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

5

POWER and control. In and out. The old eagle, Swanee Law, just reared back and burned them in. In across the knuckles: zip! Zap: skimming the outer edge! Now winging in across the letters, then plunging past the knees: the Law Special. Pappy Rooney was again using nearly everybody he had today, even pinch-hitting a couple pitchers. All his Haymakers got out of all the going in and coming out was one run, but it was enough: Law gave up just two scratch singles to the Bridegrooms and struck out fourteen to win, 1-to-0, Swanee's sixth straight victory. Pappy clapped them in, ragging them about the puny bitting, but they all felt good: it was their thirteenth win in the last fifteen games, and eight of them had been by one run. As for Swanee, not only was it his sixteenth win of the season and his fourth shutout, but the fourteen strikeouts brought his season total up to 219, giving him an outside chance still to hit the magic mark of 300, attained by only five pitchers in UBA history. Law knew what he had going for himself: whenever sportswriters interviewed him, they were shown large charts he kept tacked to his wall, indicating his own game-by-game progress in comparison with that of the five men in history — Hokey Lancaster, Fancy Dan Casey, Timothy Shadwell, Brock Rutherford, and Edgar Bath — he was challenging. Brock had the record: 341, set in Year XXVII. Rooney had to laugh at Law's prostrating himself before the tired and filthy feet of history, but as long as it helped win ball games he couldn't care less. The newsboys, bored, troubled, or revolted by what was happening — or not happening — in the rest of the league, fed on Law as the last hope for revival. You were pretty mean out there today, Swanee. Yuh, he'd say, gazing thoughtfully up at his charts, but we kin be meaner. Gotta be. Photos of him: narrow eyes reflecting concern, determination, square jaw solidly set… a tough old boy.

Elsewhere, the action in the UBA was confused and bewildering. Moreover, Law was a false hope; they'd need more than he could give. In his private offices, high above the day's play, Chancellor Fennimore McCaflree sat with vexed spirit watching it on four television sets going at once, aware that his Association was undergoing a radical transformation, the kind sprung only from situations of crisis, extremity; his worries now were no longer merely political, but ones even of survival. With him sat his old coach and mentor and only surviving ex-Chancellor, Woodrow Winthrop. Squawk boxes, receiving from ball-park spotters, computer rooms, and special agents, chattered out their several messages, creating a low-keyed cacophony, and McCaffree missed none of it; his phenomenal powers of concentration were already a league legend. Used to be, in his day, the quality Woody Winthrop was best known for, though age had loosened his wits some in recent years. He sat now, studying Fenn, amazed as always, wondering who was the protege of whom.

"You see, Woody, it's one thing to say that each of these players and each of these teams is interested in maximizing its expected utility, and another to know — even for them to know — what that utility really is."

"How's that, Fenn?" Went right by him. Conversations with Fenn McCaffree these days got pretty one-sided. He was forever yakking about distribution functions, the canonical form of M, compound decision problems, relations of dominance; like Fenn had somehow forgot the game was baseball.

"Law shouldn't have pitched today."

"Oh." That Woody could understand. Rooney was pitching Law too much, wouldn't have anything left for the stretch.

In his trademark swivel chair! — party symbol for the coming campaign — Fenn pivoted from set to set, his long legs crossed, spine curved, left elbow sharply out-thrust and hand gripping the chair-arm where his intercom buttons were rigged; blacksuited, string bow tie in the high collar, pants cuffs hiked high above the bony ankles and exceedingly long and narrow shoes; high-domed bespectacled head dipped forward, leaning against the pipe held clamped between under-slung jaw and right fist, as an old man might lean on a cane. On the Haymaker-Bridegroom screen, the game was over, and Law and Rooney were being interviewed by reporters; on the other three, the Knickerbocker-Pastimer, Excelsior-Keystone, and Beaneater-Pioneer games were in their final innings. Beaneater left-fielder Bartholomew Egan poled a homer into the center-field bleachers off the Pioneers' Thornton Shad well, and Fenn punched a button: "What did Ingram call for?"

"Low and outside." One crackly report muddled with all the others. Woody heard it because it came in over his own right shoulder.

"Where did he get it?"

"Down the slot."

"Feed it in."

"Check."

Watching his own hand-picked successor in office, Woody realized that he himself had probably been the last of his kind. He'd thought of himself as a rebel, but in reality he'd only brought the old ways to consummation. Under McCaffree, politics, the Chancellorship, even the game had changed. Fenn fooled you. He looked old-fashioned, but he had an abiding passion for innovation. He was the most relentless activist ever to take office, yet he never seemed to move a muscle. He was coldly calculating, yet supremely loyal to old comrades, and what else was it but sentiment that was making him, against all logic and advice, support his son-in-law as the next chief of the party? "You mean," Woody ventured, "Rooney oughta be giving Law a little more rest between games."

"No, I mean he shouldn't be using his best pitcher against inconsequential teams like the Bridegrooms."

"Well, Fenn, it don't matter much who you beat, what Rooney wants is to win ball games—"

Fennimore McCaffree pivoted slightly, almost imperceptibly, to glower witheringly upon the only surviving ex-Chancellor of the UBA, and said acidly: "Well, goddamn it, Mr. Winthrop, I know he wants to win ball games, that's just the point!" Then he turned back to his TV sets, where the Cels had a rally going in the ninth: a long belt up against the screen in right, scoring two runs, and that was the game, Cels 4, Keystones 3. Poor old Tim.

"I'm sorry, Fenn. I don't get you."

McCaffree sighed impatiently. "What if, Woody, we have passed, without knowing it, from a situation of sequential compounding into one of basic and finite yes-or-no survival, causing a shift of what you might call the equilibrium point, such that the old strategies, like winning ball games, sensible and proper within the old stochastic or recursive sets, are, under the new circumstances, insane!"

"Hmmm," said Woody Winthrop. Only word he was sure of was the last one. Above the television sets, electronic score boards, hooked directly to those of the separate ball parks, recorded the surface data of the games, blinking their messages in a slow burn, left to right. Partridge was throwing gopher balls and his Pastimer teammates were fielding like a bunch of bush-leaguers, turning what was supposed to be the game of the day, if not of the year — Knicks vs.the Patsies, with both teams once again tied for the league lead, Jock Casey pitching against Sam Partridge — into a circus. The Patsies' infield, supposed to be the UBA's greatest, had made four errors so far, and the Knicks were winning, 5-to-1, with another rally going in the eighth. The Pioneers had just lost to the Bean-eaters, 8-to-4. Young Thornton Shadwell's third loss; Tim's boy just wasn't going to make it. Woody didn't know exactly why, but he felt things were not going well in the Association. Ever since that boy's death. Like the soul had gone out of it or something, as if Sycamore Flynn's Knicks had stolen it somehow and wouldn't give it back, or couldn't, and the whole balance of things had got thrown off. Feeling antiquated and stupid and disconnected, Woody sighed and said: "I don't know, Fenn. Maybe you're probably right."

But Fenn was talking to somebody on one of the squawk boxes and wasn't listening to Woody. In adjoining rooms, machinery, looking like big eyeless monsters conjured up from the depths, hummed and clicked, sucking up the information being fed to them from scorekeepers, scouts, official monitors, and even a set of special camera devices that Mc-Caffree had invented to time runners, spy out jittery fielders, register variations between what the catchers called for and what the pitchers really threw, million different things. Made Woodrow Winthrop's old head spin. "You see, given this shift and the fact that it seems to be out of our hands, some built-in flaw or gap which doesn't allow us to cope with it directly," Fenn continued, apparently speaking to Woody again, though still studying the TV sets, "it would almost be better for the whole league if the players were all incompetent and irrational."

"Is that so?" said Woody.

"Mmm. The way things are going, we're apt to get a payoff nobody wants." Young Chauncey O'Shea was at the plate for the Knicks with runners on base. Fenn asked for a close-up of O'Shea, then leaned forward to study his batting stance, grip on the handle. Whenever Fenn did something like that, it made Woody wince, and he winced now, feeling instinctively sorry for O'Shea under that kind of scrutiny, though in fact he didn't even know the boy, only knew he was the one calling the pitches when young Rutherford got killed, and so had no reason certainly to feel any special warmth for the man. But Woody suffered the intrusion of all this machinery, this detailed information gathering, the dossiers, the intense pattern studies and close-ups, the projections, the cumulative files which Fenn called CUMS — in Woody's day that was a dirty word — didn't like it at all, found it suffocating and unfriendly, thought there were too many people playing a functional part without asking themselves what they were doing there. And now Fenn was even using the same methods to gauge and manipulate the political picture. Of course, even if people did start asking themselves about the roles they played, that wouldn't necessarily change things. And as Fenn always said: people'll get used to it in a few years and wonder how they ever got along without. "Besides, people are narcissistic: they like being studied and stared at." And you certainly had to hand it to Old Fenn, he never missed a trick. Agents operating inside the other two parties and at least one on every ball club, filing the data that Long Lew Lydell and the computers tabulated. He wondered what the payoff Fennimore was talking about could be, but he didn't worry too much about it, since he figured it couldn't concern him, and above all, he didn't want to risk getting put down again.

O'Shea doubled, scoring two runs. Fenn leaned back. Casey knocked the Patsies off, one-two-three, in the ninth, giving the Knicks a lopsided 7-to-1 win. "And there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it," Fennimore McCaffree said softly. Glumly, the seventh and eighth Chancellors of the Universal Baseball Association watched the League Standings Board suffer its daily transmutation.

Disappointing. It was. Henry glanced back at the board, then left, pulling the door to. Down the black stairs he went, across the pale threshold and into the street, trying to forget about it, get his mind on a good meal. Surely he needed one, and moreover, Lou was right, he had to restore some order to his life, especially now. He'd just played sixty straight games, the most he'd ever done at a stretch: his kidneys ached, his neck hurt, and his eyes were so tired he could hardly see, yes, he needed this break, relax the mind, indulge the lower spheres, find some stability for himself, if he couldn't find it for the Association. But try as he could, he couldn't shake it off; discontent, like a dark improper bird hatched in his own injured breast, attended Henry Waugh on his Saturday night walk to Mitch's Bar and Grill.

He'd risen after dark last evening and had done nothing since but play the game. Normally, it took him about six weeks to play out a season, not counting the week or two it took to accomplish all the midwinter blue-season summarizing, analyzing, and record-keeping, but in these twenty-four hours he'd driven himself through fifteen days of play, sixty games, nearly a quarter of the season. To accomplish it, he'd had to hold his log entries to a minimum and finally leave off keeping statistics altogether, planning to catch up at the end of the season, if he still wanted to. For all Fenn McCaffree's pretense at efficiency, the truth was the books just were not being kept, and no one knew exactly anymore what was happening. The only exception was the pitching records, he had to keep up with those in order to know what Jock Casey was doing, for Casey had become, through his own peculiar intransigence, the key to the whole mess — cooler than ever, winning games, even dusting batters on occasion, now owning the fourth or fifth best ERA in the Association. And his Knick teammates were still hanging onto the league lead, while the Pioneers, losing eleven of their last fifteen games, had dropped out of the picture. Yes, the Spirit's E-R-A wasn't worth much, to be sure.

But what more could he do about it? Henry walked the dark streets weakly, possessed by impotence. Twenty-one games to go, how could he stop them? Rooney's pitching staff had got all unbalanced and was sure to fall apart sooner or later, the Patsies were stumbling all over themselves, and the Pioneers showed no signs of pulling out of their dive. The Knicks may have become the hunted, but there were no hunters. Henry had juggled the other seven teams' pitching schedules so as to pit the Knicks almost exclusively against Aces, had under one pretense or another — personal problems, minor illnesses, obscenity on the field — shaken up the Knick line-up, even briefly benching a couple Stars, and still they kept managing to win more than they lost. There was, in effect, as Fenn McCaffree would say, a hidden coalition structure, but no rules permitting correlated strategies, and worse, an almost total and necessary league ignorance of the way things truly stood. As for Casey, Henry had thrown him in at every worst moment, even sometimes tossed the dice in advance to make sure he was going to get hit before actually writing in his name — and somehow Casey had usually made the best of it. If he didn't know better, he'd suspect the dice of malevolence, rather than mere mindlessness. And it was Henry, not Casey, who was losing control.

Food smells alerted him: he'd nearly passed Mitch's by. Over his head, a three-phase neon arrow pointed the way to the quarry: through a door strung round with red lights, giving it a carbuncular effect. Lou was in the anteroom, peering out the window. "Henry!" he squeaked, and plunged forward like a giddy seal. "Come on! I was afraid you'd got lost! Did you have any trouble…?"

Henry smiled, shook his friend's hand. "I'm starved," he said. "I just followed my nose."

They bundled in, warm odors assailing them gently, past a sign that read: Go thy way and eat thy bread with joy! Piped-in radio music floated over the kitchen noises, the whump of doors, rattle of cocktail shakers, the bubble and buzz of underwater voices. Walls in a lush green with gold sparkle, cedar wainscoting, soft glow throughout, yet at the same time, linoleum floors and tawdry leatherette booths. Frilly lamps at the tables like little flowers, massive paintings and prints of whaling ships and dead pheasants on the walls. Elegant bar of carved wood in the romantic style, but the tabletops were cheap speckly formica. Dark-suited business types were conferring in one booth, young kids necking in the next. Yet somehow it all hung together okay.

A plump little man, tuxedoed, bobbed up beside them: "Good evening, Mr. Engel. Two?" The owner, of course: Lou always knew the owner, wherever he went.

"Evening, Mr. Porter. This is my friend Mr. Waugh I've told you about." Mr. Mitch Porter, not quite smiling, surveying Henry's slack condition and obvious need, dipped his head in recognition of this wondrous encounter, then led them primly to a table in the center, underneath a pillar. A litde like Frosty Young, but better mannered. Not a third baseman, though. Second maybe, like Frosty. Or a catcher. Yes, that was it, put him back behind the plate, guarding home. "He won't believe, you know, that the food's so, as good as I say, so he's finally come to find out for himself."

"I hope you won't be disappointed, Mr. Waugh," the owner said politely, discreetly nodding them into their places. He bestowed menus upon them with his right hand, his left discharging a practiced and imperial command kitchenward. Henry saw no one there to receive it, yet a moment later a waitress was headed their way with table linen and silverware. Mitch Porter knew he was good. Poise: no really great star was ever without it.

"Lou's kidding you, Mr. Porter," Henry assured him. "He's what they call in baseball a real swinger at the plate, and I have complete faith." The waitress, bellied over the table, spreading the fresh white linen as though preparing a marriage couch, smiled at that. The worm stirred… yes, balance, let the dark forces rise. Plop! plop! the napkins, and long silver instruments — the better to fork you with, my dear, as Willie O'Leary would say, but she was gone.

Henry picked up the menu to read it, but Lou had already pushed his aside, was leaning sideways in a bulky list to confer with Mitch Porter. "I was thinking about.. the steaks," he said softly, as though making confession.

Mitch Porter gazed thoughtfully toward the kitchen, then around to be sure there were no spies, bowed slightly forward. "I'm just not entirely pleased with them this evening, Mr. Engel. They look good, but they're — I wouldn't tell anyone but you, Mr. Engel — but they seem cut a little too green from the tree, if you know what I mean." Lou, knowing well, inched forward, ears cocked for the word. "But the duck," Mr. Porter whispered, puckering his lips and touching them with the tips of two fingers and a thumb: a soft insinuating kiss blessed them and the hand opened like a blossom.

"Duck!" announced Lou firmly, leaning back.

"Me, too," said Henry.

"And before?"

"He makes a wonderful seafood cocktail, Henry."

"Okay by me."

"Two cocktails," beamed Mitch Porter. "And to drink?"

"Right now, I'd like an Old Fashioned," said Henry, having seen that the menu plugged them, and Mr. Porter smiled, raised his brows to Lou. Lou nodded. Mr. Porter slipped away then, passing unheard instructions to barman and waitresses: whump! gaped the kitchen doors, and swallowed him up.

Lou, following Henry's gaze, turned back and whispered: "He makes the duck himself!" The kitchen, having inhaled Mr. Mitch Porter, now exhaled a waitress, exiling in a handsome breech delivery, bearing aloft a tray heaped high with silver-canopied dishes. "Henry, your eyes look all bloodshot! What have you been doing?"

"Working." And though hard, not hard enough. He'd wanted to start Monday clean and fresh, his decision made, but he doubted now he could finish the season tomorrow.

"Are you still taking that extra work home, Henry?" Lou shook his head. "Just what I thought. You come dragging into the office at noon — you're gonna end up losing your steady job at DZ&Z just for the sake of a few extra dollars, it's not worth it, Henry. What do you wanna be a millionaire for? Who're you gonna leave it to?" Lou clucked disapprovingly as the drinks came. Who was he going to leave it to? The dark bird flapped in his breast again and beaked bis throat. At another table, under a storm at sea, the youngsters blew kisses at each other over their plates, and across the way, a navy officer leaned over a young woman's bosom. . "No, really, Henry—"

"What I do, I do because I want to," Henry said, and lifted his glass in a toast, then drank. In one corner, two old men played chess beside an aquarium of goldfish, and somehow neither they nor the fish seemed out of place. Maybe he could move his Association over here. Might rescue it. He smiled.

Lou twisted around to see what he was smiling at, saw the chinless cod-faced woman who slouched dumpily back of the cash register, under a pair of lovebirds, reading a movie magazine. "Mrs. Porter," he explained. "You wouldn't believe it, would you?"

"Of course, I would!" Henry laughed. "Couldn't be anyone else!" Lou laughed blankly, not getting it. An old hand came down and touched a crown, veered past it to elect a seahorse, white as death: it leaped forward, but currents carried it slantwise. To be good, a chess player, too, had to convert his field to the entire universe, himself the ruler of that private enclosure — though from a pawn's-eye view, of course, it wasn't an enclosure at all, but, infinitely, all there was. Henry enjoyed chess, but found it finally too Euclidian, too militant, ultimately irrational, and in spite of its precision, formless really — nameless motion.

Lou asked about the interview with Zifferblatt and Henry told him, all the while watching the chess players, the excited youngsters, all the paintings and dour Mrs. Porter, the people at the bar, the waitresses, that girl with die navy officer— who was he? seen him before. . young Brock Rutherford Jr. maybe… "So when I told Ziff that the Greek god of commerce was a thief and led the dead to hell, Ziff said: 'Yeah? well, look what it got the Greeks, all they got's a few restaurants!' "

Lou wheezed with giggling, his round face pink with the thought of a foolish Zifferblatt. "Did he really say that, Henry?"

"No, I'm just kidding, Lou. To tell the truth, I don't know what either of us said, because I fell asleep."

Still giggling, but shaking his head at the same time, sipping the Old Fashioned, Lou seemed to find that harder to believe than the dialogue. "I couldn't fall asleep in front of Mr. Zifferblatt," he confessed, "if they gave me ether!"

Pink sea monsters, washed up on a shore of lettuce leaves and parsley, arrived, iced, their pungent sauce piercing through the present aroma of the Old Fashioneds' bitters like an arrow: zingo! right to the nose! and to the palate! terrific!

While the waitress was still at hand, Henry, munching a cherry, asked for another round of drinks, then with a wink at the lady, forked the earthly remains of a once-proud crustacean. The whiskey was having a wonderfully balsamic effect; he was glad he'd come. Lou, like any artist in confrontation with the raw stuff of his vocation, fell silent, but for barely audible mumbles of judgment or bliss. The waitress, under-belly apron white, floated by, deposited fresh drinks like a lay of eggs, then flipping her rosy tail, drifted on, starched apron strings waggling in her wake. Others watching her, too. That officer, even while sounding other knees and thighs below the table. One's not enough for him. Never is. What was the mechanism? Maybe those little buggers had eyes, after all: we got that one already, dad — move on! Long Lew apologizing to Fanny McCaffree: I'd like to get married, Fanny, it's a wonderful idea, but what am I gonna do with this? Holding up that old sea serpent that dragged him under every time.

Impotent? not really. But sometimes total power was worse. Message of the Legalists: without law, power lost its shape. That was what kept Casey proud: born into a going system, he judged himself by it, failed to look beyond, look back: who said three strikes made an out? Supposing he just shipped Casey to the minors and to hell with the rules? He could at that. If he wanted to. Could explain it in the Book. It wasn't impotence. Still, it might cause trouble. What trouble? The players… What players? Some kind of limit there, all right, now that he thought about it. He might smash their resistance, but he couldn't help feeling that resistance all the same. Their? mine; it was all the same.

Brock Rutherford II, who had failed in the UBA, was making it in the back booth of Mitch's, having gotten his pitching fist well under a sea-blue skirt. The mystic ship of life, sail on, sail on! Elsewhere, a black queen flew south, answered by a coalition of bishops. On a far wall, red-coated horsemen leaped hedges in pursuit of… of something, a fox maybe, just a dark blur on the canvas there; maybe it was poor Sycamore Flynn. The youngsters beneath the raging sea had themselves grown suddenly still, eyes locked, oblivious |o everything, hands chastely gripping napkins, lips meeting — Mr. Mitch Porter materialized: with his left, he ordered the youngsters out, while his right hand summoned the waitress with the bill. Down the aisle plowed her proud white breast, then back up again, outstrutting the young cock, who left doubled over his arrowing desire, face lit with shame and anticipation. Mr. Porter apparently didn't notice the navy officer who, while chatting amiably above table, had bared everything beneath. Matter of interpretation, no doubt. And why haven't you ever married, Henry? Who asked that? Lou? Henry glanced up, but Lou was ingesting neat brown slabs of duck, a jewel of orange rind glistening on his plump chin. It was really good, all right, had a wild original taste all its own, a genuine creation: Mitch Porter could play on anybody's team. Hall of Fame.

Now he passed with a bottle of rose on ice. With a whirling flourish of wrist and fingers, he conjured out the cork, poured a finger into each of their glasses. They tasted: "Mmm, good!" said Lou. "But—?"

"My pleasure," said Mr. Porter with a slight bow, and filled their glasses, then disappeared before they could really thank him.

"Gee, that was nice, wasn't it, Henry?"

"Mmm. Great duck, too."

"I told you."

The waitress pecked disparagingly in the gravel of small coins left her by the banished teen-agers, then click-click-clicked back up the aisle with dirty dishes, swishing her ample tail; the officer, still fishing, watched benignly. The gaze of his young prey, however, fell on Henry; she started, flushed, pushed the officer's hand out, then, feathers ruffled, pranced off to the ladies' room, the door of which, Henry noticed, was upholstered in the same cheap leatherette as the booths. Leftover piece. The officer, grinning, said something to the waitress. Jauntily, she arched her hips, peeked back over her shoulder at her apron strings, flicked one hand loose-wristed at the officer — he laughed aloud — and switched on back to the kitchen, marvelously pleased with herself.

Why? Maybe it was Hettie who asked. Or Mitch Porter, dropping by on the quarter hour to receive, solemnly, their homage. Or Mrs. Mitch, yawning cavernously over her movie magazine. Yes, young Brock was handsome, elegant in his way, but it was easy to see that in a real ball game he just didn't have it. Something vital missing. How would his son — Henry assumed it would be a boy — turn out? Grandpa's genes dominating probably, and that was okay, he'd need some of that raw power, hopefully a touch of his uncle's grace — and on the mother's side? Henry watched her emerge from the ladies' room, handbag clutched front and center. She fired one angry glance Henry's way, then homed for the officer; too much temper and a little baggy in the britches. Have to wait and see. Might be worth twenty more seasons just to find out. A man like Brock Jr., with nothing else to do, could marry; Henry couldn't. That was all. A family, beautiful wife tender and loving, children with their special hurts and happinesses: great comfort, great pleasure. But Henry had chosen the loner's life, the general pain, because… because… he couldn't help himself.

Aw, shee-it now! cracked old Pappy Rooney, bachelor himself but suitor of no pain, except that which served to prove to him he lived still. Some like it, some don't. Rooney pinched the lady's bottom for luck, drew a dark ace in the hole: That's it! he chortled, that's what they're for!

"Henry, if you don't mind my saying so, I, well, I've noticed you've been talking to yourself sort of lately sometimes…"

Henry gazed up at the plump perspiring face of his friend, now anointed with orange sauce. "I've been talking to myself all my life," he said, and crossed his knife and fork on the plate.

The waitress, clearing, stretched out over their table, hips outthrust, full breasts aquiver — wonderful how she did that, excessive but communicative, style all her own. Willie O'Leary tucked a toothpick in his teeth, and lifting his right hand in a benediction upon that bosom, said: "When he stretched forth his hand, the mountains trembled." And, reflexively, they did.

"Oh, you!" the waitress said, cuffing him gently with a damp hand, and O'Leary tweaked a rib. Abdomen muscles flexed, bouncing her back off the table; she grinned, flicked her tail to his view — there was an instant, just time for a pinch, but this was Mitch's, after all, not Jake's, and O'Leary's hand in motion abruptly stopped and its fingers snapped — the waitress flinched, good as the real thing, then giggling to herself, swished kitchenward with dishes.

"Why haven't you never got married, Henry?" Lou asked, cheeks brightly flushed from such proximity to license. Maybe it had been Lou asking all the time.

"I don't know, never thought about it much," Henry lied. "Probably the same reasons you didn't want to."

"Didn't want to!" After big meals, Lou's squeaky voice mellowed. A kind of coo. You could hardly hear it. Lou scrubbed his face with a napkin, pressed forward. "Henry, I'd get married tomorrow, if I knew where to start. You always know how to say the right thing, but me — Henry, I've never even gone, you know, on a, out with a.. " Yes, it was Holly Tibbett, all right, in the flushed and floundering flesh. Up from the ashes, a magical event.

"Shall we start then with the waitress?" O'Leary suggested. Willie was modestly but marvelously drunk, while back of the pillar, Gabe and Frosty and the boys were egging him on. They took Holly up to Molly… He signaled.

"No!" gasped Holly, looking for some place to run, but too full to squeeze out.

O'Leary saw the others splitting their sides, but with effort kept a straight face, which seeing, the approaching waitress grinned at broadly. In on it. In on everything. They took Holly up to Molly/And she said she'd like, by golly/To eat a hot tamale in the shower. . Willie O'Leary lit up one of Holly's cigars, and admiring a navel-high splotch of shrimp sauce on the white face of the moon, said: "Molly, my girl, what can we do, you and I, to relieve a poor lad in direst distress?"

"A lad…?" A little slow; she was.

"Yes, our friend here, the vice-president in charge of talent-testing for All-American Symphonies Consolidated; he's on the quest of a respectable and compassionate — and of course talented — lady companion to go, uh, round die world with him on an unlimited expense account, and who do you think we can find for him?" The brogue was a little rusty, but he saw she liked the music of it.

"Who, ya mean Mr. Engel here?" Molly said. "Ya must be kiddin'!" Slow as they come.

Henry grinned. "Sure, I'm kiddin'," he said. They all knew Holly wherever he went, too — the backside of shyness. O'Leary winked. "He's really the president."

She smiled, rubbing her nose with one hand, stroking her big round butt with the other, looked down on poor Lou, near to tears with shame and desire. Well, that tamale was a folly /For melancholy Holly/Cause that dolly stole his jolly little flower. . "Get me back in time for work Monday?" she asked.

Holly, the crimson flush congealing suddenly into brilliant splotches, giggled hopelessly. The boys, concealed, whooped it up.

"So, what'll it be, boss?" O'Leary asked, and blew smoke on the excited birds that fluttered around them. "Round the world or two lemon sherbets?"

"Same for me!" Holly squeaked, and that made them all laugh.

And coffee," said Henry, shifting to make room in his pant leg for the old rahab who rose and hungered in his lap.

Molly winked gaily at O'Leary and left them. Slow, but a heart of gold, sure as sin.

"Henry! you must be drunk!" Lou gasped, reduced to a hoarse squawk.

"I am feeling pretty good," Henry admitted. Felt light, head swimming a little, shedding his duties like an old skin, rising up… "Glad I came."

Mitch Porter, spying a favored customer in discomfort, bobbed up once more to inquire into their well being and was reassured, but Henry was chastised with a brief suspicious squint, and Molly, too, received ample admonitions. No funny business when she brought the sherbets, but Lou went scarlet again just the same. Henry, watching, realized: why, he loves that girl. Simple as that. How many did Holly love in truth, and which did he, going out with that mushroom that bulged in his brain, dream of? Just one, maybe. It was often like that. The naval officer, Henry observed, had gone, the lady as well. Over their empty booth, ducks rose from a lake in alarm — shot rang out, feathers flew, and that pretty one, head reared: ahh! always glorious. Second-rate ballplayer, slaek-waisted backstop: still glorious. "Let's go to Jake's."

"Where?"

"Bar I know."

The bill appeared, and then Mr. Mitch Porter, kindly assisting with coats. Henry found coins approximating a seventh of the bill, which he lay beside the saucer, but Lou, impulsively, plunged an extra dollar to the pot. The waitress, arriving too late to catch more than a glimpse of the great red-necked seal, fleeing cashierward, her penguin boss in stubby-legged pursuit, still trying to help with die coat, like a mating pair, surprised, trying to run away still hooked up, gathered up the offering with bemused care. "He's a nice man," Henry said.

"He is," said she.

At the cash register, Lou hesitated, dropping bills all over the floor, but Gus Maloney, stoked up, paid. Party's money and none a my own. "More where that came from." Old Gus, one of the great old-timers, and a classic case of the single inscrutable ego rising up to have his own way at all costs. Henry never liked him but he couldn't stop him. He'd even finally grown fond of the corrupt old bastard. Big Daddy Boggier.

They went out, huddled around cigars — Good evening, Mr. Waugh! Good evening, Mr. Engel! Night now! Thanks again! Come again soon! We shall! We shall! — and found the night had chilled a bit. Hot-stove league weather.

"Winter's coming on," Lou remarked.

"Seems like it." Would there be a winter? Probably. He'd want to tie up all loose ends. But why? once it was over, it was over, wasn't it? Well, curiosity. See if Thornton Shad-well made it into the big leagues or not. What Stars and Aces fell and who came up to take their places. Whether or not Swanee Law set those records he was aiming at: ho ho! what a surprise for that big arrogant fart to have history end as soon as he made it! He saw old Swanee's jaw set into the storm: "Ah ain't quittin'!"

"Quitting what, Henry?"

"Nothing, it's a line from a song," Henry alibied. "I was trying to think of it, just remembered it."

"Henry, you listen now, you have to stop that extra work, it's—"

"It's not really work, Lou. It's a game."

"A game?"

"A baseball game I play with dice."

"A baseball game!" Lou mulled that over. "Mmm." Which meant a certain dim light was beginning to dawn. "But then…?" And now the history of the last few weeks. "With dice…" Reflecting on the bloodshot eyes, the office absences. "Is that really what…?"

"Like to see it?"

"Well, I.. sure! I mean, is it something, uh, something two can…?"

"I don't see why not. Why don't you drop over tomorrow night? Pick up a pizza on the way. I've got plenty of beer."

"Sure!" More enthusiasm now. Two could. Yes, this might make it work again. And while Lou was learning it, suppose he had the Knickerbockers.. might give the others just the edge they needed. "Why don't we go to the movies first, and then—"

"Well, no, thanks, Lou. I've got to clean the place up a little." That's right, Lou always went to the movies on Sundays.

"Oh, I don't care how things look, Henry. Come on, we'll—"

"No, I'm not much of a moviegoer, Lou." Had to be careful. Couldn't let it degenerate into nothing more than a social event.

"I, I didn't know you kept up with baseball, Henry, how…?"

"I don't"

"But…?"

"Oh, sometimes I like to read about it. But the real action was over a century ago. It's a bore now."

"You don't go to games, real ones?"

"Not for years now. The first game I saw, Lou, the league's best pitcher that year threw a three-hit shutout. His own team got only four hits, but three were in one inning, and they won, 2-to-0. Fantastic game. And I nearly fell asleep. I kept going back for a while. There were things about the games I liked. The crowds, for example. I felt like I was part of something there, you know, like in church, except it was more real than any church, and I joined in in the score-keeping, the hollering, the eating of hot dogs and drinking of Cokes and beer, and for a while I even had the funny idea that ball stadiums and not European churches were the real American holy places." Formulas for energy configurations where city boys came to see their country origins dramatized, some old lost fabric of unity… act that never quite came off. "But I would leave a game, elbowing out with all the others, and feel a kind of fear that I could so misuse my life; what was the matter with me, that I could spend unhappy hours at a ball park, leave, and yet come back again? Then, a couple days later, at home, I would pick up my scoreboard. Suddenly, what was dead had life, what was wearisome became stirring, beautiful, unbelievably real…"

"But why did you stop…?"

"I found out the scorecards were enough. I didn't need the games."

Lou puffed his cigar and pondered that. "Did you ever want to be, you know, like a ballplayer, Henry?"

"I don't think so. Oh, sometimes I wished I could do something heroic, something tremendous and legendary, a testing of lie very limits of the record systems, something that gave the sportswriters heart attacks at the very contemplation of what was happening. But, no, I never wanted to be just an ordinary ballplayer, stooping for grounders and waiting out bad balls. I never even wanted to be a manager. Of course, being manager of every team in the league at once, that might not be so bad."

"Oh, I don't think they'd let you, Henry."

"No, you're right," Henry smiled, "they probably wouldn't let me. Here we are."

Lou squinted at the neon light. "Pete's. I thought you said Jake's."

"Goes by both names."

"Evening, Mr. Waugh."

"Evening, Jake." Hettie over there with some guy. Too late. Too damn late. At the bar, he said: "My friend Lou Engel, Pete."

"Always pleased," said Pete, and Lou agreed.

"Usual for me, Jake," Henry said, though the night fell short of the celebrative. Still, a great meal like that…

Pete reached for the bottle, and Lou, seeing it, nodded a second. Pete seemed more reserved tonight than usual. Well, no doubt for good reason. Hettie, too, had cast a suspicious glance his way. The guy she was with was a younger man, but not all that young. Fortyish. Seedy. Ruddy. Farmer type. But younger all the same, admit it. Age. It got them all. Began at thirty, a little slower, harder to steal, harder to stretch that long ball into a triple. Injuries tended to be more serious. A little slower afoot out in the field. The slowdown accelerated at thirty-five. All of it worked into the charts. It was something the players had to live with. Some of them understood it, accepted it, developed sinkers and sliders as their fast ball slowed, learned new positions, later became coaches, managers, even club owners, as they aged. Others fought against it, kept trying to act the bright young star. Frosty Young was like that. Usually made the end, when it came, as it always did, more grotesque. Frosty finally fractured a hip trying to steal one base too many, five years too late. He later became an umpire, a good one, but he still carried a bitter chip around, as though somehow he'd been particularly and uniquely condemned to grow old. That kind of romantic sourness tended to rub Henry the wrong way, but he understood it. In fact, some wonderful league personalities needed this excess to complete their characters. What would the UBA be if they were all Brock Rutherfords or Jake Bradleys?

Jake now dropped by to fill them up again, and Henry said: "I don't remember much of what happened the other night, Pete, but I hope I didn't make too big a fool of myself."

"Oh no, Mr. Waugh," said Pete, but his face was momentarily darkened by what could only have been a grim remembrance of it. "We all have to go on a bender from time to time." He hesitated, then smiled. "Enjoyed that song about what's-his-name with the long, you know…"

"Long Lew and Fanny. Was I singing?"

"Oh yes." Again he smiled, winked at Lou. "More or less."

They all laughed together, though Lou clearly had only the merest inkling as to what it was all about, and that inkling was enough to make him give Henry a funny look. Well, now it would be forgotten, Henry supposed. After all, as best he could figure, he'd dropped over a hundred dollars in here that night, so Pete couldn't be too sore about it.

One of Jake's cats curled by Hettie's leg, and she reached down to stroke it. Her suitor leaned away, focusing badly, signaled for another round. A fire-red tie, pinked cheeks, ruby nose, and sparse red hair on a freckly pate made him look like he was about to boil over. Then, as though pulled by some magnetic force, they drew together again, hands in each other's thighs.

Who could do it for him? O'Leary maybe. Or young Thornton Shadwell; still a virgin probably. Or Mighty Mel, the Terrible Truncheon. No, Trench was having a bad time, probably worrying too much to get it up. Flenched Trench. Henry stared into his snifter, saw the bar and all its people squeezed into its amber sphere, lights ablaze on it, and he himself — he looked away. How about Hamilton Craft? Big rebound, must be feeling good. Or maybe. . "Would you like to go with that one over there?"

Jolted Lou at least six inches off his barstool. "Not so loud, Henry!" he choked.

"How about it?"

Lou didn't even look, just stuck his nose in his snifter. "Not, uh, not my type, I guess."

"Not your type! Why, she's everybody's type, Lou!"

Lou sipped cognac oppressedly.

"Then you don't mind if I…?"

"Oh no, no!" Lou squeaked. "Don't mind me!"

The suitor, withdrawing momentarily from her valleys, pitched around and weaved away, heaved hotly past them, bruised a table, and disappeared through a door in the rear. Sack in the back. No, not here, not really, just a font or two; Pete didn't care for the subtler needs.

"Evenin', ma'am! Whatcha say we git us up a bawl game!"

"Henry! Ssshh! Cantcha see I'm busy?"

"Ain't no batter up there, baby. He cain't even find you!"

"Maybe not, but it's you he'd better not find here when he comes back, or he'll pop a rib!"

"Aw, he kin wait. Put him off till tuhmorra, baby. Ah need you tonight!"

She softened, trying to figure his pitch. "That boy come back from the dead, Henry?"

He winced, but was able to bang in there. "More'n one pitcher in this here bawl game, lady." He unfolded a handful of twenties to widen her sleepy eyes, but it was her knees opened apart instead.

"Well, let's get out before he comes back," Hettie hissed.

Henry nodded a farewell to Lou. "Tomorrow night."

He shouldered out behind her, feeling good and mean. Earthy. Crude, in fact Won't be the same, he realized. No magic. But it had its good side. Right to the point, no fancy stuff. In and out, high and low. Just rear back and burn it in.