke. He put the dice in the cup, shook it. Cold hollow rattle. Casey stretched. The sun beat down, or maybe it was just the lamp — anyway it threw a withering glare off the papers on the table, made Henry squint his eyes, and he felt somehow he was up to something sinister. That's it, he chided himself, pile it on, you'll feel like a fool when nothing — he listened to the rattle, to the roar, held his breath, pitched the dice down on the table.

He knew even before he looked: 1-1-1.

Damon Rutherford was dead.

No one moved. All stared at home plate. Damon lay there, on his back, gazing up at a sun he could no longer see.

Impossible. He blinked, looked again.

Brock sat. Head reared in shock and his face was drawn. He looked suddenly gray and old. He rose.

He stepped back until he came up against the stove. But he couldn't get his eyes off the table. Now the others, Bancroft, the Pioneer regulars, Flynn, the old-timers, were moving, they were running toward the boy, pressing around, crying out. Do something!

But do what? The dice were rolled.

Casey watched—

Henry was thinking, had to think, something, some way…? He was at the table again, leaning over the dice, trying to stop, trying to back up, force like the clashing of tremendous gears shrieked in his mind, the fans were all shrieking, they were crying and shouting, and he reached out — but no, he let them, he let it be, he had to, he stayed his hand, because the boy was dead, he was dead, Damon was dead. Damon Rutherford! "Oh no!"

Barney Bancroft knelt by the boy, unable to believe, faced with those eyes that stared strangely past him, that lean beautiful wrist in one hand, wrist that threw the — crowding round, calling for doctors, yet knowing—"Stand back, please!" Right under the sun. Head cracked like an egg. Bancroft sought the communicative beat, found instead the ebb of warmth, the ebb of all warmth…

Reporters moving now. Fennimore McCaffree, ash-gray and long-striding, darkly emerged from the masses, then into the Pioneers' ball-park office, to the phone.

Bancroft let the wrist drop. It fell away. Barney stood, turned to Gabe Burdette and Willie O'Leary. He nodded up at Brock, stricken in the stands. They understood, went up there to be with him.

The rookie catcher Chauncey O'Shea sat behind the body, mouth agape, eyes damp, and had he called..? But Casey had shaken him off. Twice.

Henry caught his breath, sank down into the chair, faced with the strange insistence of those staring ones.

Brock standing paralyzed. Alone. Knowing, but not knowing, his fists balled in silent appeal. Staring down at his son, where, from a crouch, an old friend's face looked up, told him: no.

"That's right," said McCaffree. "Funeral tomorrow." His long pale hand curved corroboratively out of black sleeve, white cuff, tips of fingers poised on the black phone's white dial. "We'll be there," the voice on the other end said softly.

Old Sycamore Flynn, manager of the Knicks, at home plate,

stood up. Glancing toward the stands, his eyes met Brock's. Was Brock looking at him, singling him out? Flynn looked away. He saw Burdette and O'Leary moving off. As though a shrinking. Henry felt it. O'Shea in tears there, and nobody coming near, but Casey — two times! And now quietly out there on the mound, he—

Brock saw them, knew why they had come. Neither Gabe nor Willie said anything. They stood by him, but gave him leave by their silence to do it his own way. Their coming helped him move at last. He took a breath, giving what life he could to his suddenly aged and borne-down body, and started forward toward the field. The two friends trailed. The sea of bodies parted and they passed through.

Henry sat again, chewing his fist, trying to keep the tears back. Couldn't stop them — Royce Ingram broke free, went for the mound, went for Casey. Yes! Casey hadn't moved, still stood by the mound, oddly aloof. Bancroft wanted to stop Ingram, but lacked the voice for it, crying himself and Flynn didn't know what to do either, it seemed out of their hands. It was clear now, yes, the rivalry, the secret grudge being nursed, the signals shaken off, Casey had wanted it, and now Ramsey and Hines were following. The Knicks stood back. Under the sun. Pupils constricted. No, wait! But then York and Patterson stepped out. Casey watched them come. He didn't seem to care. He watched them converge. Locke. Wilson. James. Wilder. "Kill him!" they cried, they all cried, and now the fans — but a hesitation… a moment… Bancroft stopped them, yes, no, he — Casey smiled! Oh the fool! Ingram hit him first. Smashed his bony face. Yes, it was a bony face with cavernous eyes and fat arrogant lips, mad, he was mad! Mad Casey staggered back. Hines threw one to the gut, doubling the killer forward. Patterson split his mouth with a crushing right, knocked him to the dirt. Henry wept, shredding paper, sobs racking him like insane laughter. James and Ramsey jumped on him, dragged the dirty bastard to his feet. Witness York — no! no! they didn't hit him—

'No!"

The voice stopped them, had stopped them all. Didn't touch him. Ingram, his arm cocked for that first blow, heard it. He held back. They turned. Brock stood over his son's body and his quiet mournful gaze shamed them all. "No," he said again.

No. The Proprietor of the Universal Baseball Association, utterly brought down, brought utterly to grief, buried his face in the heap of papers on his kitchen table and cried for a long bad time.