Up on the Scoreboard someone toted up a strike. Giggling sounded from the dugout, and the outfielders slowly started trotting in. Babe beamed and armed himself with another baseball.
"Don't let it get to you, Wolf." Jimmy's voice soothed some of my embarrassment as I tightened my grip on the bat. "Just relax. When you see the first line, take a cut. You'll get a piece of it. The helmet is tough for all of us."
"Yeah, but you get paid to do this."
Babe's second pitch came in and I knew I'd seen that track before. I stepped into the ball, but I didn't quite manage to get all of my bat on the carbon-copy pitch. My hit popped straight up, then shot back down as the ball ricocheted from the cage's steel skeleton. I jumped back and dodged it.
More laughter from the dugout started my cheeks burning anew. A second strike appeared on the score-board and someone triggered a computer graphic showing a cartoon figure swinging and missing bigtime. One of the pitchers flopped over onto his back as the breeze from my cut reached him.
You do not have to tolerate this, Long Tooth,the Old One snarled in my head.Let me give you my quickness and strength. Then you will show them.
I shook my head. Ringing the practice field, four watcher spirits monitored the area for magic. For me to invoke the Wolf spirit in a real game would result in my being ejected from the league forever. Here, in practice, it would attract unwanted attention, and it had been agreed upon earlier that such a thing was not a good idea.
I held my hand out to Babe and backed out of the batter's box. "Ever have a desire to burn one down the third-base line into those clowns?"
Jimmy chuckled under his breath. "Yeah, back in double-A when I was starting out. Pitchers can be hell on you because they're out in the bullpen without adult supervision most of the time."
"I know. When I was out there earlier they were teaching me how to spit." "Now there's a skill for the Fifth World." Jimmy hooked his fingers through the netting on the cage. "What would you do if Babe was shooting a gun at you?"
"I'd shoot him back."
"Same dif here, only the bullet is bigger and you're sharing it with him."
"Gotcha." I reached up and turned the helmet off. "I think I'm set now."
"Go get 'em." Jimmy waved at the outfielders to back up. "Longball hitter stepping up, boys. Get on your horses."
Babe wound up and delivered a solid fastball. It came straight down the pipe and I swung all the way through the ball. I was late on the swing, so the ball hooked out into foul territory, but it was a long way out in foul territory. That surprised Babe because his next pitch came in high, leaving the count at 1 and 2 on the Scoreboard.
"Wolf, this'll be his curve. Tight, golf-shot it."
Just as Jimmy predicted, Babe's curve arced in and broke down. I stepped out and snapped the bat around, connecting rock solid. The ball exploded off my bat and passed just above Williams' glove as the third baseman leaped up at it. Beyond him it skipped off the turf and tucked itself into the corner of the outfield.
Behind me Jimmy chuckled. "That's a double for sure, maybe even a triple. You've got good wheels."
"You're being generous."
"Never going to fit undercover, Wolf, if you don't brag a bit."
"Just taking my lead from you, Jim."
With the rest of his pitches, Babe kept me honest, but I got pieces of more than I missed. As he began to tire and I got into my rhythm, stroking the ball felt really good. Finally, as we both agreed it was to be the last pitch, I pointed toward the outfield. "This time I'm serious."
Babe laughed aloud. "Yeah, you and every other curb-climber. No mercy, Wolf." "Asked or given, Babe."
Because I'd begun to hit his curve, he came straight at me with a hard fastball. I saw him release it at the top of his arm's arc and I knew in a split-second that ball would be jetting fat and happy through my strike zone. Pushing off with my left foot, I strode forward. Cranking the bat around, I knew the ball was going places.
It was, like right into the backstop as my bat missed it by the same margin Christmas misses June.
With my bat pounding the turf as my swing spun me around, I dropped to my knees. Looking up I saw even Jimmy holding his sides to stop chuckling. "What the hell was that?"
Babe jogged down from the mound and laughed with a low, sinister voice. "Just a reminder, kid. We're the pros in this league, and you're just a promising amateur." If not for the impish light in his eyes, I'd have figured Babe was mad at me. He slapped Jimmy on the arm and headed into the dugout.
I slowly regained my feet and brushed my knees off. "That ball broke like a Ferrari on Pothole Road."
Jimmy nodded and kicked some of the balls back out toward the mound. "Yeah, well, Babe was just having some fun with you."
"What was that pitch?"
He kicked a ball toward me and I noticed that dirt clung to part of it. "Babe gave you a spitter."
I swore. "And what doyou do when somebody pitches you one of those?"
"Miss like you did…" Jimmy shrugged. "Or hit it on the dry side."
Even though I'd not worked up much of a sweat, the shower felt good. I would have lingered, but Jimmy and I had dates for the evening and the woman I was seeing considered punctuality next to cleanliness in the way of divine attributes. As I was definitely considering dedicating a temple or two to her, I knew better than to keep her waiting. A tall, beer-bellied man with a lopsided smile tossed me a thick white towel as I stepped from the shower. "You went after the spitter. 'Sa nasty pitch." He pounded his own chest proudly. "Fzz able to hit that one."
The man's slightly slurred speech and the partial paralysis of the right side of his body made me uneasy, but I returned his smile. "You're a better man than I, in that case."
Jimmy left the shower and fielded the towel line-drive easily. "That you could, Thumper. You could hit that spitter like it had been in the desert for years." He jerked a thumb at me. "Wolfgang Kies, meet Al Grater. He used to play under Ted Williams for Seattle about ten years back."
My smile broadened. "Yeah, okay, I remember now. You were playing Williams' 1947 season back in '39, weren't you? I actually saw you play. You hit a double, a triple, and a homer in that game."
"The Thumper, 'sme." His brown eyes watched me carefully. " 'Sa good year."
The ragged scar tracking back through his black hair on the left side of his head reminded me of what had happened to him. In the 2040 season he'd been hit by a pitch that, as it turned out, had fractured his skull. He remained up at the plate and hit the next pitch out of the park, but collapsed rounding third. The brain damage hit him as hard as a stroke. The Seadogs management tried to put him back together, but could not, so they let him work around the Dome.
"It was a good year indeed." Babe Ruth draped an arm over Thumper's shoulders. He pointed a fat corona's glowing tip at me and grinned. "That was the year I entered the team's AAA Coastal League franchise, and the last year I ever swung at a spitball."
Jimmy rubbed his towel through his closely cropped, kinky black hair. "You had to throw that pitch because you knew Wolf would have hit anything else you threw at him." Babe winked at me. "True enough. A little seasoning, Wolf, and you could play Wildfire Schulte or Footsie Marcum."
"Thanks, I think."
Jimmy rested his left hand on my right shoulder. "Might want to rethink that, Babe. Wolf isn't wired and he turned the helmet off. He was hitting you all by his lonesome."
Babe blanched a bit, but his jocularity only vanished for a nanosecond. "I'll get someone to get me my '16 statsofts2and then we'll give him a real workout."
I nodded. "You're on." I turned to Jimmy. "We'd best get moving. We don't want to be late."
Jimmy fastened his towel around his slender waist. "I hope you're right about this woman you've got me meeting. I hate blind dates."