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

by Robert Coover

  "Lou, wait a minute! I just rolled a home run—"

  "We can finish it next week, Henry."

  "Next week! I'll be into the next season by next week!" he cried.

  "Henry, remember what Mr. Zifferblatt—"

  "Oh, to hell with Zifferblatt, Lou! Listen, I just rolled a triple six. That moves the game to the special Stress Chart!"

  "Well, that's nice, Henry, but—"

  "That only happens twice in every three games, Lou! Don't you see? Anything can happen now! Come on, play out this inning anyway."

  "Aw, Henry . . ." he whined, but he came over.

  Henry flung the dice: "Hah!" he bawled at them. But all they gave him was a 2-6-6, a lot less than he'd hoped for.

  Lou yawned: "Hee-oooff!" and slapped his hat to the table —bop! the beer can somersaulted and rolled, bubbling out over charts and scoresheets and open logbooks and rosters and records—

  "Lou!" screamed Henry. He leaped for the towel, but Lou,

  in shock and drunkenness, stood up suddenly, and they collided. "You clumsy goddamn idiot!" Henry cried, and shoved around him. He snapped up the towel, turned back to the table to find Lou there, dabbing pathetically at the inundation with a corner of his handkerchief.

  "I'm sorry, Henry," he mumbled tearily.

  "Just get outa the way!" Henry shouted. He toweled up the beer as fast as he could, but everywhere he looked ink was swimming on soaked paper. Oh my God! He separated sheets, carried them into his room and spread them out on the bed. At some point, he heard the door close, Lou's heavy footfalls descending the stairs. When he'd got up the worst of it, he sank into his chair, stared at the mess that was his Association. The Pioneer-Knickerbocker game lay before him, damp but still legible. It's all over, he realized miserably, finished. The Universal Baseball Association, proprietor left for parts unknown. A shudder raked through him as he sighed, and he felt ill. He propped his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and leaned his head against them. Great moments from the past came floating to mind, mighty old-timers took their swings and fabulous aces reared back and sizzled them in; he saw Marsh Williams belting them out of the park and flashy Verne Mackenzie and Fancy Dan the Keystones' Man, watched Jumpin' Joe Gallagher go hurling himself up against the ivied wall in center and shy Sycamore Flynn making impossible leaping snags of line drives, saw the great Pioneers drive for flag after flag and watched the wind-ups of Sandy Shaw and Tim Shadwell and old Brock and Edgar Bath, and there was the great Cash Bailey cracking the .400 barrier and Hellborn Melbourne Trench socking them out of sight, Uncle Joe Shannon, and Wally Wickersham, and Tuck Wilson, and Winslow Beaver, and Hamilton Craft. . . and Damon Rutherford. Finally came down to that, didn't it? All week, he'd been pushing it back any way he could, but it just couldn't be done. Damon Rutherford. He wiped his eyes with the beery towel, stared down at the game on the table. That was what did it, it was just a little too much, one idea too many, and it wrecked the whole league. He stood, turned his back on it, feeling old and wasted. Should he keep it around, or ... ? No, better to burn it, once and for all, records, rules, Books, everything. If that stuff was lying around, he'd never really feel free of it. He found a paper shopping bag under the sink, gathered up a stack of scoresheets and dumped them in, reached for that of the night's game. He saw the dice, still reading 2-6-6, and—almost instinctively—reached forward and tipped the two over to a third six. Gave York and Wilson back-to-back homers and moved the game over to the Extraordinary Occurrences Chart. Easy as that.

  He smiled wryly, savoring the irony of it. Might save the game at that. How would they see it? Pretty peculiar. He trembled. Chill. Felt his forehead. Didn't seem hot. Clammy, if anything. No, it's too crazy. He reached again for the night's scoresheet, but again hesitated. The three sixes stared up at him like thick little towns. Who was up next? The catcher Royce Ingram. Damon's battery mate. Poetic. Indeed. He snorted, amused by it in spite of himself. He sat down. Of course, he could throw triple ones again, and Casey'd have two notches on his throwing arm. He wasn't really thinking about the bean ball though. Now, his eye was on the bottom line of that chart:

  6-6-6: Pitcher struck fatally by line drive through

  box; batter safe on first; runners advance one.

  He penned in York's and Wilson's home runs on the score-sheet, watched Royce Ingram pick out a bat and stride menacingly to the plate. Now, stop and think, he cautioned himself. Do you really want to save it? Wouldn't it be better just to drop it now, bum it, go on to something else, get working regularly again, back into the swing of things, see movies, maybe copyright that Intermonop game and try to market it, or do some traveling, read books...

  He stood, paced the kitchen idly, feeling lightheaded. Yes, if you killed that boy out there, then you couldn't quit, could you? No, that's a real commitment, you'd be hung up for good, they wouldn't let you go. Who wouldn't? aren't you forgetting—never mind, never mind. He was growing dizzy, contemplating the consequences. He decided to forget it for tonight, go to bed, make up his mind tomorrow. But on his bed, he found the Association all spread out like defenders of the gates ... oh yes, the spilt beer. He stacked them up, but didn't throw them in the bag, left them neatly on the table. Anything could happen still.

  He undressed, crawled into bed in his underwear, too woozy to change into pajamas or brush his teeth. But in bed he felt worse than ever and he couldn't get to sleep. He kept seeing Jock Casey, waiting there on the mound. Why waiting? Who for? Patient. Yes, give him credit, he was. Enduring. And you had to admit: Casey played the game, heart and soul. Played it like nobody had ever played it before. He circled round the man, viewing him from all angles. Lean, serious, melancholy even. And alone. Yes, above all: alone. Stands packed with people, but faceless, just multicolored shirts. Field full of players, but no faces there either. Just a scene, sandy diamond, green grass, ballplayers under the sun, stadium of fans, umpires, and Casey in the middle. Sometimes Casey glanced up at him—only a glance, split-second, pain, a pleading—but mostly he watched the batter Ingram. Get to sleep. There'll be time tomorrow. And a fresh mood. But he couldn't sleep. Casey waiting there ... But he was too sick to rise. Just can't —but still Casey waited, and his glance: come on, get it over, only way, and still Ingram swung his bat, and still Chauncey O'Shea crouched, and still the stands kept their awesome silence. "Somebody—!" Henry gasped. Sycamore Flynn broke it, yes, he walked to the mound. But he didn't say anything either. Just a faint jerk of the head, asking the question. Casey shaking his head and Flynn going back. A terrible silence. And Casey looking—

  Henry got up. He stumbled to the kitchen in his shorts. He picked up the dice, shook them. "I'm sorry, boy," he whispered, and then, holding the dice in his left palm, he set them down carefully with his right. One by one. Six. Six. Six. A sudden spasm convulsed him with the impact of a smashing line drive and he sprayed a red-and-golden rainbow arc of half-curded pizza over his Association, but he managed to get to the sink with most of it. And when he'd done with his vomiting, when he'd finished, he went to bed and there slept a deep deep sleep.

  STRANGE how that season ended. Some blamed it on the heat, some on the humidity, but they all knew better. Players hit balls, moved around bases, caught flies, but as though at rest, static participants in an ancient yet transformed ritual. Journalists quit writing, just watched. Nobody interviewed anybody. No one sought autographs and no women shrieked or fainted at the feet of heroes. McCaffree swiveled in silence, Wmthrop silent. Umpires jerked thumbs or spread their hands, but no one complained. Good pitchers threw strikes, bad ones gave up hits to good hitters, while bad hitters went hitless. Boys watched grimly, older than old men, and old men hardly watched at all, just closed their eyes and nodded, nodded. Even Pappy Rooney, waterlogged in his own sweat, wrapped a towel around his bony old shoulders and sank back on the Haymaker bench, accepting, accepting, come what may. Sycamore Flynn and the Knickerbocker club-owners went to see Chancellor McCaffree about forfeiting the rest of the
schedule. Nobody stood in their way now, but they couldn't seem to win. Just too much, Fenn. McCaffree understood, strange, yes, but what do we know about it all, Sycamore? Do your part, play the game, play it out. So they did and dropped the last nine games in a row. Contrarily, Barney Bancroft's Pioneers, as though released from some inexplicable burden, began to win. Barney ceased all subterfuge, called his plays open-handed, other teams knew perfectly well what was on— and still everything seemed to work. Nothing flashy: he just got men on base and brought them in, while his fielders and pitchers routinely retired the opposition.

  The team with the most Stars and Aces, the Pastimers, won the pennant. The final three-game series found the second-place Haymakers, trailing by two games, in the Patsies' ballpark. Rooney, old trouper, stood up, tried gamely to get some life into his boys, but they'd been driven to play over their heads too long, they just collapsed, lost the first game and thus the pennant, so Pappy sank back again. Swanee Law finally did win another game, though, last one of the season, his twentieth, striking out his 303rd man, fifth best mark in UBA history—wonderful, but few cheered, not even when he got named Most Valuable Player. The Pioneers took three at the end from the Keystones to wind up in third, while the Knicks lost all theirs to sink to the cellar. Final Year LVI standings:

  So: into blue season. Time to bring all the records up to date, summarize the year's play, plan for the future. It was, in a sense, the static part of the game, this between-seasons activity, but it was activity all the same, and in some ways more intense than the ball games themselves, a concentrated meditative concern with history, development, and equilibria. Especially this one. He'd let things slide the last half of the season, had a lot of catching up to do. But more than that, it was simply a season that would demand a lot more thought than usual. Already, it seemed incredible to him that it had all happened.

  He wanted some way to mark it, some special event, down there in the Association. Fenn was thinking, the old-timers, too, and the Council of Elders, but nothing yet. Of course, they'd already named both Damon Rutherford and Jock Casey to the Hall of Fame, joining the twenty-six other great all-time stars—including Damon's father and Jock's great-grandfather —but it didn't seem to be enough. He'd considered a UBA anthem, a monument, maybe a violent change in the playing rules, even a revolution, led by Patrick Monday perhaps, a revolt that would establish, ultimately, a rival league. He'd always wanted some kind of World Series, but on the other hand an entire new league would mean a terrific slowdown in the seasons. Going full time, it already took him two whole months to get a season played and logged, and if anything, he needed ways to speed it up. Another possibility was to imitate the majors and create a ten-team league, but for one thing it upset the record books (seasons would have to be six games longer), and for another it seemed somehow central to the game to maintain the balance provided by any power of two. To say a team finished in "first division" implied the possibility of further divisions, but a five-team division couldn't be further divided. Moreover, seven—the number of opponents each team now had—was central to baseball. Of course, nine, as the square of three, was also important: nine innings, nine players, three strikes each for three batters each inning, and so on, but even in the majors there were complaints about ten-team leagues, and back earlier in the century, when they'd tried to promote a nine-game World Series in place of the traditional best-out-of-seven, the idea had failed to catch on. Maybe it all went back to the days when games were decided, not by the best score in nine innings, but by the first team to score twenty-one runs ... three times seven. Now there were seven fielders, three in the outfield and four in the infield, plus the isolate genius on the mound and the team playmaker and unifier behind the plate; seven pitches, three strikes and four balls; three basic activities—pitching, hitting, and fielding—performed around four bases (Hettie had invented her own magic version, stretching out as the field, left hand as first base ...). In the UBA, each team played its seven opponents twelve times each, and though games lasted nine innings, they got turned on in the seventh with the ritual mid-inning stretch. Well, he'd think of something, record Sandy's songs maybe, order a commemorative painting, he'd find a project, there was time, and meanwhile, ahead of him lay the winter player trades and contracts, the announcing of the new crop of Year LVII Rookies, balancing of the club financial ledgers, individual team elections and awards, plus this season the UBA-wide elections for Chancellor, reorganization of managerial and coaching staffs, death rolls, essays and obituaries and forecasts for the Book, as well as the traditional blue season basketball and bowling leagues, ice hockey, billiards, and auto racing, and in the spring, the UBA Golf Open, tennis, and the annual Olympiad. Maybe even another pinball toumey. Some of these sports were limited to active team players, but most were open to veterans as well. Helped bring them all together once a year. Big Bill McGonagil, for example, was a perennial contender on the golf links, though now in his fifties, and Willie O'Leary had long been the undisputed billiards king. Chin-Chin Chickering, who'd failed as a Bean-eater shortstop, was making it big as a basketball center, while Brock Rutherford Jr. had taken up car racing. These other games were enjoyable, usually fast and full of action, played off in an hour or two, but ultimately simplistic, shallow, no competition for the baseball league. Relaxations only. Exercise, too, since he played out the bowling tourneys and billiard matches on real alleys and tables.

  His immediate task, though, was the compilation of all season LVI statistics, and this he'd pretty largely accomplished by the time Benny Diskin brought up sandwiches and blue-season supplies about sundown, at least well enough to know that the Patsies' Bo McBean had won the batting title, that Damon Rutherford's ERA at the time of his death was far and away the best in the league, that his teammate Witness York had hit the most home runs and had the highest slugging average, and that Swanee Law led in games pitched, complete games, games won, shutouts, strikeouts, and had the second-best ERA. As usual, a number of the LVI Stars slipped below the line. The one that troubled Henry most was Pioneer catcher Royce Ingram, Damon's courageous battery mate and the man swinging when Casey got killed: he wound up with a .284, twenty-sixth among hitters and thus just out of the twenty-four man Star grouping for LVII. Of course, he could make a comeback next year; Henry hoped he would. But maybe it was worse than that. The instrument. Watching Damon, he missed Casey; watching Casey, Ingram ... where would it end?

  Before posting all the statistics in the permanent records, of course, he'd have to run a complete audit of all box scores and computations—couldn't risk mistakes, it was the one thing that frightened him—but he had enough now to pass out the MVP award to Law, the Rookie-of-the-Year posthumously to Damon Rutherford, and the Manager-of-the-Year prize to the Haymakers' Rag Rooney, his third time to win it, and to name the UBA All-Stars, the dream team of LVI . . .

  First Base: Virgil (Virgin) Donovan, Pastime Qub

  Second Base: Kester Flint, Keystones

  Shortstop: Bo McBean, Pastime Club

  Third Base: Hatrack Hines, Pioneers

  Left Field: Bartholomew Egan, Beaneaters

  Center Field: Witness York, Pioneers

  Right Field: Walt McCamish, Knickerbockers

  Catcher: Bingham Hill, Haymakers

  Pitcher: Swanee Law, Haymakers

  Pitcher: Damon Rutherford, Pioneers

  Manager: Raglan (Pappy) Rooney, Haymakers

  When Benny Diskin brought up the sandwiches, along with a couple of cans of good coffee, a box of cigars, a few six-packs of beer, sour pickles and a carton of slaw, crackers, a thick slab of rich cheese, bacon and dry sausages, and a couple quarts of orange juice (Seabrooke Farms . . . Seabrooke Orange... Seabrooke Bacon... Stogie Seabrooke... hmmm, yes, Stogie Seabrooke, could be, catcher maybe), he wanted to know if Mr. Waugh was on vacation or something. Miss one day of work and old man Diskin began to worry about the rent. Henry gave Benny a fifty-cent tip to go out and buy him a bottle of brandy, and said nothing
about getting fired. Summer, spring, or winter, blue-season was hot-stove-league weather for Henry, and so he always drank hot grogs. Yeah, I'm all washed up, boys, I got the axe, I got the aches...

  Henry had been dragged out of a deep and peaceful sleep a little before noon by the telephone. He'd been dreaming, something to do with Fanny Lydell nee McCaffree, she'd been thanking him for something, he couldn't remember what, probably not important what, and he'd awakened to the ringing of bells. It wasn't Fanny, though, it was Lou Engel, calling on behalf of DZ&Z to say, in effect, he'd done all he could, nothing more to be done; hang up your cleats. "But what I, why I called, Henry, is, well, Mr. Zifferblatt here found these, uh, papers in your desk, with funny, you know, like names and things on them..."

  "That's a horseracing game, Lou. You'll also find a couple dice there—"

  "Unh-hunh. Well, we, uh, he found those, all right. But what he wants to know, why he asked me to call you, is what do you wantbim to do with them?"

  Henry yawned. "Is he there beside you, Lou?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, tell him, if he wants to know where to put them, to look in the folder marked DERBY, year—or I mean page number forty-nine, top horse on the list."