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

3

HE went out. Feeling sour. Undiscoverable sun at four o'clock in the hazy sky. But a kind of glow in the streets, mocking him. Later, he'd have it rain.

Neck and back stiff from dozing all night on the tabletop. Strange dreams there. Some high hill with ruins on it. They were playing ball up there, bunch of kids, and the ball kept disappearing over the side of the hill. He chased one, had to, thinking all the time: I'll never make it back up. There was something awful down below, but he didn't know what it was. Grabbed up the ball, but it kept slithering out of his hands. Holding it tight to his chest, climbing up with it, he discovered one leg was shorter than the other. The short one was spindly and weak and threatened to buckle under him; the long one, the left one, was thick as an elephant's leg and had to be dragged up. He was crying. They were calling him Greasy-fingers and pushing the ruins down the hill at him. Catch this, Greasyfingers! they hollered. The stones they threw had strange markings on them which they tried to read as they hurtled by.

Later they wrote on his face and rolled him up in newspapers. His tears spoiled his notebooks and a teacher pushed his face in them. The teacher looked like Zifferblatt, but had a sunburned neck like Rag Rooney. And on and on through the early morning. Not once did he dream of the dead boy.

At seven, he'd stood. Shakily. He hadn't entirely forgotten about work, it was there in the back of his mind all the time, just at seven especially, but he'd stumbled on his two odd legs directly into the bedroom, freeing himself of shirt and pants on the way, had collapsed on his rumpled bed and slept until midafternoon. Later, he'd discovered he'd torn all the buttons off his shirt.

It was a long walk to Lou's but he had a lot of time; Lou wouldn't be home until well after five. They'd all be coming, he supposed, the old and the young, all the survivors. By car, train, plane. Lot of them already in town, the old-timers anyway, because of the special ceremonies for Brock. Lot of special ceremonies for Brock. That poor old guy. Still, damn it, that's what he got for fathering more ballplayers. Rutherford couldn't be just one of the passing boys, no, he'd had to try and sanctify his own goddamn blood and name. If he'd been blessed with a name like Rag Rooney, maybe he'd have had fewer illusions. His gut ached with a surfeit of glory and history, and somehow he felt it was Brock's fault.

Well, Rooney was sorry the kid had got killed — who wasn't — but it had given him a day off, time to think, so perversely, coldly, he was grateful, too. He'd got locked in the season's pace and rituals, gone mindless in the midsummer heat, and now suddenly he'd waked up. He had to shake his boys up, shuffle the line-up, make them move, make them run, get them back into the fight. Yesterday's game with Melbourne Trench's Excelsiors had got underway before Rooney had even realized it. He'd been sure there was something he'd meant to do before, but there was the goddamn ump, hollering to get the game going, and he hadn't been able to think what it was. He'd wondered if he was getting too old maybe. Addled. His stomach had griped. He'd put one calloused hand through his flannel shirt to squeeze and soothe it, watching his Haymakers pile out onto the field.

Yes, feeling rotten. Need to eat something. Can't eat.

The Homemakers, the sportswriters were starting to call them, and Pappy's Pantywaists, Rooney's Boobies. He'd scanned the bench, trying to remember what the hell…? He'd seen Swanee Law sitting there, tensed forward, not his day to pitch, but dressed just the same, popping gum and whooping it up. A pro, all right Goddamn it, he'd be the greatest in the league if he had guys like York and Patterson to back him up. Power and control: Rag Rooney's kind of pitcher. In fact, if he had to choose between Law and the Rutherford kid, Rooney'd still take Law over the long haul. And that was what he'd been thinking about when the dugout phone rang, bringing him the news. He'd turned to Law and said: "Rutherford's dead." Why tell Law first? Rooney wasn't sure. Maybe because he'd sensed Swanee's resentment at getting beat by the kid, thought he might — but no, Law had turned white as a sheet. Rooney had called his ballplayers back in off the field to wait there in the dugout then for the official announcement before going to the showers.

Street of shops, and the one he was now passing sold flowers. For All Occasions. B. Valentine, Floriculturist & Modeler. In the window, mostly asters, chrysanthemums, and cornflowers, Indian corn in bunches, funeral wreaths. Golden-banded lilies: Chancellor McCaffree's idea. Bancroft plumped for plain old marigolds. And bittersweet. Why not? Heliotropes and night-shades. Bancroft smiled wryly, brushed his eyes. Above the heaped flowers, a conical vase of red and white carnations, disarranged, all leaning to one side as though blown by a wind. Inside the shop, in a humid showcase, there were arrangements of roses, fuchsia, blue flags, hyacinths, gladioli, and calla lilies, set off against sprays of maidenhair ferns. A few orchids. Dense vegetable atmosphere.

An old man emerged from a back room, wizened, peering dimly over bifocals, smiling faintly, gray apron down his front, holding his hands out limply in front of him. A silvery substance glittered on his fingertips. In the back room, there seemed to be something cooking. "A bouquet," he said; it was hardly a question.

"Well, I was just sort of looking," Henry said.

The old man stood beside him, looking too, peeking over the rimless spectacles into the rich damp display case. "An orchid," he said softly.

"Well, actually—"

"Extraordinary development," the florist whispered. "Highest point of monocotyledon evolution. Perfection of the imperfect."

"How's that?" Henry asked. He realized that he, too, was whispering.

"Unisexual. Utterly impotent without insects. A loner. Exquisite." Mr. Valentine plucked an aster from a counter vase. "Perfection," he explained, roughing its bright head with a sharp-nailed thumb, "is bisexual."

"Hmm," said Henry.

"Dull? Perhaps, but multifarious," the florist said with a smile. "I have some pretty comos, if you like. Zinnias, marigolds, and bachelor's-buttons. Quite cheerful in big bunches."

"I was thinking about a wreath," Henry said.

"Ah!" Mr. Valentine sorrowed. "I didn't realize." He stepped behind the counter, brought forth a prickly wreath sprayed with silver, black-ribboned. "A popular item."

Henry took it in his hands. "Why, it's plastic!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," the florist smiled, "my own work."

Now Henry noticed the flowers all over the walls. Foxglove, lilies of the valley, primrose, violets, nasturtiums, buttercups, jonquils, sweet peas, streamers of ivy, morning glories, tulips: all plastic. He fingered the wreath. "Really, what I had in mind—"

*"It will last forever," the old man whispered.

"But… well, that's not the point, is it?"

The florist crushed the aster in his blue-veined silvery hand. "We must keep searching, we must carry on the work, we must resist to the end!" he whispered hoarsely.

"I'll take a white carnation," Henry said.

In the street once more, wearing the carnation in his lapel, he passed a newsstand.

DAMON RUTHERFORD DEAD!

Tragically Felled On

Brock Rutherford Day

Pioneer Park, LVI:49—(Urgent) A high inside fast ball thrown by Knickerbocker rookie Jock Casey struck and crushed the skull of Pioneer rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford today, killing him instantly, the first such death in UBA history. In the bottom of the third inning, young Rutherford, already one of the game's immortals. .

Rooney snorted. A dead immortal! Who thought up that crap? Of course, you had to feel it: the sudden loss. Even Law felt that. As for the rest of it, the great promise unfulfilled, the history-maker dehistorified, the record-breaker busted, that was the kind of sentimental claptrap that singed Rooney's weary ass. Oh, yes, he was sick of it! He saw those news guys writing it all down, eyes crossing over their own noses, and saw them for what they were — a pack of goddamn leeches, inventing time and place, scared shitless by the way things really were. History my god. An incurable diarrhea of dead immortals. It was the one thing he and Law didn't see eye to eye on. Law knew all the records in the book by heart, thought everybody else should know them, too. To that extent, he was stupid.

Soot settled sullenly on the residential section through which Henry walked. The day's glow was gone, and a deep bitter gloom was on him. He looked out, not to sink in. A dog barked at a window. Cars passed. A child smashed ants on the sidewalk with an egg-shaped stone. No, not a stone. Plastic again. Had they finally found it after all these centuries of search? That Stone of great virtue, called a Stone and not a stone? Next thing, they'd be going off the gold standard, filling Fort Knox with plastics. The quintessence, huantan, the sacred stuff, though the ants might disagree. He was early; just five.

"'I hear they went for Casey after," one of the boys was saying, just killing time on the train.

"Did they rough him up? The papers don't say anything—"

"Brockheld them off."

"Well, that's right, it wouldn't have. . changed things. I wonder if he… you know, threw it on purpose?"

Now Swanee Law joined them, leaning his big seriocomic head into their midst, whispering as though hatching some plot: "Ah called up old Fenn. Don't say nothin', but he figgers it's purty sure. Case shook Chaunce off twice."

"What'd O'Sheacall?"

"He ain't talkin'. But he and ole Case was roomies, and they say Chaunce's moved out. Like as how he's skeered or somethin'."

Rooney grinned to watch the studied pucker on Law's big face. You couldn't love a sick bastard like that, but you had to admit: he was one helluva ballplayer. Rooney recalled the game against the Pioneers four days ago, when, humiliated in the eighth by those two homers and not a prayer of a chance to win, Law had come back in the ninth tougher than ever, could have pitched another fifteen, twenty, thirty innings. Nothing ever bothered the sonuvabitch for longer than an inning. He brooded sometimes, but not really about anything, it was just one of those mood shifts of his. Organic. He wasn't exactly stupid either, but there were some connections most people made, Law didn't make.

"Whaddaya mean, Swanee?" somebody asked. "You think Casey's a little… off?"

Law turned on his holy/concemed/studious/fatherly/ moralizing pan and whispered: "We don't know yet.""Ahh sheeeittt!" griped Rooney. "You ladies are making me sick! Pitcher throws a duster, the batter don't duck. Well, hell, that's his tough luck."

"Behind the ear, Pappy. That's pretty far inside."

"Ole Fenn he's purty sure he's got a case," Law insisted.

"Got a case is right," said Rooney. "He's got a case of political buboes, that's what he's got." They all grinned, but Law's heart wasn't in it; that boy had real ambitions, all right. Rooney truly hated McCaffree and all his pious Legalists, and it bugged him that Law was one of them. In love with his own silly name probably. "Why, I'm surprised at you, Law. After as many guys as you've dropped to their butts!"

Law leaned back, lifting his hands in mock protest, expression of abused innocence crossed with collusive irony on his big face: "Ah pitches 'em close, Rag, but Ah don't aim tuh hurt nobody."

"Well, you're not as good a shot as Casey, that's all."

"Aw, Rag," said Law, but it was still more than an off-balance filling of shocked silence: Rooney saw by their expressions he'd got to them all with that one.

Raglan Rooney. Ragbag, they called him his rookie year, Year X. And then it was Rag. The Ragger. Coined some of the most famous obscenities in UBA history. Now in his forty-seventh consecutive year with the Haymakers. Forty-seven. Henry trembled. Played first base, coached under Gus Maloney when he got too old to play, took over the team when Gus quit to grab control of the Bogglers Party, been at the Haymaker helm ever since. And not a ball game in those forty-seven years he didn't try to win. He was the worst loser the UBA had ever known, and he was goddamn proud of it The old Haymakers he played for won three different pennants and were always in the running — in spite of Crock Rubberturd and his goddamn Era. Oh boy, Rooney had to laugh at that one! How could guys like McCaffree and Flynn and Bancroft come up with such a dumb idea? Had they forgot how it was? Immortal deadheads.

He wondered what Flynn was going to do now. Probably ought to get rid of Casey. Otherwise, the whole damn team was in for it. Besides, Casey probably wouldn't be much good now anyhow. "Killer," they were already calling him. But Rooney knew Sycamore Flynn well enough to know he'd never do what was smart. Hell, he'd probably even start feeling sorry for that young sonuvabitch.

They pulled in. Through the window as they unloaded, he could see that Lew and Fanny Lydell had come to meet the train; darkly wrapped, somber faces, pious tilt to their heads, carrying umbrellas. Long Lew was even beginning to look like his father-in-law — silly bastard was forgetting bis own immortality, wanted to be Chancellor instead. Fanny McCaffree was her daddy's girl, all right. Hadn't plumped out at all. Must be pushing fifty, and she still had that long stringy spinsterish frame she had back in XLIII when Long Lew split it for her in the Knick dugout to win a bet with Jaybird "Wall. Her butt hadn't even spread much, for all the action. Not a peep out of her that day, no thrashing about, just an imbecile loll of her head off the players' bench, eyes bulging on that birdy face, and something like a soft gurgle in her long white throat. They had all laughed to watch it rip. The Knicks really packed them in for a while after that, and there were always clusters of the curious nosing around the dugout after games, hoping for a rerun. If Rooney'd had any daughters or even a wife, he would have tried to work up something like it in the Haymakers' ball park. No imitators of that boy, though. Long Lew humbled them all. Now, in an unflattering droop, he extended his hand and said: "We're glad you've come."

"Henry!" cried Lou. "Gee, I been looking for you! I just come from your place, it was all dark and I thought — Henry, is there something. .? I mean, Mr. Zifferblatt nearly— what's the matter, Henry?"

"I'd like to listen to some music, Lou. Would you mind?"

"Music! Well, no, but — Henry! why, what's — you look awful!"

"Nothing. A… a death. I—"

"Oh!" Lou's round weight sagged softly. He stared at the white flower. "I'm… I'm sorry, Henry. Who…?"

"I don't feel like talking about it, Lou. I just thought, well, I dropped by, I thought maybe some music might…"

"Why, sure, Henry!" Lou squeaked, truly concerned. He fumbled in the bulge of his coat, panting lightly, came up with the keys, dropped them, stooped for them with a tender grunt, tried three or four in the lock before he found the right one. "Mr. Zifferblatt was in a, not a very good mood, but I explained something was wrong, that it was just, you know, seemed like something was on your mind, and — it'll be all right, Henry, you'll see, he's not inhuman, he'll—" They went in.

Dark vaults. Shhh. Musty Gothic odors. Candles. The transepts ablaze with innumerable waxlights. That's it. Stop fighting it. You loved him. You don't have to be ashamed about that. Let the ballplayers come in now. Let them fill the cathedral. Pioneers, regulars and old veterans alike, the first to enter, to pass by—

Lights: Lou switched on the overhead, bringing muss and clutter to view. Not a disorder so much as a clumsy order, everything bumped out of place, but its proper place still plainly evident. Henry closed his eyes against it, sought the dark and higher spaces.

"I'm sorry, things are kind of a mess," Lou said, his welcome ritual. "Can… can I take your hat, Henry?"

Henry looked up at his friend. Moonface abloom with pity. Wrong emotions. One day, he realized, they would grow apart. He gave Lou his hat. Lou plodded with it and his own hat to the middle of the room, hesitated, seemed not to know what to do with them. "Do you mind?" Henry asked, reaching for the switch of a floor lamp nearby. Get that damn overhead off.

"No!" cried Lou, then clambered anxiously forward, hat in each hand, to help: with Henry's he batted the shade askew. "I'm all thumbs," he complained, putting Henry's hat on his own head and reaching forward again. Henry backed away, but almost miraculously, the light came on and the shade was righted. Lou turned toward him, grinning sheepishly under the hat two sizes too small for him. Henry switched off the overhead.

While Lou wandered absently around the room with the hats, Henry turned to the shelves, thumbed thoughtfully through the recordings. Have to be careful, no woeful threnodes, he cautioned himself broadly, no cheap sentiment. It was welling up in him; he needed something with precision, discipline, control. Like the kid himself. Harmonious, though. Nothing cacaphonic. Just damp cool concrete, a floor — his eye fell on the Archduke. The aristocrat. Third movement: bottom of the third. McCaffree wanted a full orchestra, something not just for the boy but for the whole Association, but no, Bancroft had his way. It was right. He put it on.

"Can I fix you something, a drink, coffee, pop..?" Lou had rid himself of the hats, but wore his coat still.

"No — well, some sherry maybe," Henry said. "If it's not too much trouble."

"No trouble!" Lou assured him, ricocheting kitchenward off a table and an easy chair, in that heedless spongy way of his.

Throughout the room, equipment hummed. Henry settled back in a rocker, waited, eyes closed, for the piano's first soft footfalls. And they entered in. The somber throng, the Chancellor and his people, friends and foes, but foes none to the spirit this boy had shown them, the majesty in the mere sweep of a pitching arm, the fulfillment in the mere acceptance of a catcher's signal. Magic, yes, yes it was, had been. Resonant strings filled the air with their solemn dialogue, violin speaking of brilliance and sensitivity, cello of maturity and might. The daily upward struggle and the underlying continuity of the — or did they really say so much, Bancroft wondered. No, no — they said nothing, they simply. . simply were true.

Henry sipped the sherry: the moist remnant of passage, sponged from the walls of sepulchres. He smiled gently at that, watching Barney Bancroft, chin in hand, suffer mutely in the cathedral's hollow gloom. Brother to the father, Barney was a father to the son. And beautiful, yes, he was a beautiful ballplayer. Was. Murdered by the past tense and laid in a lonesome grave, the black pit of history: he was. Was beautiful. Take it easy, Barney. Just love. Forget the rest.

Tick tock tick tock: high percussive pips beat the thin truth off the stained-glass windows, while far below, the strings held long painful plaintive chords, as though trying to hold time itself back. But is it enough, Barney? McCaffree wanted to know. "This is more than one man's funeral." The piano said: "It is done." Descending. "Yes, well, you mean the Requiem, I suppose." McCaffree nodded. The violin objected, rose in protest against the injustice of it, but saw at last it was futile and accepted. The cello, humbly, agreed. "All right," said Barney. In the cathredral: "Amen." Lou put on the Requiem.

"Did he leave any… family?"

A son? Yes, he could have, he could have at that, and his name…? "No. Only a father. And a brother." And how did Brock Jr. take it, what was on his mind?

"Henry! Is it your, your…?"

Henry hesitated. The question had taken him by surprise. "No," he said finally, "not exactly."

Their urgent appeal for mercy crashed suddenly in his ears, on all sides of him, the agonized pulsing of hearts clamoring for union with his own, reaching — ahh shee-it now! muttered a familiar voice in the back pew, and Henry grinned sheepishly. He saw by Lou's face it had all been misunderstood.

"A… a child then?"

"Nineteen, twenty."

"Ah!" Lou shook his head, stared down at his feet. He was out of the coat now: it lay heaped on the table like a body. "That's awful, Henry!"

"You know, Lou, when Jim Creighton died, the boys crowned his grave with a fantastic monument. It had crossed bats on it and a baseball cap and even a base and up on top a giant baseball. Or maybe it was the world. They probably no longer knew the difference."

"I didn't know he. . died, too. I'm sorry, Henry. When…?"

"In 1862." Lou blinked. "And you know what else they put on that monument, Lou? You won't believe it!"

"No.Wh-what?"

"A scorebook!"

Lou's expression remained unchanged. He didn't get it. All he could find to say was: "He… he was a ballplayer, then."

"Who, Jim Creighton?"

"No, your. . uh. . " Bastard: that's what Lou was thinking.

"Yes." And what had Barney ordered? Barney and Brock and the Chancellor?

… Oh, when I die, jist bury me

With my bat and a coupla balls,

And jist tell 'em Verne struck out, boys,

If anybody calls…

Yes, maybe Verne Mackenzie had a big monument like that somewhere. But not Damon. The music tried to tell him what. Simple yet complex. Intricate but harmonious. The light he brought to the league. Yes, a lamp maybe, Aladdin's lamp, the boy with the magic arm…

But then, suddenly, the thin voice of a small boy cried out, a boy in terror, boy gripping a baseball, gift of the slain giant, boys all, hurt, terrified, the emptiness, the confusion— Henry gasped. What kind of a world was this? Cum. . vix. . iustus. . iustus — children! sit securus! He sighed, bowed his head. No, no, even worse than that, much worse. Barney, afraid of giving way, tried to think about something else, the larger picture, the season ahead — how would he get them moving again, their minds off of it? Salva me! Salva me! "It's how Damon would have wanted it, fellows…" No, he could never do it that way. Maybe Flynn could. Even that old cynic Rooney could probably do it. But Barney Bancroft couldn't. He gazed across the nave toward Sycamore Flynn and his Knickerbockers — that kid catcher Chauncey O'Shea, loosed in tears again, undone by it: how many careers would be wrecked by that bean ball? Something.. something was changed. . somehow, inalterably, the entire Association had — Barney tried to think, but the music was too loud. I shouldn't have pitched him, I shouldn't have pitched him! He struggled against the mad crescendo. The perfect game had already sunk away into a kind of unbelievable golden age, long lost, forever inaccessible. Where have I taken us?

Wrong! "No, it's all wrong!" Barney cried to himself. His mind bolted ahead, racing through Mozart's creative operations, the way he chased flies, fielded grounders, threw to first, swung, ran. . smooth, faultless, but something was wrong. Not just the words, but the music too. "Artifice! Arrogance!'* The bogus hell's-better-than-nothing comfort. He realized suddenly that he hated the thing, hated the shabby neatness, the trumped-up despair, he wanted to lay into the whole damn outfit, kick them while they played, make them sing while running the basepaths until they dropped! "I hate it!" he cried out. "Stop it!"

Lou, lurching, sent his drink flying — needle shrieked insanely across the record, knocked against the center post with a resounding clock! heard through all the many-speakered system, bounced back to report one "lux aeterna!" then rejected itself.

"I… I'm sorry, Lou." What was happening to him?

"Is… is there something else you'd. .?" His friend watched him, wide-eyed. Calm down. Funny, after all. See poor Lou. His gloom runneth over. Seeping darkly into the rug's earth-brown nap. Stunned, Fenn and Barney stunned. Rooney winked.

Henry grinned. "Put on the Purcell."

"You mean the… the funeral. .?" Lou in a state of total and mournful perplexity. For the day, it would seem, was dark and troubled. "Are you sure, Henry? That's kind of…" He wrinkled his nose.

"I don't care, put it on." Confusion and emptiness, teehee and boohoo, get it straight from the master's whinny!

"Well… all right, if. . it's really what you'd like," Lou said, and revolved irresolutely, poor old tub in an unexpected weather, to search out the record.

Henry stood, poured more sherry, drank it off at a dispreciative gulp. The sepulchral dew: ha ha! He switched to bourbon. Corn liquor, the really basic stuff. Yes, let's have a little fire, boys! And feet on the ground! The fatal hour comes on apace!

Ruefully, the sackbuts poop-poop-dee-pooped, discreetly distant. In bitter cold, through streets draped in black, slowly advanced the pallbearers. Hop, skip, and a long cold shuffle. The frozen corpse rocked in the hollow box: whump! tum-tum-tum clump! Long live the dead queen! Yes, it took a leering toper to lay it on the line! Ho ho! who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place where only his harmony can be exceeded — whump! Henry drank whiskey and laughed aloud.

Lou stuffed himself, shrinkingly, in a shadow. "Henry…?" he whimpered from darkness.

Trompetta! blaa-aa-att! and a mocking rumble of the tympanic gut! Man that is born of woman, woman that is laid by man! Blaa-aa-att! He cometh out! He goeth in! Raunchy giggle of trumpets. Pallbearer Rooney is giggling. Giggling hysterically. It infects them all. Oh that goddamn Rooney! Hee hee! Spare us, Lord!

"Shall I… take it off, Henry, or…?"

"Oh no! he is much lamented!" Tee hee hee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, tee hee hee hee, boo hoo hoo hoo, ha ha ha ha— oops! the body bounces out! they pop it in again! out! in! it's one-old-cat, boys, with the earthly remains! Hee hee ha ha ha ho ho hee haa haaa!

"Oh, Lou!" he cried, holding his sides, "why do we go on?"

Suddenly inspired, he turned to the machine, flipped it up to a higher speed. "Thou knowest, Lord!" they piped. Yes! he knew it! A tavern song, after all! The secrets of our hearts! "Tonight!" whispered Rooney, jigging along under the burden.

"Jake's!" The Hole in the Wall. Tweet-tweet-tootle and a rattle of tin spoons on a hollow hilarious bouncing skull!

He left, hatless, cold wind on his wet face, his funeral a shambles.

Play resumed. It always resumes, every dying old bastard's despair. But first, the night before, a troupe of the old-timers gathered in Jake's Bar behind the Patsies' Park. Brock wasn't there, of course, and McCaffree stayed away, but Pioneers Gabe Burdette and Frosty Young were present, and Willie O'Leary and Jonathan Noon and doleful Barney Bancroft. And there was beer-bellied Surrey Moss and Mose Stanford and Chad Collins and Toothbrush Terrigan. Young Brock Jr. was among the absent: he'd bolted for home the minute the burial was over, dragging his missus behind him, and there, pressed by an inexplicable urgency, had heisted her black skirts, and without even taking time to drop his pants, had shot her full of seed: yes, caught it! she said, and even he felt that germ strike home.

It was Rag Rooney's idea, this gathering of the grieving, and he was of course on hand, salting his ulcer with bourbonic acid, and with him came his old boss and crony Gus Maloney, blowing smoke and stoking his political machine with good humor and an occasional round of drinks. Some of the boys on the inside, too, Seemly Sam Tucker and Big Bill McGonagil, a dozen or more. Hometown Pastimer boss Cash Bailey showed up, though his Patsies were on the road, faced the Beaneaters in their park the next day, but the Beans' manager Winslow Beaver was there, too, so it was even up. The other managers came, too, why not? The Excelsiors' Melbourne Trench and the Bridegrooms' Wally Wickersham and Timothy Shadwell of the Keystones, last year's Manager of the Year but this year's most promising goat: he needed a drink. Even Sycamore Flynn. It was funny about Sic'em: they all loved the bastard, pure gold the man's heart, yet this night they couldn't get close to him. Wasn't his fault Yet something was happening. They all felt it: his Knicks were gonna get it. Things had to get evened up. Gawky Jock had jinxed them all. Flynn set them up and left early, a relief to everyone.

Sandy Shaw brought his guitar and Long Lew Lydell his reputation. Jason (Jaybird) Wall was on the scene, dropping rubber bugs in drinks, passing out explosive cigars, and slipping whoopee cushions under couching hunkers, the only consolation being that, fairly soon, Jaybird would pass out, bringing a sodden peace to the place, the more appreciated for its contrast to the persecutions preceding. And two great player-coaches from the Golden Age of the XX's turned up: the Knicks' Whipper Will Andersen and the Bridegrooms' Puritan Ballou, both Hall of Famers. And Yip Yick Ping, the Chinese lefty, and Prince Hal Scarlet and Chin-Chin Chicker-ing and Cueball McAuliffe and Agapito Bacigamupo. And there came Bruiser Brusatti and No-Hit Nealy and Birdie Deaton and Jumpin' Joe Gallagher and a bunch of their old teammates with them.

Intense, brilliant, but isolate Patrick Monday looked in, but Pat didn't stay long: Monday, it was remarked by all, had aspirations above and beyond the temporal kingdom of elbow-benders. No love for old Maloney either, and matters might have got touchy had Monday stuck around. Gus had squandered a lifetime building up his Bogglers Party, and knocking off McCaffree's Legalist gang was almost a sure bet, if not this year, then in LX, and now, just when the old man had a chance at last, along came Monday to chew him up. Monday was starting his new party from scratch, after all, he had to get his followers from somewhere, and where he was getting them from mostly, it seemed, was from the ranks of Boggier soreheads. Especially the young ones. Patience, young fellas, we all die, you'll get your chance. At a corner table, Gus puffed, laughed loud at jokes, and bought rounds, while Monday, with that maddening self-assurance of his, stood coolly at the bar and dropped the now-familiar phrases: the imperative of excellence, freedom through constancy, the contagion of confusion, pilgrimage back to majesty — Maloney's laughter boomed, the coins rang, but his ears quivered with attention. He slipped Jaybird Wall a buck. "The intransigent will of history!" Monday declaimed, and sat back: blaa-aat! moistly. He smiled faintly at the bar-wide rhubarb and pulled out.

Funny thing about real gloom, Bancroft reasoned; it had a giddy core. Made hard things soft, silly things true, grim things comic. Psyche, up against the wall, had its own defenses. Bancroft, the rationalist, disbelieved in reason. It was the beast's son, after all, not the father, and if it had a way of sometimes getting out of hand, there were always limits: it lacked the old man's cunning. And it had no hands. Re: back again, the primitive condition, the nonreflective operating thing: res. His son: if he couldn't scare the kid into submission, he could always tickle a rib and break all the connections. Rooney, sourest man in Association history, was staggering flop-limbed around the bar in an old man's fit of spittle-chinned cackling. Drunk as a skunk and he shouldn't even be drinking: "Hell, it split open hours ago, I gotta sterilize it!" And a wild rattle of hysterical laughter. The point was: Rooney was afraid to die. Pushing seventy. "Whole digestive tract nothing but one long raw sore. If he stopped to think about it, he couldn't keep going. So the old cerebrum got its switch flipped. But suicide…?

Was he intentionally feeding that inner volcano, hoping for the dark? Maybe, maybe not. Plastered, after all, he loosened up. Bile stopped pumping. Bourbon wasn't medicine exactly, but it might be a slower sweeter poison. Barney drank his own, listened to Sandy and the boys, waxed slowly soft and barmy: he received thanks, relayed through the skittish sconce, but sent him by the other fellow. .

I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen,

Out here where the green grasses grow,

But you've kept me awaitin' so long, man,

The grass is all co-huh-vered with snow!

The grasses was all turnin' yeller

When our ace he got sent to the show'rs,

But ya went'n sent in some other feller,

And left me a-out here apickin' flow'rs!

I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen,

Out here where the…

"It was a nice funeral, Barney," Tim Shadwell said, leaning close. Tim was the greatest pitcher in Association history until Brock Rutherford came along to wipe out all his records. How did he feel about that? That it was a nice funeral. "Fenn told me you had a lot to do with it."

"Not so much," Barney said, smiling faintly. Did rue sit so heavily on him? Tim was the fourth man to pass his bar-end perch, go glum, release a hushed lament. Guilt. The sons banded together. Old man psyche had his hands full, all right. Legalism. Was Tim a Legalist? We all were. McCaffree was in, wasn't he? Whoa, Barney! Slipping your stitches. "Slitching my stipples."

"Howzat?" Tim leaned closer, drunk, sincerely. Sincerely-drunk. Looked like his eyes might sincerely cross. Not more than a week ago, Barney's pile-driving Pioneers had shattered Shadwell's crumbling Keystones, socking them out of second with a three-game swamping sweep and they were still in a full-tilt tumble. Shattered Shadwell. Tuckered Tim. Didn't he hate? Well, talk instead about the funeral. Community of pain and beauty.

"I said, can I buy you a drink?"

"You owe me one," tumbling Tim said flatly, and leaned away.

I know thet I give a lotta passes,

I know thet I ain't no more a pup,

But yer love for me is like these grasses,

Yer love fo-hor me is all dried up!

I been gatherin' blisters in the bull pen…

Barney caught Jake Bradley's eye, and Jake filled them up. Grieved shake of the bald pate: they grievedly shook to ratify. Tough. It was. Poor Brock. "You'll pull out," Barney said.

"I hope so, Barney," Tim replied, sucking in deeply the dark bar air. "The sinking Stones: boy, those news guys really eat you up when you're down." Words of wisdom from the Manager of the Year. Tim reached for his drink, knocked it over. Full-tilt tumble. Clunk of the year. "God, I've had enough," he said sheepishly. As Shadwell righted his glass, Bancroft saw his hand was shaking. Too-tight Tim. Called for Jake again. "Another one, Jake. And a bar rag."

I wish that you would reconsider

And let po-hore me back in the game!

The grasses is brown and they're bitter,

And you have forgo-hotten my name!

I been gather in' blisters in the bull pen,

Out here where the green grasses grow,

But you've kept me awaitin' so long, man,

The grass is all co-huh-vered with snow!

Well, it was some gathering, this wake, bar packed to overflowing, and what was it for? it was hard to tell. It was like they'd all been squeezed into this big retort, Jake's athanor, seeking a transformation, a way of going on with it, some viable essence unaltered by the boy's death that they could start over with, and to be sure, the heat was on.

She came up to him. He hadn't noticed her there before. She winked cheaply and asked: "How's Damon's pitching arm tonight?"

"He's dead."

"Hunh?"

"Damon Rutherford is dead."

It was as though he'd struck her in the face. He asked Jake for another. When he looked again, she was gone. He turned to Tim Shadwell. "How's the boy coming along?"

"Who?"

"Your son. Thornton. Going to be ready next year?"

It was the wrong question. Shadwell began to break. Tears bubbled out. "When I saw that boy there today, Barney. . in that.. that box… so… so dead… I kept thinking… I kept feeling. . my own boy. . I'm afraid, Bamey. . he's so young. ."

And you're so old. Don't kid me, Shadwell. "He can take care of himself, Tim." As though to make matters worse,

Sandy struck up "The Happy Hours of Youth," and Tim and the other guys joined mournfully in. .

Oh, rookies, come along

And hear m' sad song!

Old age is the bane o' mankind!

So enjoy while ya may

The fair spring day,

Cause the blue season ain't far behind!

Oh, the happy sunny da-hays of old!

When our feet were fleet and our hearts were

bold!

There's nothin' so fine in the world to behold

As the happy hours of youth!

When the years're green

And the hits come clean,

You're honored among the athletes;

But they'll come a day

When they won't letcha play,

And like us, you must hang up yer cleats!

Oh, the happy sunny. .

Glorious days, bold hearts: Barney, you're just an old fool like the rest of them. Some of the boys were snuffling, most had a sparkle in their eye, as they harmonized on the chorus. Distantly, he heard Rooney vomiting. Too much drinking — or maybe it was the cheap sentiment. No letting up, that was Rooney's success. Shit maybe, but hard shit, hard as bricks. Rooney had a lot of fire all right, but there was no real life in it. It was fratricidal. Destructive. Divisive. But are you really Bure, Barney? Maybe the old sonuvabitch had the truth after all. Beside him, Tim Shadwell, all choked up, sang brokenly, soddenly, loudly. Nauseating, all right. Yet there was something human there. If Rooney did have the truth, Barney didn't want it. He entered in… into the soft shit…

You're a rookie jist once

And kin beat outcher bunts

While yer years still number few;

But the day will come

When yer legs won't run,

And you'll bid this League a-huh-dieu!

Oh, the happy sunny da-hays of old!

(Oh, the happy happy sunny sunny glorious days of old!)

When our feet were fleet and our

hearts were bold!

(When our cleated feet were fleet and true

hearts were ever bold!)

There's nothin — nn' so fine in the world

to behold

(There is nothin' quite so fine in the wide world

ever told)

As the happy hours of youth!

(As the happy sunny hours of youth!)

"Heh-hey!"

"Ya-hoo!"

"Oh, that was beautiful, Sandy!"

"Brings back the old days!"

"The happy hours of youth!" Tim Shadwell exclaimed and blew his nose, and there were melancholic mutterings of assent around the barroom, and then a soft silence. The moment was ripe, and Sandy probably had a new song ready, McCaffree supposed, for the occasion. Rooney's retching seemed to have stopped. Maybe the old sonuvabitch was dead…? Not likely. Even old Gus Maloney, stogie stuffed defiantly in his fat jowls, derby tipped down his bald pate toward his nose, seemed to have a tear in his eye, though one could never be sure, the old bastard may have worked it up for a vote or two.

The UBA Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree sat alone in his darkened and gloomy office staring morosely at the barroom scene on one of his television sets. Jake Bradley was a loyal Legalist and his bar was a popular hangout, so the installation of a camera there had been a natural for the party. He'd noticed that gatherings like this one always did something to the ones who came. Changed their politics, altered their view of reality, transformed them in subtle but often surprising and upsetting ways, and it was something F «nn had to keep an eye on. Especially since he himself functioned poorly in groups. He was a Legalist, the social construct was his central concern, group behavior was his favorite study, but he was, paradoxically, more of a loner even than Rag Rooney. He'd been lucky after all to get a gregarious son-in-law. Long Lew took on Fenn's public role.

So, he'd watched them gather, watched Pappy Rooney mix them up, watched Gus Maloney and Patrick Monday politick, seen Monday leave early (tailed, of course), watched Maloney's henchman Jaybird Wall — dentures fastened to the seat of his own pants — play his usual run of practical jokes, eavesdropping for Maloney on the side, had watched them drink and sing and wax sentimental, wondering what it was all going to come to.

Right now, Sandy Shaw was fingering his guitar lightly, tuning up. One of the old Bridegrooms, back in the days of Winthrop and Flynn and Gallagher. Fenn remembered the first time he had to swing against Sandy, his rookie year. Sandy was the ace of that championship Bridegroom team of XIX. Twenty-two wins that year, best season Sandy ever had. He looked harmless: freckled boyish face, light frame, graceful delivery, mild soft-spoken manner. But Sanford Shaw could really mix them up. Fenn had never seen so many different pitches as he looked at that day. Got called out on strikes three times, before he finally hit Shaw: double against the center-field wall. But by then, the Grooms had the game in the bag, and maybe Sandy was letting up. His major weakness. It was never Fenn's. Sandy started making up folk songs in the XX's to cheer up his teammates, those being grim letdown years for the Grooms… "Cellar Dweller Blues"… "Where Have All the Base Hits Gone?"… "Benchwarmer's Lament". . "Just A-longin' for Home". . "The Day They Fired Verne Mackenzie". . "No-Hit Nealy". . "Gone Down Swingin' Blues". . "When Toothbrush Dusted Gus in the Third". . fifty or sixty different songs. In his sixties now. No one like him. It'll be a great loss, when he's gone.

Sandy looked up now at the boys. They were all watching him. Hushed. They all seemed to sense he had a special number, had been waiting for it. Fenn knew, of course, what it would be, and it troubled him. On the other hand, he reasoned, maybe that was the solution: turn it into folklore. Wouldn't be in the way then. Sandy tucked his chin down into soft neck folds, going over the words once in his head maybe, and a kind of shadow passed over his face; then he looked up, and in his soft mellow tenor commenced — slowly, plaintively, syllable by drawn-out syllable — to sing…

Hang down your heads, brave men, and weep!

Young Damon has come to harm!

They have carried him off to a grave dark

and deep:

The boy with the magic arm!

We had gathered there to celebrate

His daddy's great career,

When an ill-fated pitch struck him down at

the plate:

The end of a brave Pioneer!

Hang down your heads, brave men. .

Fenn watched their faces. There they were, men turned into boys, whelmed by awe and adolescent wistfulness. In a way, Sandy did them a disservice, provided them with dreams and legends that blocked off their perception of the truth. But what was the truth? Men needed these rituals, after all, that was part of the truth, too, and certainly the Association benefited by them. Men's minds being what they generally were, it was the only way to get to most of them…

Oh, who has it been, brought to such grief,

While pitching a perfect game?

Whose life has been so bright, so brief?

Damon Rutherford is his name!

Hang down your heads, brave men, and weep!

Young Damon—

McCaffree switched off the volume, paced the floor, one eye on the screen. This killing couldn't have come at a worse time. Just when things were looking up. Not his fault, nothing he could have done to prevent it, yet it was bound to have an effect on elections this winter. Damon had been a wonderful league tonic. The whole process had been slowing down, the structure had lost its luster, there'd been rising complaints about meaninglessness and lack of league purpose. His Legalists, for no other reason except that they were the incumbents, had been dropping in popularity polls. And then Damon Rutherford had come along. He'd captured all their hearts, Fenn's included. Brock Rutherford Day had been Fenn's own idea. The whole UBA was suddenly bathed in light and excitement and enthusiasm. Fenn had foreseen an election sweep. Maloney and his Bogglers didn't have a single new issue. Patrick Monday was a rising threat, but at least four years off. The Guildsmen couldn't find a candidate. Total mandate. And then that pitch. He wasn't sure what he could do about it. Investigate the incident, of course. But what if he uncovered the worst possible fact: that Casey had thrown the bean ball on purpose? All pitchers threw one from time to time. All right, a new law maybe, lower the strike zone an inch or two or something, stiffer penalties, but nobody really wanted that. The only conceivable forms of meaningful action at a time like this were all illegal. Which meant, no matter what happened, he'd have to be on the wrong side, so to speak. Of course, he might be able to pressure Sycamore Flynn and the Knickerbocker management into getting rid of Casey. But then what? Monday or Maloney or somebody would probably make an issue of that. Yes, that's right, Monday didn't have to wait four years now. Boggle, boggle. And the empty Guildsmen candidacy was starting to look pretty attractive, too. Gatherings such as this one tonight in Jake's, he saw, were dangerous. He scanned the familiar faces. Gallagher. O'Leary. Stanford. Any one of them could suddenly emerge tonight as a new political figure.

And with the glamor of this ceremony attached — gilded — to him. Sandy Shaw himself, for example. Yes, they were all with him right now, to be sure. Some eighty or ninety boys there altogether, a small cut of the thousand or so living UBA veterans who made up the electorate, but enough in concert to wield a tremendous force. Yes, damn it, he ought to break it up somehow.

Sandy's song was over and they were milling about. Small groups were forming up, dispersing, reforming. They'd heard the song and wept and been released. Things would start getting noisier. Sandy Shaw was drinking over there with Shadwell and Bancroft. Jaybird Wall was up to his tiresome tricks again, and Rag Rooney, apparently revived, was back out there seeking new victims. Here and there, arms over each other's shoulders, groups of three or four men were singing together. Well, there were ways he could do it, ways he could bust this thing up and get them out of there, head them home. He reached for the phone. But he hesitated. Enjoyment. What in god's name did enjoyment have to do with people and life and running a goddamn baseball league? He stared dismally at the TV scene. Then, dispiritedly, he did call. He watched Jake appear on the screen, pick up the phone, glance up at the camera, up at him, Universal Baseball Association Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree, alone and full of sorrow, self-pityingly encased in that dark gloom that would pursue him to his grave. "Jake, this is Fenn. Listen… set the boys up a couple times… for me. Will you?"

Things were livening up. Some of the family men had left; but Jake's was still packed and there were still a good many bottles that hadn't got drunk up yet. The collective eye was on Jaybird Wall, whose own night was nearly done. He was into his old ball-chasing act, imitating himself out in left field, losing a fly ball in the sun. Wearing a ball cap over his eyes so just his big red nose stuck out, detoothed mouth agape, using Maloney's derby for a glove, shirttail out, pants sadsackly adroop, shoestrings untied, he rubber-legged around the barroom, trying to spy the falling ball. Sandy picked up his guitar and played a tremolo on a high string. Chants and shouts. "Look out!" Laughter. "I thee it! I thee it!" Jaybird gummed, scrawny arms upstretched to invoke a fair catch, and then, "Glop!", seemed to swallow something. He lowered his chin, pushed back his cap, crossed his eyes, staggered around clutching his throat, then stuffed one finger into his muzzle and leaned over Maloney's derby. He seemed to be prying something out… POP! (sound effects by Jake) — he smiled broadly, produced a baseball from the hat. Applause and laughter. Jaybird beamed, dropped the ball back into Maloney's hat, and with a drunken weave and flourish, grandly donned the derby: CLUNK! (Jake bopping the bar with a beer bottle) and over he went. Descending whistle (the whole crowd in concert): WHOMP (no sound effects needed)! Not to rise again. Not this night anyway. No matter how they whooped and paid him tribute.

Trench and Rooney dragged Jaybird out to keep him from getting walked on, popped him onto the back-room cot, kept there for the purpose. Who hadn't slept there? Home away from home. Had been for Trench anyway. Sandy had a song about it. .

… I'm all washed up, boys,

I got the axe, I got the aches;

Now you'll find me when you want me

On the sack in the back of Jake's!

Mel Trench had ended his playing career here in this town, traded to the Pastime Club by the Excelsiors when his deep belts no longer cleared the wall so often, when they had a way instead of getting caught Difference of ten feet maybe, but it was enough. What was the grave, but a difference of six? He'd watched them lower that boy today, put him under the sod, and he himself had had a pretty sinking feeling. Something like he felt when the Cels traded him off to the Patsies. Nothing wrong with the Patsies, great guys, but a comedown after his heyday with the Cels: five championships in seven years! Oh, they were great, and he, Mighty Mel Trench, the Terrible Truncheon, was the greatest by god of them all! Hell-born Melbourne. Look out! Home-run king and the only man in UBA history ever to win the Most Valuable Player Award two years running. Not even Brock Rutherford had done that. But suddenly he lost it. And the Cels packed him off. He didn't deserve that. All the newspapers said so. A deserving guy. A rotten deal. But he wasn't bitter. They all noticed that. Sweet fellow, they said. Swell Mel. And he'd tried like a bastard for the Patsies, hoping for just one more pennant, but the fences just kept backing off, and the Patsies those years were no real contenders. Toward the end, he wasn't much more than a pinch hitter. Benched Trench. Finally, in XLVIII, they let him go. And then, the next year, the Patsies did win the pennant. No mention of Swell Mel then. He slept back here a lot those days. Hellborn.

Finally, though, it was his old outfit that rescued him, showed up here winter before last with an offer to manage the Excelsiors. Not too much to work with, but at least he couldn't do worse: they had finished LIV in the cellar. So he accepted and gave it all he had. . and wound up in the cellar again last year anyway. And that was where they still were today.

En-Trenched. He had to do something, but he didn't know what. Made him want to cry, just thinking about it.

But anyway he was glad he had come tonight. Helped him see the bigger picture, loosen up a little. All came out the same in the end, he saw that now. Some won, some lost, it didn't really matter; what mattered was… well… the Association, this whole thing, bigger than all of them, that they were all caught up in. When he tried to picture it in his mind, it fuzzed into a big blur, but in his heart and when they were all together like this, he knew what he meant. Yes, it was a terrific bunch of guys out there tonight. Most of them were old-timers, ballplayers he'd watched as a kid, old heroes, in their late fifties now, some of them — like Rooney and Wall here — even older. Still looked and talked and laughed like ballplayers, though. Something in the blood or the heart or the balls that made you keep going, no matter what. He heard old Sandy Shaw out there, tuning up his guitar again. In his sixties, and Sandy still looked like a freckly-faced kid. Trench felt his own thick paunch. I'll be dead before any of them, he said to himself. Didn't really believe it, though. He looked at old Rooney. Pappy. One of the greatest of all time. Lean face scarred with deep wrinkles now. White hair. Crinkled leather skin on the back of his neck looked hundreds of years old. Somebody said he had cancer. And yet look at him: still a terrific scrapper, still out there every day, giving it all he had. Wonderful old man. Hall of Fame. Trench wanted to wrap his arm around him, show the old guy he cared, and that he'd truly be sorry when he died. Tomorrow, Rooney was his worst enemy. If Trench didn't get his Cels out of the cellar, he was through, and he had to start tomorrow, had to knock off Rooney's Haymakers. But still, tonight, he could put his arm around the old bastard and swear blood oaths: I'm with you, man. And he knew, when the chips were down, he could count on Rooney, too. That's how it was in this game.

Now, Rooney turned to him and said: "Trench, I just wanted to mention: we're gonna knock the holy shit outa you tomorrow."

Trench was caught off guard, but he managed to say: "What with, sewing needles?"

Rooney grinned patronizingly, and very gently, very distinctly, said: "We're gonna bury you, boy. For good."

Trench felt something cold whistle clean through him. Before he could think of a comeback, Rooney had gone back out front. Trench turned, stared down at toothless Jaybird Wall, snoring on the cot. Oboy. Move over, man. .

Ain't no more roar

In the park no more;

Down in the cellar

And cain't find the door. .

Hot shit! Raglan (Pappy) Rooney was on his way to the final transmutation! into the land of the goddamned blessed! yes! grind, grind without slackening, first law of the game! soak it up, blow it out! Those first shots tonight had burned Rooney's belly like salt and vitriol and had brought on a bloody purgation that scared the hell out of him; but then, taking a deep breath, he'd discovered that the old tubes had somehow been fritted by the fire, arid the rest of the night it was all sublimation. He'd revivified himself with a long rosy piss, then gone back out to slaughter the innocents. He really got a bang out of drinking with these guys. He didn't give a golden chamberpot full of solid silver turds for buddyship, so-called, but Rooney loved to drink and he hated to drink alone. He liked to hear them laugh and bitch, liked to hear old Sandy sing, liked the racket, the meanness, the tension, the heat, liked it all filled up and boiling away. And above all, he loved to rag 'em. Ho ho! fat Trench had nearly popped his cork: fffooOO! They were going to beat him all right, Trench was through. Dead. Rooney cackled. Bathe 'em in blood, boys! Give 'em the truth! And the truth? It was raunchy and morbid and arid, but it was all there was and worth a passing celebration!

Yeah, you're down and you're out, boy,

All the play in' is done,

You tried and you failed, boy,

And you ain't anyone. .

This was Rooney's party and nobody was enjoying it more. The wake's at Jake's! He sang and hollered and whipped it up. It tickled his best rib to see them all show up, they couldn't stay away, afraid to come, more afraid not to come. Too bad Sick Flynn was gone, he'd had a few more things he'd like to jab him with. Like shotgunning poor Damon for jumping his virgin daughter. But Flynn was scared. And he'd better be. They were going to needle him and that kid pitcher of his right out of baseball. The great-grandson of Fancy Dan Casey. End of the line! Mad jocks get off!

No-hit Nealy, ho ho ho!

When they pitched high, he swung low!

"Hey, Gooney! Stop garglin' and get rid of it, man!"

"Aw, you guys ain't got no appreciation!" He laughed with them, though. When they stopped ragging him, they'd bury him.

He caught Bancroft on the way to the head: "Hey, Philosopher, can I interest you in a coupla pitchers?"

"What kinda pitchers?" Barney asked. He was smashed.

"Dirty pitchers!" Rooney howled with delight. "Things're gonna get tough, Philosopher!"

"The Rutherford spirit," Bancroft slurred, "will carry the day!"

"Oh yeah? What's your spirit's E.R.A.?" Rooney cackled, oh hey! that's a beauty! "E-R-A, get it?" He dug Bancroft's ribs — the Old Philosopher my ass, a lotta puff and blow, but he'll never make it — then spun on the others. "Hey! It's the new Rutherford Era!" he hollered. "The Spirit E-R-A!" He roared with laughter, but laughed alone. Nobody got it. "Pour 'em out, Jake! Keep 'em alive!"

While the house was picking itself up again, he soft-shoed over to Shadwell, got old Tim yakking sentimentally about the old days. Rooney and Shadwell had come up as rookies the same year — Year X: who the hell said XIX was the Year of the Rookie? — and Tim had dusted Rooney more than once over the next fifteen seasons. Then, once he'd got Tim waxing eloquent and blubberish, Rooney leaned close and whispered, "Now, honestly, don't that Brock Rutherford Era crap twist your balls, Tim?"

Shadwell flushed pink as a punched virgin. "Well. ." he said, squirming, looking around. His hands shook and the cubes rattled in his glass. "Of course, uh, Brock had his faults, but… I mean, it's not exactly the, you know, right time to…"

"Crock Rubberturd."

Shadwell, uncontrollably and no doubt shocking his own lily-white self, commenced to giggle. "Rooney, you're worse than death," he allowed.

"Hey, Sandy!" Rooney bawled out. "Give us 'Long Lew and Fanny'!"

Lew Lydell protested, but the rest of the boys picked it up. "Long Lew and Fanny!" Sandy stroked a chord and loose laughter rattled in the bar. "Give her all you got, Sandy!" some wag shouted.

"Too late for that," Sandy drawled, and they whooped again…

Come, boys, give a cheer,

And buy me a beer,

And sit down beside me a spell,

While I tell the uncanny

Tale of Miss Fanny

McCaffree and Long Lew Lydell!

Oh, who can ever forget

That day the Grooms met

The Knicks on the Knicks' home diamond?

Long Lew'd made a vow

That they'd win somehow

Or Fanny would forfeit her hymen!

Now, this much is true:

The first was Long Lew,

Though later there may have been many;

For, believe it or not,

Though Long Lew had a lot,

Fanny had never had any!

After nine innings of play

On that hot summer day,

The Grooms lost, nothing to six;

So Long Lew went and caught her,

The long-legged daughter

Of McCaffree, the boss of the Knicks!

"Excuse me, Miss Fanny,"

Said he, "don't take any

Offense if I must tell you true

That this will hurt me

More than you, for you see

Here the reason they call me Long Lew!"

Oh yes, this much is true:

The first was Long Lew,

Though later there may have been many;

For, believe it or not,

Though Long Lew had a lot,

Fanny had never had any!

Now, when all of Long Lew

Came into full view,

Miss Fanny collapsed in dismay—

She fell on the bench,

Did that long-legged wench,

With her skirts tucked neatly away!

There was wrenching and pounding,

The noise was astounding,

And still he had only begun!

But he banged and he bored

Till at last he had scored,

And Fanny cried out: "HOME RUN!"

No, I'm sure this is true:

Number one was Long Lew,

Though later, perhaps, there were many;

For, I swear on this spot,

Though Long Lew had a lot,

Fanny had never had any!

How he managed to pin her

And get it all in her

Remains an eternal league mystery;

But the crowd round the pit

All had to admit

That Long Lew Lydell had made history!

As for Fanny, though fallen,

She said: "Stop your stallin'

Long Lew, and prove you''re a pro!

I've seen your muscle,

Now show me some hustle:

You still got eight innings to go!"

Oh yes, I'm tellin' you true,

Her first was Long Lew,

Though later there were probably many;

For it's true, is it not,

That Long Lew had a lot,

But Fanny had never had any!

Well, Old Fenn came upon her

In total dishonor

And Long Lew in a state of fatigue;

He'd've made Long Lew shorter

But was stopped by his daughter,

Who said: "Daddy! I've made the

Big League!"

So the Knicks won the game,

And Long Lew his fame,

And Fanny had fun in her fall;

McCaffree was furious,

The fans merely curious,

And the moral is: don't win' em all!

Yes, this much is true:

The first was Long Lew,

Though later there may have been many;

For, believe it or not,

Though Long Lew had a lot,

Fanny had never had any!

Well, yes, it was a great wake, and as they joked and shouted, he saw that it was good, but yet it wasn't enough. Something was missing. "Hey! All you old pissers! Over here!" Rooney shouted,

"Whatsamatter, Pappy?"

"Get over here!"

"Pappy, if I take this bar out from under my elbow, I ain't got nothin' left to hold me up!"

But he kept insisting, and finally they all came, he gathered them all together, and when he'd got them all over, they looked back toward the bar, and there she was, nobody'd noticed her before, but now, there she stood, alone, at the bar. They wasted no time. They rolled the cot out from the back room. Old Jaybird Wall still snored there, biting his ass with his own dentures; they dumped him off and her on. No time or words wasted. They'd had enough of the putrefaction phase, they'd passed through the dissolutions and descensions and coagulations: what they wanted now was union. And oh yes, they seeded her well, they stuffed her so full it was coming out her ears, it was a goddamn inundation. .

"Well, it's a funny world," said Jake.

"Yeah… yeah, it is. You said it."

His name will shine down through all time,

Shine like an eternal flame,

For though he has died in his youthful

prime,

His spirit lives on in the game!

Hang down your heads, brave men, and weep!

Young Damon has come to harm!

They have carried him off to a grave dark and

deep:

The boy with the magic arm. .

Going into exile, heartsore, Sycamore Flynn stared out on the night, seeing nothing there, not even his own pale reflection, staring dispiritedly back into the coach. He had no thoughts, any more than a drowning man had thoughts, just anxieties, and his mind in trouble pitched here and there, rocked by the wheels' pa-clockety-knock, jogged loose from the continuum, sloshing here and there, the green and the gold, the suns and the shadows, the sons and the fathers, the sons and the fathers — and the piping cries of the sandlot boys, the leaping and throwing and running and swinging, all the games won and all the games lost, balls came bouncing at him, were thrown at him, flew by him, arched over him, and he was running back, and running back. .

He looked away. Running back. Tomorrow's game. Which was yesterday's. Pa-clockety-knock, pa-clockety-knock, nearer and nearer. Well, there was pattern maybe and legend and graphs and prophecies — but there was something else, too, and it came at you and it was hard and it was tangible, yes, to say the least, and sometimes you could field it and turn it to glory, but sometimes it hit you right in the teeth, and no, you couldn't stop it, you couldn't even duck. You couldn't even give it a name! He was afraid. Not only for himself. Not just for his team. For everybody. They'd all be there. Brock Rutherford Day at Pioneer Park. . plus two. Resumed. Substitution announced: for the Pioneers, pinch-running for. .

He'd thought of every possibility. Getting rid of Casey. At least benching him. Quitting himself. Withdrawing his Knicks from all further games this season. Proposing they call the rest of the season off, give the pennant to the Pioneers, who were anyway in second place behind them. Even: that they close down the Association. Why not? Because what would all the past mean then without the present process? Nothing at all, but so what? No answer: only dread. And everything less than that fell short or looked cheap. Finally, he supposed, it would resume, and he would simply have to play out his part. But he dreaded that, too.

His daughter had disappeared. She'd left no note. Hadn't been necessary. He knew what she was telling him and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do that would bring her back. Harriet was as dead to him now as her Damon was to Brock. Even more so, because Damon died and left no hate behind. In a way, Flynn envied Brock. No, that wasn't true. You're just trying to smooth it over, ease the guilt. You can still love her even though she hates; but what does Brock have to love? You can't love a corpse.

Brock the Great. His Era: yes, yes, it was. It had hurt Sycamore to say so in front of all those people — like he'd been tricked or something, and it had made him sore, sore at McCaffree, sore at Bancroft, and sore at Brock Rutherford. But it was true. Sycamore Flynn, age 57, Hall of Fame, all-star Bridegroom shortstop Years XIX through XXX, Most Valuable Player in XXVIII, Knickerbocker manager since LIII and twice a boss of champions, knew it was. He was there. He'd come up with Brock in XIX, and his one personal triumph had been his selection — over Brock and all the others — as Rookie of the Year. Brock had got back at him. Oh yes, many times over. Like at the end of the season three years later when Sycamore and Brock's teammate Willie O'Leary were fighting it out for the batting title. The Pioneers were taking the pennant in a walk that year, and they even got a little sloppy in the final games, but not when Sycamore Flynn came to the plate. Brock personally struck him out seven straight times in the final series — and once when there was a man on second, no outs, and first base open, when he should at least have passed him, but no, it was Get-Flynn-Year, and get him they did. Finally, he finished up fourth. Brock the Great Oh yes, damn it, damn him, he was!

The train pulled in. Sycamore was alone; his players had returned ahead of him. The depot was only a block from Pioneer Park, the hotel where the Knicks were staying just another block or so beyond that, so he decided to walk. Loosen up. Anyway, he wasn't all that confident about getting in a cab here in Damon's hometown: he might be recognized and that might not be so good. Though it was a warm night, he turned up his collar, chose the dark sides of the streets. What was hounding him? That he didn't feel guilty enough?

He passed under the stadium. It bulked, unlit in the dark night, like a massive ruin, exuding a black odor of death and corruption — no, no, just that modest stink of sweat and garbage all old buildings had, and ball parks especially. It caused an unreasonable dread in him, a stupid dread; to purge it, he crossed over, touched it, felt the solid stone, just plain ordinary lifeless matter. A ball park. Like any other. The arched entranceways, he noticed, had no gates. How did they keep the crashers out? Just a passageway, maybe; other doors and gates inside. He peered in. Couldn't see anything. It was pitch black in there.

Inwardly, he laughed at himself. Crossing a street to see if a building was real! Funny what funerals could do to the mind. If anybody saw him, they'd take him for a complete nut. He glanced about furtively, but he seemed to be alone. He rapped a wall, skinning a knuckle, as a kind of self-punishment, and set off for the hotel. But then he hesitated. Silly thing, but those gateless entrances bothered him. Forget it. What you need is a night's sleep. Or a night's rest anyway — he wasn't sure he could get to sleep with tomorrow's game to wake up to. Well, that's right, so what's the hurry? He turned back.

No, no gates. Not even the hinges for one. And inside: it shouldn't be that black in there. Was it the streetlight out here, dim as it was, that made it look that way? He stepped inside. Still couldn't see anything, but once inside, he realized it was more like a tunnel than the entrance to a ball park. He edged to his right, hand outstretched. Yes, a wall. Rough and damp. He traced it a few paces. Peculiar. Construction work maybe. Excavations. Have to come look at this in the daytime. He turned, half afraid that — but, no, there it was, the dimly lit street. But something new now. Voices. Indistinct, but not far away. Better wait. They'd take him for a thief.

As time passed, he grew impatient. A couple guys standing on a street corner describing conquests, no doubt. Of course, they could also be cops. Better stay put. To take up the time, he explored a little further, left hand stretched out in front of him, right hand tracing the contours of the wall. Earthen. Sweating. It seemed endless. Finally, he gave it up, turned hack. Now, in fact, there was no street! Moment of panic, hut he made himself think. The wall he was tracing must have been curving. He stepped out away from it. Still couldn't see a thing. Better go back the same way you came. He reached out for the wall, but couldn't find it. Then he did panic. Wheeled around, scrambling in every direction at once, not afraid of the voices now, but afraid to cry out. Why? he didn't know — ah! the wall! But which one? He was breathing heavily, ashamed. He'd lost his head there for a minute. And now what, right or left? He decided to gamble on its being the same wall, so followed it now with his left hand. But after a hundred paces or so with no sight of the street, he realized he'd guessed wrong, was just getting deeper. Turned back. Keep calm. It'd be easy to break. Count. At one hundred, he paused. Must've started about here. Another fifty or a hundred paces, and he ought to see the street. But after twenty, the wall curved suddenly to the right. He swallowed, licked his lips. Keep thinking, keep cool. Could put your back to the wall, then strike straight out on the perpendicular — have to find the opposite wall sooner or later. But he had a grip on this wall and didn't want to let go. And when he did find that other wall, which way would he go? Besides, if these were excavations, there might be drops: he could fall, hurt himself, have to spend all night here. No, consider. This tunnel must go somewhere. Some other exit probably. Better stick with it, keep moving. He was afraid of the right turn he'd come on, so he went back over the same ground again, right hand out in front, left hand tracing the rough passage wall. Hundred paces and that wall curved, too, sharply to the left. Too soon. But maybe he was taking bigger steps now. No point in going back. Better keep moving. Don't think. Just lead to panic. Move, just move, hustle. In his mind, he kept up a little pepper. That's it. Lotta action. Hup, two, three. Every hundred paces or so, the wall again bent left. Going around in circles. Or maybe a spiral. What kind of a goddamn ball park was this anyway? Don't question it. Keep going. Seemed to be climbing now. Lift those knees. Come on, Sic'em baby, cover ground! He was sweating now, his clothes feh sticky on him, the air heavy— heart going too fast! He dropped his right hand to feel its beating and smacked up solid against a sudden right turn in the wall.

Face stung. Felt dizzy. Greasy. He paused there, in the corner, half ready to quit, getting his breath. Then he saw where he was. In his own dugout. Visitors' dugout near first base. Still dark, no shape to things, but no longer pitch black. He stepped through the dugout, out onto the field, to get his bearings, get some fresh air. As he did, as he passed through the dugout, he saw them there, but he looked away. No, that would be too much. Even out on the field, the night air was oppressive. He stared off toward where, more or less, home plate was, must be; but his back tingled. Another trick of the shadows, he supposed. Night. Always did that. Irrational. But he was pretty sure they were there, pretty sure he'd seen them. Sitting on the bench. Didn't know who. But they were there behind him. Imagination. Go back and check. No, don't be an idiot, that's how you've ended up here in the first place, remember? He recalled an exit behind home plate. Head for that. Get outa here. Yeah, boy. Walk, don't run. Control. But speed, too. He sighted on the bag at first, only thing he could see out there. Finally he was running.

But at first base, he pulled up short. Figure lurking there. No turning away from that. Flynn was all alone out on a darkened ballfield, behind him that dugout with its goddamn spooky benchwarmers, the tunnel back of that — and something even worse ahead. The figure stood about six paces off first base, down the baseline toward second. Flynn's baseball habits made him think instinctively: he's playing too close to the bag. Or maybe he was moving toward first. Someone coming up from home? Base on balls? Or…? aha. Oh no.

Damp dank wind curled around his ankles, crept down his back. Made his clothes tug and tremble on him, and the first baseman's pants fluttered around his motionless knees. Flynn felt rooted to the spot. "Matt?" he whispered. No answer. His mouth was dry, tongue thick. Almost didn't hear himself. "Matt, is that you?" Face in shadows, no features visible, but the body, the shape, looked like Matt Garrison. Cap tipped forward like he always wore it, jaw out-thrust. Just fixed there. Flynn, keeping his eye on the immobile first baseman, circled, then backed away. Toward home. Toward the exit. Oh man. You gotta get outa here. This is something awful.

But then he paused. Felt the turf under his shoes. Not the baseline. He'd got off it. Must be near the… the mound. Yes. And he knew: there was somebody behind him, all right. Didn't have to look. Didn't have the nerve anyway. "Jock?" Could still faintly make out Matt Garrison's figure, and beyond Matt, the black mouth of the dugout from which he'd come. McAllister Weeks over toward second. "That you, Jock?" Turn around and look, you ass. Can't. Sorry, just can't. "Jock, if you don't want to pitch it out…" He could imagine Casey's face. The hard thrust of bone against the lean flesh. The scooped-out shadowy loner's eyes. That set cold stare. Couldn't turn and look, though. "Just let me know, I can…" The night wind. The lifeless field. His own heart which was going to fail, going to break, going to quit. "Why've you done this to us, Jock?" he cried out. Flynn was near tears. Behind him, he realized, past Casey, past home plate, there was an exit. Maybe it was a way out, maybe it wasn't. But he'd never make it. It was all he wanted, but he'd never make it. He couldn't even turn around. And besides, he wasn't sure what he'd find at home plate on the way. "I quit," he said. But then the lights came on.