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

"Just the rules, Lou. It's what I was saying, maybe you ought to let me explain more before we start, see, there's a lot of special things about errors and injuries and relief pitchers and pinch hitters and lead-off hitters and pinch runners and clean-up hitters and—"

"Hey, wait!" Lou exclaimed. "There's four stars here! You musta left one out!"

Henry felt his face go hot. "Bran Maverly," he said. "He's been in a kind of slump, and Flynn thought—"

"Aha!" Lou found him on the roster. Left field. He erased Moon from the scoresheet and wrote in Maverly. Moon had hit 6 for 8 in the last two games: how did Flynn explain it? "We'll just see if he don't snap outa that slump," he said, and winked at Henry.

"Listen, Lou, I wasn't trying to be unfair. It's just that there's a whole history here, I mean, there's been a long season already, and you're getting in sort of in the middle. You'd understand better if—"

"That's okay, Henry, don't apologize," Lou said with a grin. "I'd do the same thing." He shook his beer can. "Is there any more?"

"Sure, I'll get some." From the sink, he watched fat Lou Engel, sitting where he himself usually sat, poking through the charts, tossing sample throws, humming some baroque melody. How has this happened? he wondered.

"Who goes first?"

"I'll go first, give you last bats." The game was in the Knickerbocker ball park, couldn't be any other way, but it seemed like the easiest way to explain it.

He sat, took up the dice. He tried to get his mind down into the game, but Lou's bulky presence seemed to blank him out, and all he saw was paper. He didn't seem to be playing with Lou, but through him, and the way through was dense and hostile. "Toby Ramsey batting," he announced, but self-consciousness made him keep the announcement brief and hushed.

"What's he?" asked Lou, poking his nose in front of Henry to peer down at the lineup. "R. Rookie. Which chart. .?"

Henry showed him. "We only need these three, now that we've both got Aces in," he said.

"Ace to Star, Ace to — yes, I see," Lou said, then pursed his lips in an undisguised imitation of Zifferblatt.

Henry threw. "Fly out to center."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Yes, FO CF — but what's this?"

"Runners advance one. But there aren't any runners."

"Oh yes. I see. Okay. Just want to get it all. What's that now? One out. .?"

"That's right." Henry marked the scoresheet, threw again, this time for Regular batter Grammercy Locke. Single. He waited for Lou to find it.

"Single, advance two," Lou read. "How can you advance two on a single?"

"That means the baserunners, if there were any, would advance two."

"I thought it was a disadvantage to be a plain type."

"It is. Only about eighteen per cent of a Regular's possibilities against an Ace are hits, while for a Star, for example, it's over twenty-five per cent."

Lou showed surprise. "You really got it all figured out!"

"Yes."

"Still, those aren't very good averages," he reasoned.

"Well, there are other parameters: walks, errors, injuries, different combinations and charts—"

"Per a what? Whew!" Lou leaned back, shook his head, picking his nose absently. "I'm never gonna catch on to this, Henry."

"You're just not used to it yet. It gets simple when you play it awhile." He rolled for Hatrack Hines.

Lou drank beer. "That was a good movie today, Henry. You should've come."

"Was it? Look. Hines is a Star and he struck out. See, Lou, you never know."

Lou watched carefully as Henry penned a K on the score-sheet. "There was this guy who kept bees. He was making tape recordings of the sounds they made, see, because he wanted to see if he could communicate with them."

Witness York sent a line-drive single into left center, moving Locke around to third. "Way to go!" Henry said.

"What's that?" Lou put down his beer to take a closer look. He read the numbers on the dice, searched the chart.

"That's the one for Rookies, Lou. Here, this one." This was going to take all night.

"Let's see, 4-4-6: that's that single-advance-two again."

"Right. Puts York on first, Locke on third."

Lou stared down at the table, trying to see it. "I'm already lost, Henry."

"Oh, for God's sake, Lou," Henry cried, losing patience, "it's not that hard. Look, two out, men on first and third, forget who they are. A Star batting. Watch." Infield fly, shortstop. Rally choked off. Somehow he felt it was Lou's fault. In a way, it was. On Casey's chart, it would have been a base on balls, bases loaded. Of course, Locke wouldn't have got his — forget it. "Well, what is it?"

Lou frowned, looked on the wrong chart again. "I don't—"

' This one, Lou!"

"Don't get mad, Henry, I'm only trying — here it is: what's that?"

"Infield fly."

"He's out, hunh?" Henry nodded. "How many is that, Henry?"

"That's three."

"I'm up now?"

"Yes." Henry handed him the dice.

Lou livened up, studied the line-up, saw he had a Rookie batting, put his finger on the Ace-to-Rookie chart, and threw the dice. Strikeout. Lou's finger ran down the chart. "Aw," he said, "that's a strikeout." He threw for McAllister Weeks. Another strikeout. Anyway, Halifax was on the ball today. "Base on balls."

"You're on the wrong chart again, Lou." '

Lou winced despairingly. He found the right one. "Strikeout. Heck." He rolled again. Three in a row. "Infield.. no, wait: I remember, Henry, he's a Star. Ummm: strikeout! again! It sure seems awful easy to get a strikeout in this game," he grumped.

Henry took the dice. While Ingram and Wilder popped up and James flied out to center, Lou told about the beekeeper. "So, anyway, see, he's finally got so he can translate a few

of the things they say and talk back to them, you know, things about going back to the hive, danger, and so on, and — oh, I forgot to tell you about this woman—"

"You're up, Lou."

Lou droned on about the bees while taking his turn, Henry helping him find the result of his throws to speed things up a little. Biff Baldwin popped up to the pitcher and Walt McCamish fouled out, but Bran Maverly doubled off the right-field wall. "Now, what'd I tell you about that boy!" Lou gloated, and Henry had to grin in spit of himself: fattening Flynn and his Daffy Dillies, new image of the Knicks? Lou pumped the dice in his puffy fist. "Seven come eleven!" he piped meaninglessly, and tossed them down. Triple three: injury.

"Now you throw again," Henry explained, after Lou had found the meaning of his throw, "and use this chart. See, the injury can be on either your team or mine. Some are more serious than others, and it makes a difference how old the player is. Your man O'Shea, for example, is twenty, came up this year, Year LVI—"

"Year what— !"

Henry felt the flush come again. Hadn't meant to go that far tonight. "I'll explain all that later Lou. Just go ahead and throw."

That cold Zifferblatt-like expression of incredulity and distrust crept over Lou's wide face, but he picked up the dice and pitched them again. Henry tried to watch it happen: O'Shea's line-drive sailing out to right center, Witness York drifting over for it, Stan Patterson calling for it, Knickerbocker fans raising a howl, drowning them out — but all he could see was Lou running his stubby greasy finger down the chart, lips in a skeptical pucker: " RF Inj Collision w/ CF: D Adv 3, RFout 4 G ." Lou sighed deprecatingly. "What's it mean, Henry?"

"It's a double, your other man is home, my right fielder is out of the game." He wrote Tuck Wilson's name into the lineup, replacing Patterson. Out of action for four whole games! What a mess.

"I got a run?"

"That's right. Man on second and two outs."

"What about stolen bases? Can I have that man steal third?'"