"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.
6
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.