Robert Coover - The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

It was a large pizza, enormous in fact, Henry had never seen one as big, and as they neared the end of it, they ate more slowly, drank more steadily. Should get to the game, but an animal satisfaction was on him like a thick blanket, and it seemed criminal even to move. It was Lou, in fact, who brought it up: "What's that up there on the wall, Henry?"

"The Team Standings Board. It shows where the teams are. I made it myself."

"The teams?"

"Well, it takes a little while to explain, Lou." He belched, drank beer, trying to remember how it was he'd practiced it. For one thing, he hadn't meant to begin with the Team Standings Board. "See, the game, well, it's a whole baseball league. Eight teams. Rosters, twenty-one guys—"

"Guys?"

"Players. Names. All the teams play each other and I keep the—"

Lou looked disappointed. "I thought this was a game that two could play, you know, like pinochle or Monopoly or something."

"No reason why not. You take one team and I take another."

"Okay," he said, popping suddenly up out of his chair like a blimp cut loose. "Let's go! Batter up!"

"You sure you don't want to know more about the… the rules?"

"I'll pick it up as we go along." At the table, he stared down on the heaps of paper, as though not quite perceiving what all that had to do with a mere game.

Henry washed at the sink, feeling uneasy. It was the way he wanted it, wasn't it? Not exactly: inexperience was one thing, complete and disinterested ignorance another. "Don't you want to wash your hands?"

"They're all right." Lou wiped them absently on his pants. He'd found the different charts and was shuffling through them.

"They're not as complicated as they look," Henry said with a weak laugh, drying his hands.

"I hope not." Lou picked up the dice, fingered them, then tossed them down. He searched the chart. " S if PR/LO; Others Ret S 1B " He scratched his head, looked down at the dice.

"That's the special chart for stealing second base," Henry explained. "If the runner trying to steal is a pinch runner or the lead-off man in the line-up, he makes it. Otherwise, he returns safe to first. Here, these are the charts for—"

"I don't know if I'm going to be able to figure all this out, Henry," said Lou frankly. He seemed ready to drop the project, but instead he sat down and began patiently to read more of the charts. He rolled again, compared the result on the different charts. "How do you know which one to use?" he complained.

"Well, see, there's nine charts because there are six different player categories. A pitcher can be an Ace or a Rookie or a Regular, and so can a hitter. I mean, he can be a Star—"

"How do you know that?" Lou was staring at him as though to say he must be kidding.

"There's a mark by his name. The Rookies come up, well, see, each year—"

"Year?"

"I'll explain that, Lou. Just wait a minute. Each year, at the end, the eight pitchers with the worst earned-run averages get retired or sent to the minors — they can come back — sometimes, I mean, if they're not too old—"

"Too old!" Lou blinked. "You know how old. .?"

"There's a chart for that, see. . here it is. That's for

Rookies when they come up, tells how old they are. When they're forty, they have to quit, or before if they drop into the twenty bottom batters or eight bottom pitchers — I mean, unless they're still a Star or an Ace at forty—" He could see Lou wasn't with him any more. "Look, don't worry about that part of it now. There's three kinds of batters, three kinds of pitchers. Rookies have a few advantages over Regulars, and Stars and Aces have advantages over Rookies. So there's nine charts, one for every possible combination, Ace-to-Star, Ace-to-Rookie, Ace-to-Regular, and so on, for the Rookie and Regular pitchers. Anyway, pretty soon you get it all memorized and you don't have to worry about this part of it."

"Memorized! You know all this stuff by heart, Henry?" Lou squeaked.

"Most of it."

Lou shook his head. "Where's the playing board?" he asked.

"Well, you sort of have to imagine it," Henry said. "I used to have a mock-up of a ball park, but it only got in the way."

Lou stared gloomily at the heap of papers. "Well, let's see what happens." He looked up at the Team Standings Board. "Who am I"

"The next game is between the Knickerbockers and the Pioneers. It just happens that way."

"You mean that team at the bottom? Why don't we play with those two at the top? Looks like more fun."

"It isn't just one game, Lou. It's a whole season. Each team plays eighty-four games. There's an official schedule, just like in the big leagues. We're at the seventy-fifth round of games, and they've all been played but one, and so it's the Pioneers against the Knicks."

Lou shrugged and smiled generously. Forcing it, though. "I don't care. Who've I got?"

"You can have the Knicks." Twinge of guilt, but he shook it off. Poor Flynn buffeted by a fat confusion. Henry brought out the scorecard, the line-ups already filled in.

PIONEERS

2B Toby Ramsey (Rookie)

LF Grammercy Locke

3B HatrackHines(Star)

CF Witness York (Star)

RF Stan Patterson (Star)

C Royce Ingram (Star)

SS Lance Wilder

1B Goodman James

P Mickey Halifax (Ace)

KNICKERBOCKERS

SS Scat Batkin (Rookie)

2B McAllister Weeks

1B Matt Garrison (Star)

CF Biff Baldwin (Star)

RF Walt McCamish (Star)

LF Archie Moon

C Chauncey O'Shea (Rookie)

3B Galen Musgraves

P Jock Casey (Rookie)

"These are the teams, and here's the roster with the rest of your players, in case you want to make substitutions or anything."

Lou admired the scoresheets. "Say, these are nice. Where do you buy them?"

"I have them printed."

"Aha! Those trips to the printer!"

"Yes." Henry laughed sheepishly. Had Lou come to play the game, he wondered, or only to smoke him out? Have to be careful. He sat down beside Lou, rearranged the charts so Lou could see them all, pointed out the differences between them. "These here are for special strategy plays or when there's an error or injury or something, and these are the ones we use most of the time. We only need six of the nine, since we have an Ace and a Rookie pitching." He felt miles away somehow.

"Aha!" Lou said, studying the scorecard. "So that's what this R's for by my pitcher?"

"Yes," Henry admitted, feeling suddenly guilty: didn't look fair at that. Now he'd have to explain about the rotation of pitchers, rules about when they can pitch and when they can't. .

"And your pitcher has an A. Isn't that better?"

"Well, there's a small difference, but—"

"Don't my team have any Aces?" Lou squinted at his roster.

"Yes, but, you see—"

"Yes! here's two of them!" Lou looked up and grinned, wagged an accusing finger. "Henry…!"

"But it was Casey's turn—"

"Aw, come on now, can't I pitch one of these other boys? How about this fella Whitlowe Clay?"

"I suppose so, but he pitched two days ago—"

"Yeah, but he's tough," argued Lou, grinning. I'll start with ole Whitlowe." He erased Casey's name and wrote in Clay. "Where'd you get these names from, the funny papers?" The whole thing was fast becoming pointless. "Now, these little stars, they're for…?"

"Yes, the batters, they…"

Lou winced studiously at the heap of charts and rosters. He counted the R's. "Two for me, one for you. But here, you've got four stars batting, and I've only got three. What if I put that Casey fella in as a hitter instead of a pitcher, then we'd be almost even up."

"The Rookie status for pitchers only helps them as pitchers, not hitters."

"Oh? why not?" Absent question, spurred by vexation more than curiosity.