"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 bo
y 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.
NOT once, in the Universal Baseball Association's fifty-six long seasons of play, had its proprietor plunged so close to self-disgust, felt so much like giving it up, a life misused, an old man playing with a child's toy; he felt somehow like an adolescent caught masturbating. Year LVI, in spite of its new crop of rookies, in spite of the excitement of a new team's imminent rise to power, in spite of the records being set and the giants being toppled and that boy being killed, was a complete bore. Or so it seemed as he stared out his kitchen window on a world going to winter that Sunday afternoon. Lou was coming soon. He was afraid, but he was glad, too. Lou could save it. Or him from the game. He felt waterlogged with it. He'd played too much, too hard, since Damon died. Have to ease up. He considered writing in the Book for a while, but the weariness of it paralyzed him. So he just stood and stared.
Bad start that morning. Awake to a bed full of Hettie's odors, broken dreams about a zoo or a circus or something, all too pertinent. 'That Swanee's really a good old guy," she said, getting up with an old lady's grunt, then commenced a whinnying laugh that mutated into a phlegmy cough. But he didn't feel like Swanee Law, felt more like old Woody Winthrop, senile and gravebent, or luckless Mel Trench, down in the cellar and fat in the head. Hettie padded out and into the bathroom. She'd be in there a while, he knew, so he allowed himself to doze off again. Dreamt he was in some far-off impossible place. Italy, maybe. Or Spain. It seemed like he'd been telling Lou about Hettie, how good she was, the old brag, but now they were only admiring the countryside. Soft rolling hills, vineyards, wooded valleys, blue river trickling by, stone farmhouses, almond trees in blossom. You're only kidding yourself, somebody said, didn't seem to be Lou, but might have been. Anyway, he ignored it. Distantly, a mule hitched to a two-wheeled cart creaked up a hillside, a man walking beside. It was steep, and sometimes the mule slipped backwards or stopped altogether. Then Henry and whoever was with him, if somebody still was, were helping to push. It was hard work and they were getting nowhere. If only I had an ass, the farmer said. It was true, there wasn't any animal, he'd been mistaken. If you can't find one, Henry told him, make one. He'd meant it as a dirty joke, but the man didn't get it, just stared at him blankly. Henry tried to explain, he changed it to: Did you say an ass or some ass? but there was no communication. Language problem. He felt crude and stupid, like a beast himself. A great weight pressed down on him and he was thinking, as Hettie reached under the blankets to pinch his butt a lot harder than she needed to, that today would be the hardest day of all.
He dressed and went out for sweet rolls, while Hettie made coffee. Returning, he opened the door just in time to catch her in the middle of an enormous bovine yawn, soft neck flesh folded and teeth showing their gaps. Her face wrinkled into the agony of suppressing it, and she asked: "Cold out?"
He yawned himself, unable to hold back the reflex, and replied: "Pretty cold."
Sometimes she made the bed of a morning and straightened up the room a bit, but a glance in there showed him only the rude disorder of old. He heard himself asking himself: why won't someone help? She poked sleepily into the package he'd brought, and said: "They look good." She shoved back the papers on the kitchen table and put the rolls there.
"Careful! My work...!"
"Just a corner, Henry."
They sat there at the cleared corner, taking rolls and coffee, used to each other and therefore comfortable, but not especially cheered by the other's presence. Conversation openings occurred to him. He projected them out. Some would lead back to the bed, some to the door, some just in circles. On occasion, his eye fell on the Association and he felt depressed, not so much by Hettie's thoughtless rumple of it, as by the dishevel his own haste yesterday had created. Take a good while to get it all straightened out. Couple weeks just to get the data posted. More work than it was worth.
"I think I'll go to church," Hettie announced.
"Which one do you go to?" he asked, hardly caring.
"Don't matter. First one I come to." She sighed, spraying crumbs.
"Absolve your sins?" he asked, feeling a little contentious, but meaning no sarcasm.
"Sins? No, I ain't got any feelings about that," she said. "I just want a place where I can go and mope in company without bothering nobody." She stared glumly into her coffee at the brown reflection of herself. "Let's face it, I'm getting old and ugly, Henry."
"Listen, Hettie," he said. He dug in the billfold, found another twenty. "Here. Go buy a new hat or something. Flowers on it"
"Flowers are for spring," she argued.
"Well, old dry leaves then. Anything. A new girdle or some fancy drawers, I don't care. I just want to see you happy."
She smiled, patted his hand gently. "Ain't that easy," she said. "But thanks, Henry. That's nice." She tucked the bill in her handbag. Putting the bag back on the table, her eyes fell on the dice. She stared at them quizzically. She glanced up at the Team Standings Board, at the bronze Hall of Fame plaques, at the bookshelves, adding machine, heap of papers full of names on the table. "What's these for? You a gambler, Henry?"
"Sort of." Caught him by surprise.
"I don't get it. Whadda dice got to do with your work?"
"Well, in a way," he said recklessly, "they're my employer." He realized his hands were sweating.
"I still don't get it." She turned an inquisitive head-tilted pressed-lips stare on him.
He sighed. "It's a game, Hettie. The baseball—not a real job in the plain sense."
She blinked. And then she laughed. Opened her baggy jaws and whooped. "A game!" She looked back at the table, a light dawning. "You mean...? Then that's...! Hey!" She jumped up to paw heedlessly through the papers. "I'll bet old what's his name, Swanee's here, ain't he?" She cackled, rummaging and clawing. "Lookit these names! We can have a orgy, Henry!" Her laughter tore clean through him. She turned on him and tweaked his nose: "Henry, you're a complete nut!'* Laughing, grinning, she looked down on him, sighed. "But you're awful sweet, just the same." She leaned down and deposited a spongy sour-sweet kiss on his forehead.
He watched her pull her wraps on, unable to rise from his chair. "Come on!" she laughed. "Don't take it so hard, I'm only kiddin'!" She tongued a wad of sweet roll out of one of the gaps in her teeth and, standing in her coat, took a final sip of coffee. "Anyway, who ain't crazy? I sure ain't got no sense!" She stared out the window, preparing herself, men turned back to him. "Listen, ain't every man can still please a woman old as you are, Henry." Everything she said was wrong. Just, maybe, but merciless. All he could do was sit there, dumbly taking it. Now she paused thoughtfully, then dredged up from last night's blowzy doubleheader to drop horribly in the morning kitchen: "Ah'm pitchin' to ya, baby!" And, head thrown back, yakyakked doorward.
When she realized he wasn't following her, she turned. "Come on, Henry, say good-bye." He only stared. Ugly and old. She was. They were. Her smile faded. "Don't be a sorehead. We had a good time, didn't we? I don't wanna leave without ..." She meant the benedictive slap on her bottom. She always thanked him for it, said if a man didn't give her one on the way out, she always felt somehow she'd failed. "Henry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . ." He shook his head. Suddenly, astonishingly, she burst into tears. "Ah, go to hell, you loony bastard!" she cried. She dug agitatedly in her purse, pulled out his money, and, hands shaking, threw it into the room, then, still bawling, slammed out the door and down the stairs. He heard her
heels smacking down the wooden stairs and scrape-clicking out into the world, and for a long time he just sat there.
Then, mechanically, he cleared the breakfast away, reordered all the papers, and began, once more, to play the game. Now, at sunset, it was four full series, twelve days of play, forty-eight ball games later. He didn't remember the scores or who had played. He knew the Knickerbockers had lost every game but the first one, he'd seen to that, but the rest of it was just so many throws of the dice. He was destroying the Association, he knew that now. He'd kept no records, hadn't even logged a single entry in the Book. Didn't know if all the players had their required at-bats or innings-pitched, didn't know who was hitting and who wasn't, didn't know if any pitchers were running over the legal limit of innings-pitched, didn't even give a damn who was winning the pennant. He'd been obsessed with a single idea: to bring Casey and the Knicks to their knees, see them drop behind the Pioneers in the standings, if only for a day. But, in mocking irony, the more he crushed the Knicks, the more the Pioneers fell away. He tried to reach them, Bancroft especially, tried to find out what was the matter, but it was strangely as though they were running from him, afraid of his plan, seeing it for what it was: the stupid mania of a sentimental old fool. And now they'd run as far as they could run ...
Bump up against the door! "Henry!" Suddenly afraid: a mistake! "It's hot, Henry!" Wkump whump!
Take it easy, he cautioned himself, but his heart was beating wildly when he opened the door. Lou plummeted into the room bearing garlicky perfumes and a great disk of wrapped pizza. "It's dripping!" he cried and made for the kitchen table.
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop Page 16