The coffee was done, so he poured himself a cup, returned now to the table to post the day's batting statistics. These charts were larger, had room for a full roster of twenty-one players (pitchers had batting averages, too, of course, and a couple of pitchers in UBA history had, in spite of the odds against them, hit their way into Star categories and become right fielders in the course of time), contained such information as Games Played, At Bats, Runs, Hits, Doubles, Triples, Home Runs,
Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, and so on, with special columns to record Injuries, as well as Most Valuable Player points, awarded after each game. Room, too, for end-of-season Batting and Slugging Averages. As for injuries, these occurred with a dice roll of 3-3-3 on all nine of the basic charts; the dice were then thrown again to obtain the details of it from the special Injuries Chart, which included everything from a hit batsman who, uninjured, took his base, to multiple injuries that sometimes kept ballplayers out of the line-up for several games, or even the season. It was every manager's headache and it was probably the worst way to lose a pennant, to have your Ace nursing a chip in his elbow or your Stars hobbling around in casts, but it was a crucial part of the whole game, and though Henry always felt a twinge of remorse when it happened, he was pleased with that detail in his system.
Finally, the dullest job — recording of fielding statistics. The trouble was, all these averages stayed pretty much the same, and worth was a hard thing to judge by them. Incompetent ballplayers just didn't make it up to the big leagues in the first place, and as for the competent ones, a couple percentage points here or there didn't tell much of a story. He had managed to bring a little color and pattern to them with small subtleties worked in over the years, such that brilliant fielders took more chances, made fewer errors, had a better chance of throwing out base runners from the outfield or setting up double plays, but except for a handful of unusually flashy glovemen, he couldn't keep his mind on it. He had thought of giving them up altogether, they took a lot of time and didn't seem worth it, but there were all those fielding records already established, and what would they mean if they had no challengers? Besides, it was, as Sandy Shaw knew, the third part of the game: "… Pitchin', catchin', swingin', out on the field all day!" So he had stayed loyal even to this, the most wearying part of his game.
This done, the posting of all statistics from the day's play, Henry turned to the job he enjoyed most — writing it up in the Book. He'd begun the logs in Year IX, feeling the need by then to take counsel with himself, though even before that, he had been writing up uncommonly exciting moments on loose sheets of typing paper (glad he did; these later got bound in). Now it consisted of some forty volumes, kept in shelves built into the kitchen wall, along with the permanent record books, league financial ledgers, and the loose-leaf notebooks of running life histories. He seemed to find more to write about, the more he played the game, and he foresaw the day when the number of archive volumes would pass the number of league years. He always used a standard-size record book, three hundred pages, good rag content for durability; he kept a shorthand point on his fountain pen and never used anything but permanent black ink, except when he underlined or boxed in extraordinary incidents or insights in a draughtsman's red ink. On the title page of each volume were the volume number and these words:
Official Archives
THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION
J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
Into the Book went the whole UBA, everything from statistics to journalistic dispatches, from seasonal analyses to general baseball theory. Everything, in short, worth keeping. Style varied from the extreme economy of factual data to the overblown idiom of the sportswriter, from the scientific objectivity of the theoreticians to the literary speculations of essayists and anecdotalists. There were tape-recorded dialogues, player contributions, election coverage, obituaries, satires, prophecies, scandals. It provided a kind of league's-eye view, since functional details of the game were never mentioned— team analyses, for example, never referred to Stars and Aces except metaphorically, and, intentionally, erred slightly. His own shifting moods, often affected by events in the league, also colored the reports, oscillating between notions of grandeur and irony, exultation and despair, enthusiasm and indifference, amusement and weariness. Lately, he had noticed a tendency toward melancholy and sentimentality. He hoped he'd get over it soon. Maybe he could do a piece on next year's upcoming rookies, boys like Copper Greene and Thornton Shad-well and Whistlestop Busby, something to spring his mind forward. He often did that: forcibly reversed his mood by a story inappropriate to it. Like the time, following a siege of minor illnesses which had left him in a deep gloom, when he had told the story of Long Lew Lydell's rape of Old Fennimore McCaffree's spinster daughter in the Knickerbocker dugout in front of five thousand wide-eyed spectators. Lew married the girl eventually, under political pressure, since the Legalist Party, which McCaffree headed up, could abide no scandals, and, so they say, he was even tamed, though whether by Fanny or by his own political ambitions, it was hard to say. Henry smiled, remembering. Sandy had a song about it…
. . For believe it or not,
Though Long Lew had a lot,
Fanny had never had any!
Might have started a new Association pre-game warm-up ritual, if they hadn't threatened Long Lew with expulsion from the league. Poor Fennimore! A lesser man would have sunk away into the earth. But not Old Fenn: here he was now the Association Chancellor and his son-in-law was a party bigwig. New elections coming up this winter, but it looked like McCaffree would be reelected. Raped daughter or no.
Henry spread open the current volume of the Book, read over the previous entry, considered this one. He wrote out a few possible lead sentences on scratch paper, but none appealed to him. He stood, poured himself another cup of coffee, carried it back to the table and stood there, staring down at the open Book. He rarely copied box scores into the Book, since they all got kept in each year's manila folders, but today it seemed the right thing to do. All those zeros! He decided for the zeros he'd use red ink. Zero: the absence of number, an incredible idea! Only infinity compared to it, and no batter could hit an infinite number of home runs — no, in a way, the pitchers had it better. Perfection was available to them.
Damon Rutherford. Rutherford. Henry was sitting now, gazing through the steam off his coffee toward the League Standings Board. He recalled that vision of the boy, standing there on the mound, one out from immortality, and not one twitch or flicker. He saw the women screaming, offering themselves up, watched the surge of adoring masses, saw Damon pitch the ball out to that little kid. Who was that boy? Someday they'd probably all find out. The reporters tried to interview Damon directly, of course, but he told them he had nothing really to say. Was he excited about what he'd done? Yes. I mean, really excited? Yes. What was the secret of his success? No secret. But that pitch — how was it…? what did he do…? Nothing, just threw it. Hey, Damon, what did Ingram say when he came out to the mound? Nothing much, just helped me relax. Helped you relax! Laughter around. Damon smiled. Say, I guess your Daddy's proud, hunh? I hope so. Did he come to see you pitch? Yes. What did he tell you afterwards? Good game.