The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop Read online

  So that was how and why it was that Henry showed up that Wednesday at the offices of Dunkelmann, Zauber & Zifferblatt, Licensed Tax & General Accountants, Specializing in Small Firms, Bookkeeping Services & Systems, Payrolls & Payroll Taxes, Monthly, Quarterly & Annual Audits, Enter Without Knocking, somewhat after the lunch hour, and there was just no doubt that the third-named and last-surviving of the firm's partners, Mr. Horace (n) Zifferblatt, Fiduciary Expert and Adjutant of Minor Industry, had his dander up. Of course, he had his reasons. Zifferblatt was a militant clockwatcher, and Henry's record of late had been none too good. And then there'd been that disturbance back during the last pennant scramble when Henry, distracted, worrying about injuries on the Keystone pitching staff, had posted to the general and subsidiary ledgers of one firm the journal entries of another. Whole quarter's worth. So: might as well expect the worst. Still, in spite of his lifelong reverence for hard work and dependability, and that letting-the-team-down guilt he'd always suffered after such lapses, today he found he just didn't care. No, Henry walked today in a perfect vault of well-being, crystalline and impenetrable, and there was nothing the wrath of Zifferblatt could do to crack it.

  Following ablutions and purifications, he and Hettie had hustled out for noontime breakfast, full-blown $2.25 platters, big No. 7 on the coffee-shop menu, the kind of farmer's breakfast that pasture-keepers like Stan Patterson and Witness York liked to put away, with extra cups of coffee along the way. Odd day outside: clear one minute, pouring the next— they'd had to sprint the last block under a sudden cloudburst, had piled into the coffee shop laughingly wheezing and snorting like a pair of. ruttish nags, hot for the feedbag. Hettie had played old-time country music on the juke to accompany their celebrations, and one of them had caught his imagination; like the cloudburst outside, a whole new Sandy Shaw ballad for the UBA had poured suddenly out of him. Nothing to it. Everything came easy today. He'd explained to a curious Hettie that songwriting was a kind of hobby. No, no luck so far, he'd lied. In the UBA, after all, they all sang Sandy's songs. Funny thing about both country music and baseball with its "village greens": they weren't really country, not since they got their new names anyway, but urban. Kid stuff, dreams of heroism and innocence, staged by pros and turned into big business. The "New York Game" they called the old town-ball version, and borough born and bred it was and is...

  Its early in the mornin' and I been out all

  night,

  Bad times with my woman and I'm tryin' to git

  right,

  I stagger into bed but the boss calls my name,

  He says, git out on the field, we got a im-portant

  game!

  PLAY BALL! (My head? s a goddamn balloon!)

  PL AY BALL! (Go 'way, don't come back soon!)

  PL AY BALL! (That's what the umpire said,..)

  PLAY BALL! (But, boys, I just gotta stay here

  in bed!)

  Well, I'm stretched out on my cot there like an

  old tomcat,

  I got such a hangover that I don't know where

  I'm at,

  I'm dreamin' 'bout that woman when the boss

  busts in the door,

  Throws water on my head and dumps me out

  on the floor!

  PLAY BALL! (Oh no! git outa my mind!)

  PLAY BALL! (Cantcha see I'm damn near

  blind?)

  PLAY BALL! (That's what the umpire said...)

  PLAYBALL! (Gawdamighty, I wish I was

  dead!)

  Wisely, Hettie had asked no further questions about the who or wherefrom of Damon Rutherford, though, on parting, she did with a Hettie Irden wink say that if ever that hoy had a new pitch he wanted to try out on an old veteran, he'd find her wanning a stool at Pete's. Warming the bench, Henry had corrected her, then had pointed out she had not yet witnessed sliders, spitballs, screwballs, knucklers, or the turnover fast ball, not to mention the duster, or "purpose pitch." Hoo-eee! she'd whooped at the list, and: Purpose? What purpose?

  Bean ball, high and inside, force the batter back, drop him to his knees, the pitch Toothbrush Terrigan was famous for, touch of meanness that could turn a game into a general free-for-all. Oboy, that's for me! she'd cackled, then had sent him off with a whispered: Tonight!

  Well, he'd have to see. For the moment, he spread open ledgers before him on his desk to look busy and thought about line-ups for the next round of games. Let's see, the league-leading Knickerbockers had lost yesterday, so that closed the Pioneers up to just two games behind. Too bad he couldn't pitch Damon against the Haymakers again tonight; that'd finish Pappy Rooney off forever. Who then? Had to save the Ace, Mickey Halifax, for the upcoming series with the Knicks, so he'd have to go with one of the Regulars. Drew McDermott maybe. Idly, he summarized sales receipts, one eye on his boss Horace Zifferblatt, who paced in a flushed pout inside his glass cage of an office. Didn't come out, though. Henry didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad one. Probably bad.

  One thing was troubling him, and he realized he had to face up to it: Damon Rutherford meant more to him than any player should. It had happened before, and it had always caused problems. For example now: Damon had already pitched over sixty innings, and he had the best earned-run average in the Association. To be classified an Ace the following year, a pitcher had to pitch a minimum of eighty innings, have one of the ten lowest ERA's in the league. It was the same with hitters: the top twenty-four batters of one season were the Stars of the next. These ratings gave them slightly better odds with the dice, gave the game more continuity. There were always a few changes each year, of course, as some of the Stars and Aces fell, usually at least a fourth of them, and newcomers moved up to take their places, but this was perfectly natural and desirable—what in fact made room for guys like Damon Rutherford. All right, here it was, just midseason, still thirty-seven games to go, and they might suddenly start hitting him. The smart thing would be to baby Damon through the remaining fifteen or twenty innings he needed, pitching him against weaker teams, using him in one-inning relief stints in which, according to the rules, he would pitch as an Ace, so as to make sure he made that all-important leap next year, without which no great career was possible. Otherwise, pitching him regularly, the bottom could suddenly fall out. It had before with other bright young Rookies, many times. So why shouldn't Bancroft do it, why shouldn't he baby him? Because Barney Bancroft didn't know what Henry knew. He didn't know about the different charts. He didn't even know about Aces and why it was the good ones often stayed good over the years. Of course, he must have sensed it, they all did: that peculiar extra force that these great players seemed to radiate. Take the Haymakers' Hamilton Craft, for example, now in a miserable slump, and yet Rooney couldn't pull him from the line-up yesterday because he somehow felt that Craft was the best man he had—he was right, but he didn't know exactly why. It was the same when a man fell from class: you could feel it, though sometimes it was hard to believe it, and you kept using the man anyway, waiting for him to bounce back. But what could you feel about Damon Rutherford right now? Only that he might be the greatest pitcher in world history, and how could you bench a man like that? No, Damon had passed up Ace Halifax, was clearly the bellwether of the Pioneer staff, the number-one starter, and unless he showed some signs of losing control that Bancroft could recognize— and even then Barney might rightly prescribe more pitching and not less—then he'd have to pitch at least another ten or twelve games. And could Henry sit idly by and watch the kid get powdered, lose hope of becoming an Ace? He had to. Oh, sure, he was free to throw away the dice, run the game by whim, but then what would be the point of it? Who would Damon Rutherford really be then? Nobody, an empty name, a play actor. Even though he'd set his own rules, his own limits, and though he could change them whenever he wished, nevertheless he and his players were committed to the turns of the mindless and unpredictable—one might even say, irresponsible—dice. That was how it was. He had to accept it, or quit the game altogether.
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br />   Someone, he noticed, was bulking by his desk. Henry looked up, expecting the worst, but it was only his friend Lou Engel. Zifferblatt seemed busy at his desk, working his mouth as though chewing a cud. "Henry!" Lou whispered, one eye Ziffward. "Have you been sick or... or something?"

  Henry felt an impulsive urge to explain, to tell Lou about the perfect game, but it would have taken too long and Lou probably wouldn't have got it anyway, so he merely said, "No, no! Feel great, Lou! Just great!"

  Lou looked unconvinced. "Let's talk after work," he said. Ziff reared his head, and Lou hurried clumsily down the aisle toward his own desk, kicking over a wastebasket along the way. "Oops! awful sorry!" Poor Lou.

  At times, it was true, Henry longed not only to talk about his game, but to have somebody to play it with him. Often, especially during the long routine stretches with one team way out in front, or when continuity and pattern dissipated, giving way to mere accident, he felt the loneliness of his game, longed for an equal with whom to reminisce, to judge, to plan. He had invented alternate schemes for playing the game which would allow for two proprietors or more, and had hinted at the game when talking with Lou, but Lou didn't seem to have quite the right feeling for projects like that. He preferred to play chess or collect stamps or listen to classical music. Of course, now there was Hettie, and the other player didn't have to be an equal, after all. No, there was the possibility of some new arrangement based not on two competing and antagonistic equals, but rather on the relinquishment of certain, let us say, feminine powers and duties, the creation of a kind of vice-proprietor, as it were. But Hettie was probably too unconscious. Whatever she did, it would have to be pretty simple.

  So I'm out on the field and the sun is mighty hot,

  And I'm thinkin' 'bout all the goddamn troubles

  I got,

  Next thing I know I'm sawin' 'em off at first

  base,

  And this guy gits a hit and comes and stands on

  my face!

  PLAY BALL! (I'm gonna split if it's all the

  same!)

  PLAY BALL! (What the hell is the name of

  this game?)

  PLAY BALL!

  "All right. Where were you this morning, Mr. Waugh?'* Just when he least expected him, there he was: Horace Zifferblatt.

  And what could he say? Playing baseball between the sheets with a B-girl? Celebrating Damon's Day in the UBA? He smiled. Looking more carefully now at his work, he saw that he had entered a whole list of figures in the wrong column. In pencil, fortunately. Zifferblatt reared before him, fidgeting in a cold yet incensed quiver, thumbs rammed into the snake-skin belt of his black-and-gray striped trousers, his third and grayest chin beetling neatly over the hard knot of his purple-and-cream tie. Henry knew he should wait until the man had gone, but he didn't. He got out his eraser and went to work.

  "Is something wrong, Henry?" The shift in name was not necessarily a good sign. Ziff, he knew, was watching him erase.

  Henry had to admit that the more carefully he figured the percentages and tabulated the records of his Association, the more mistakes he seemed to make here at work, and though he knew he shouldn't really be bothered by the fact, nevertheless he still suffered from that professional pride of computational infallibility, and so no doubt he was blushing now. He brushed eraser crumbs from the ruled paper and surveyed his work. He supposed that the whole office was watching them now, but he really didn't know what to tell Ziff. He saw Damon Rutherford down in the locker room, one foot up on a bench, lacing a cleated shoe, saw him feel a foreign presence, saw him straighten up, tall, lithe, self-composed, a look of amusement commingled with compassion arching his young brow, saw him turn to look down on this little fat man, standing there in confused rage, heard him say: "How's that, fella?"

  Zifferblatt rocked back on his heels, blew out his cheeks in genuine astonishment. "Waugh!" he squeaked. "I want you to come in and see me first thing tomorrow morning—first thing! You hear?" The man rotated, and head bulled forward, stumped off to his private office. Henry watched him, then returned to his books. Lou dropped by cautiously, but Henry waved him off; couldn't Lou see he really didn't care?

  He transcribed the misplaced figures into the right column, but once that was done, he couldn't seem to keep going. His mind kept drifting back to his kitchen table. Big night tonight. He still had to post all the action of the forty-seventh games, then write it up in the Book. Plenty to talk about. Terrific pennant chase developing between the Knickerbockers and the Pioneers, with the Pastimers and last year's champs, the Keystones, not far behind. Patrick Monday's new political party. Though, with Damon's no-hitter, he was less excited about that now; it seemed less necessary. Still, the seed was sown. Monday probably fretting about the new league mood. Wait and see. Also there was the developing slugging contest between the Knicks' Walt McCamish and die Pioneers' Witness York. Signs of a new Rutherford Era. What a season! The big story tonight, of course, was the perfect game. The boy with the magic arm. The man who knows himself. Phrases and headlines floated through his mind. Return of the Pioneers. Hopes soar for first pennant in twenty-four years. Have to remember that interview with Barney Bancroft he had in bed this morning. What about Damon's consecratory romp in the sack afterwards? Sure, why not? Somebody's virgin daughter. Maybe the Knicks' manager Sycamore Flynn had a daughter he could use. Only one? Hell, a whole stadium full! Line 'em up! Boy with the magic shortarm!

  What was he doing here? He had to get out, get home! He looked at the clock: 4:21. Couldn't even wait nine minutes? Couldn't he play the horseracing game he kept in his desk drawer, for instance? He couldn't. He glanced toward Zifferblatt's office: bent over the books. Well, it would be a hard pill for the old man to swallow, but that was tough. Henry closed the books, put them away, stepped over to the hat-tree for his gray felt, raincoat, and black umbrella, and left the office. On the move. Come on, boys, let's take the field. Lot of pepper now. As he passed Ziff's office, he caught a glimpse of the old man's gray head jerking up to glare at his early exit. Well, too bad, but how could anyone take seriously, after all, a man named Horace Zifferblatt? Once in the elevator, going down, he was able to forget about work altogether. He was headed for home, returning to his league and all its players, to the Book and tonight's big story, and there weren't any Horace Zifferblatts there.

  Outside, it was raining again, nostalgic fall evening, and Henry, as he stepped along under his umbrella, found it pleasant to muse about the origins. He'd always played a lot of games: baseball, basketball, different card games, war and finance games, horseracing, football, and so on, all on paper of course. Once, he'd got involved in a tabletop war-games club, played by mail, with mutual defense pacts, munition sales, secret agents, and even assassinations, but the inability of the other players to detach themselves from their narrow-minded historical preconceptions depressed Henry. Anything more complex than a normalized two-person zero-sum game was beyond them. Henry had invented for them a variation on Monopoly, using twelve, sixteen, or twenty-four boards at once and an unlimited number of players, which opened up the possibility of wars run by industrial giants with investments on several boards at once, the buying off of whole governments, the emergence of international communications and utilities barons, strikes and rebellions by the slumdwellers between "Go" and "Jail," revolutionary subversion and sabotage with sympathetic ties across the boards, the creation of international regulatory bodies by the established power cliques, and yet without losing any of the basic features of their own battle games, but it never caught on. He even introduced health, sex, religious, and character variables, but that made even less of a hit, though he did manage, before leaving the club, to get a couple pieces on his "Intermonop" game published in some of the club literature.