Yôko Ogawa - The Gift of Numbers aka The Housekeeper and the Professor

"That's great, Professor. But look, there's Tsuyoshi Shinjo!" Root always listened carefully to these speeches, but he showed little interest in the significance of his seat number.

The Professor talked about numbers throughout the game- just as he always did when he was nervous. His voice grew louder and louder with each inning; he would not be drowned out by the crowd.

The starting pitcher, Nakagomi, was greeted with a tremendous cheer as he was announced and headed out to the mound. At the same moment, the Professor said, "The height of the mound is 10 inches, or 25.4 centimeters. The infield slopes at a rate of one inch per foot for the first six feet toward the plate."

He noticed that the first seven men in the order for Hiroshima hit left-handed: "Left-handed hitters against left-handed pitchers have a cumulative batting average of.2568. Right-handed hitters hit.2649 against right-handed pitchers." Or, when Nishida, on the Hiroshima team, stole a base and the crowd booed: "It takes 0.8 seconds from the time the pitcher begins his windup to the time he releases the ball. In this case, the pitch was a curveball that took 0.6 seconds to reach the catcher's mitt, and then 2 full seconds for the catcher to throw it to second base, which means the runner had 3.4 seconds total to run the 24 meters from first to second base without being thrown out, running at more than 7 meters per second, or 25.2 kilometers per hour."

Fortunately, his commentary did not cause us any trouble, since the group to our left politely ignored him, while the man sitting to our right was amused. He helped us to keep the Professor calm.

"You seem to know a lot more about it than that lousy announcer," he said. "You'd make a great scorekeeper. Why don't you figure out how the Tigers can win the pennant?" When he wasn't cheering for the players on the field, he appeared to listen carefully to everything the Professor said, even though I doubt he could understand it. Thanks to this kind man, the Professor's mathematical commentary moved beyond the level of farce and, in some sense, revealed a kind of logic to the game. For that, the man shared his peanuts with us.

The Tigers held their lead through the fifth inning on hits from Wada and Kuji. The sun had gone down and the evening grew chilly, so I made Root put on his jacket and I handed the Professor his lap robe; then I was busy wiping everyone's hands before we ate, and by the time we were properly settled, I was amazed to see that two more runs had been scored. Root, beside himself with happiness, was screaming through his megaphone, while the Professor, resting his sandwich on his lap, applauded awkwardly.

He had become completely absorbed in the game. The angle of the ball flying off the bat would leave him marveling, squinting at the field and nodding. From time to time he would peek into the picnic basket of the people sitting in front of us, or glance up at the moon shining between the branches of the poplars just outside the stadium.

Hanshin fans seemed to dominate the stands behind third base. The area was blanketed in yellow jerseys, and the cheers for the Tigers were loud and long. Even if the Hiroshima supporters had wanted to answer, they had little to cheer about as Nakagomi struck out one batter after another.

The Tigers fans roared each time Nakagomi threw a strike; and when a run came in, the stadium erupted. I had never in my entire life seen so many people united in celebration. Even the Professor looked positively elated-and here was a man who only seemed to have two facial expressions, the one he wore when he was thinking and the one he gave me when I interrupted those thoughts. You might even say that he, too, had been transported by the cheers.

But the prize for the most original way of expressing enthusiasm went to the Kameyama fan clinging to the wire fence of the backstop. In his early twenties, he wore a Kameyama jersey over his work clothes and had a transistor radio clipped to his belt. His fingers were wrapped tight around the backstop and he hung there throughout the game. When Kameyama was out in left field, the young man's eyes never left him, and when he appeared in the on-deck circle, he grew agitated. When Kameyama was up at bat, he called out his name in one continuous chant that went from joy to despair. In order to get a few millimeters closer to his hero, he had pressed his face against the fence, so that the mesh pattern had become imprinted on his forehead. He wasted no energy booing the other team, nor did he complain when the great man himself struck out. Instead, he poured his whole heart and soul into repeating that one word: Kameyama.

As we watched him, we began to wonder what would happen if Kameyama actually got a hit; and when, in the middle of the fourth inning, he knocked it into left field, the spectators sitting behind him reached up out of their seats, as if expecting him to faint dead away. Kameyama's ball shot between second and third and bounced into the outfield. It glowed white against the grass, and the outfielders scurried after it. The young man screamed for a long time, and even after his lungs were empty, he sobbed faintly and writhed against the fence. Paciorek was up next, and this ecstatic display continued well into his warm-up. By comparison, the Professor's reaction to the game was reserved and respectful.

He didn't seem to care that none of the players were familiar from the cards he had collected. Perhaps he was so busy trying to connect the rules and statistics stored in his head with the game on the field that he forgot to worry about the names of the players.

"What's in that little bag?" he asked Root.

"That's the rosin bag. It has pine tar to keep their hands from slipping."

"And why does the catcher keeping running toward first base like that?"

"He's backing up the throw, in case it gets away from the first baseman."

"But it looks like some fans are sitting in the dugout…"

"I think those are the interpreters for the foreign players."

The Professor turned to Root with his questions. He could tell you the kinetic energy of a pitch traveling 150 kph or the relationship between ball temperature and the distance a hit would travel, but he had no idea what a rosin bag was. He had loosened his grip on Root's hand, but he still kept close and relied on him for reassurance. He talked throughout the game. From time to time he bought something from the pretty woman selling concessions, or ate a few peanuts. But he never stopped glancing over in the direction of the bullpen, hoping to catch a glimpse of number 28.

The Tigers took a 6-0 lead going into the seventh inning, and the game seemed to be moving along quickly. But all attention soon shifted from the game itself to Nakagomi, who by the final inning was pitching a no-hitter.

Though their team had been ahead all along, the mood among the Tigers fans behind third base had grown more tense with each pitch. As the Tigers' last batter struck out and they took to the field, murmurs and moans could be heard from here and there in the bleachers. If the team had continued to rack up runs, it might have been easier to bear, but they had not scored since the fifth inning and there was no change on the scoreboard. Like it or not, the game was an intense duel and we were all focused on Nakagomi.

As he headed for the mound in the bottom of the ninth, someone in the stands finally gave voice to the thought that was on everyone's mind: "Three more outs!" A murmur of disapproval went through the bleachers, as though this encouragement was the surest way to jinx the no-hitter; but the only comment came from the Professor:

"The odds of pitching a no-hitter are 0.18 percent."

Hiroshima sent in a pinch hitter for the leadoff batter. No one had ever heard of him, but no one was paying attention anyway. Nakagomi threw his first pitch.