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

"Where's the bar?" asks Gringo Greene, his emblematic salute.

"Ah, it's Cuss and Gringo!" complains the raspberry-complected Witness York with a turn of his knobby head. "As if things aren't already bad enough!"

"Pull the switch on that thing, man!" Gringo hollers up at the sun. "I can't even find my drink!" And clutches blindly before him, not so blindly punching Squire Flint in the chest. No love there, and feckless Flint flicks the hand away.

"Look up, good man, cast your eye on the Ineffable Name," intones Cuss, "and give praise!"

Gringo stares gapemouthed upward. "Oh yeah!"

"Do you see it?"

"Yeah!"

"What does it say?"

"100 Watt."

"Imagine!" cries Cuss into their laughter. "I always thought it said, 'Sandy lives!' "

"So it's Tuck Wilson, is it?" observes Raspberry Schultz, having orbited to the rear to read the magic number.

"Might have known McCamish would wrangle a deal for himself like that," snipes Squire Flint with a squint of ire. True, of course.

"In the giant's very gear," Cuss says. "Lucky Tuck!"

"Not all that much of a giant," notes Skeeter Parsons. "You appear to be coming out at the seams."

"Yes, Tuckered Son of Will was a bit low on the bone," confesses corpulent Costen, and they admire the parting threads. Hardy Ingram, proud scion of the avenging giant of the bloody past, and Paunch Trench, humble Damonite, do not join them, intent upon their pre-game task. Between pitches, Cuss sees, Hardy flexes his fist, staring curiously at it, probably thinking he's got something special there today, poor fool.

"You mean, long on the bone," cracks good man Greene. "I notice the crotch is holding."

The beast roars, startling them all. Casey has entered the Knickerbocker bull pen. Can't see him.

"If we could only get to whoever's playing Casey," Squire Flint says, half to himself, staring toward that distant figure.

"Awake! Awake!" cries Costen McCamish across the verdant pastures. "Put on strength, o arm of the league! Awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago! Was it not thou that didst cut Rutherford in pieces, that didst deck the daemon? Was it not—"

" Cut it out! " cries Squire Flint.

"That is going a little too far," says Raspberry Schultz soberly. They all glance guiltily over toward Ingram and Trench, who, undisturbed, are still pitching, pitching, pitching. "I don't believe in just making fun of things you don't understand."

"What's this?" demands Skeeter Parsons. "You been converted, Razz?"

"No," says the Witness, blushing Raspberry, "but, well, legend, I mean the pattern of it, the long history, it seems somehow, you know, a folk truth, a radical truth, all these passed-down mythical—"

"Ahh, your radical mother's mythical cunt!" sniffs Gringo Greene. "It's time we junked the whole beastly business, baby, and moved on."

"I'm afraid, Gringo, I must agree with our distinguished folklorist and foremost witness to the ontological revelations of the patterns of history," intercedes (with a respectful nod to Schultz) Professor Costen Migod McCamish, Doctor of Nostology and Research Specialist in the Etiology of Homo Ludens, "and have come to the conclusion that God exists and he is a nut."

Skeeter Parsons cum Tubby-ass Ram's-Eye laughs: "Why, that's funny, I was just thinking…!"

"I think you better shut up," snaps friar Squire over his shoulder, still facing out toward the Knick bull pen where Casey works.

"Say, you're pretty lucky yourself," quoth Cuss to Squire's numbered back. "I see you drew McDermott."

Flint spins around full wroth. "You trying to be funny, you bastard?" Now what did he say that. .? Well, of course, Flint wanted to be Casey himself.

"Who do you think Casey is today?" asks Skeetoby.

"Galen Flynn, I hear," offers the occult Schultz, man who has turned, so Costen has heard, to the folklore of game theory, and plays himself some device with dice.

"Flynn!" snorts Flint, whose line in this league is the longest of them all, indeed to the first of the vicars. "That damn toady!"

"Easy, easy!" cautions Raspberry Schultz, nodding with squinted eyes toward Paul Trench, son of the establishment, now receiving Hardy-Damon's warm-up pitches. "Even the eyes have spies!"

But fiery Squire McFlint in a temper is no easy man to hush. "A bunch of idiots , that's what we got running this league! Nobody understands Casey anymore! Nobody understands history! " Paunch, asquat, uniformed as Royce Ingram, mighty arm of divine retribution, is faceless behind his mask.

"Anyway," proffers the conciliatory Parson Ramsey, "maybe it isn't Flynn."

"Of course, it isn't," Cuss-Tuck McWilson informs them.

"No?" asks Witberry Yultz. "Then who do you think that…?"

"Why," quoth this hero who shall walk today from home to home to the inevitable satisfaction of all parties under the sun, "that it is Jock Casey himself!"

"Ho ho!" cheers Skeetoby Ramparts. "I might have guessed!"

"But how…?" asks the witless Jerkberry.

"You're crazy," grumps Drusquire McWormy, lover of the Casey dead, but not alive.

"Crazy? Well, yes, I am," Cusstuck confesses nobly. "Else how account for my stuffing body and bunghole into this museum piece of a rag bag?" He flexes a leg to rip a stitch and spring a general laughter. "But as for Casey, what do we know?"

"Aw, let's find a bar, for God's sake!" butts the good Gringo impatiently in.

"That no man ever lived a life like his," responds Squire Flint, the humorless one.

"First, we know that—"

"Thirst is first!" gripes Gringo Greene. But as Cuss McCamish knows full well, it is all bravado; the first sack will be tupped many times over by the sober Pioneer cleats of Goodman James today.

"He thirsts for the True Church," wry Raspberry smiles.

"And what of your fans, Gringo?" asks Skeeter Parsons.

"Mother can smother in her own vat of fat," Gringo grumbles.

"A dogmatist," Cuss McCamish complains, and all nod, pitying. "Now, as for Casey, the first thing we know is that he was still pitching long after Damonsday the First."

"Everybody knows that," is Squire's reposte. "They've just squeezed the two deaths into one ceremony in order to—"

"But if this is a falsehood, dear comrades, where is truth? We know who buzzarded about the immortal remains of our friend Hardy here — or I mean, Damon — know when and where he was immortally interred, even know the music performed at his immortal obsequies, but of Casey what can we say? That Hardy's own glorious ancestor knocked Jock on the block and fixed his clock? A mere fairy tale, adorned with the morbid imaginations of a century of sentimental artisans!" His efforts to draw in Hardy Ingram avail him not. Hardy Ingram he is no more. "We don't even know if his corpus delicti was scraped off the rubber, or if it just sank into the premises! As the great historian U. R. Obseen has informed us:

Said Long Lew to Fanny

Whilst inspecting her cranny:

'Why! someone inside I have found?'

Said Fanny to Lew:

'Dear, don't you know who?

It's the Man Who Sleeps there in the Mound!'"

"You're sick, McCamish!" is the reward the noble historian reaps from the furious Flint, though elsewhere he fares better.

"So I say it is he, in the flesh of the bone and the bone of all flesh, the Man in the Mound, Jock the Mad Killer Casey, come back this day once yearly to victimize us all, we of the green hinderparts and the wives and daughters of honest men!"

"Casey died to prove his freedom!" Squire Flint blurts out. "And ours! And all we do—"

"Well, a great man, Casey, but not the greatest."

"Who was the greatest, Cuss?" asks the grinning Skeeter.