Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  Arnaz looks at him and the silence goes on and on. When the little Cuban finally speaks, it is like wind through pine trees near a sea, like years of walls there. “Forgive me for what I am about to say, Señor Castro, but like many men in your profession, you are very naive. You hear a rumor and from it imagine a revolution. You hear the name of Jose Marti invoked by those who would invoke any name to suit their purposes and from this suddenly imagine that it is your duty to become involved.

  “It would hurt you seriously, Señor Castro,” Arnaz continues, “were word of this concern of yours—of our meeting and your very words to me today—to become public. Were that to happen, I assure you, you would find yourself in an unfavorable public light, one that would have consequences for you professionally for many, many years, for your family in Cuba, for your girlfriend here. I will not mention your visit to anyone. I trust you will do the same.”

  Arnaz is getting up. “I would also suggest, Señor Castro, that you leave matters of the kind you have been so concerned with to the politicians, to our presidents in Washington and Havana, who have wisdom in such things.”

  Fidel is nodding, rising, too. He can feel the heat of the shame on his face. They are at the door. The chauffeur is standing by the limousine. Arnaz is telling him goodbye, wishing him good luck and a fine baseball season. The gracious smile is there, the manly handshake somehow, and now the limousine is carrying him back down the driveway toward the gate.

  The despair that fills him is vast, as vast as the uncleared forests beyond the sugarcane and tobacco fields of Oriente Province, lifting only when the limousine is free of the gate and he can think of Nancy again—her face, her hair—and can realize that, yes, she would look good with red hair, that indeed he would like her hair to be such an amazing red.

  The publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950 established Ray Bradbury as one of the great visionaries of fantastic fiction. Author of some six hundred short stories and more than thirty books, including Dandelion Wine, The Illustrated Man, I Sing the Body Electric, and that great classic, Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury received many major mainstream literary awards like the PEN Center USA West Lifetime Achievement Award, while also receiving the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Here, Bradbury blends two great classics together in a poem that uses the dark violence of Herman Melville's Moby Dick to deconstruct and reimagine the great baseball classic, "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Lawrence Thayer.

  Ahab at the Helm

  Ray Bradbury

  With apologies to Herman Melville and the illustrious author of Casey at the Bat, Ernest Lawrence Thayer.

  It looked extremely rocky for the Melville nine that day,

  The score stood at two lowerings, with one lowering yet to play,

  And when Fedallah died and rose, and others did the same,

  A pallor wreathed the features of the patrons of this Game.

  A straggling few downed-oars to go, leaving behind the rest,

  With that hope which springs eternal from the blind dark human breast.

  They prayed that Captain Ahab’s rage would thrust, strike, overwhelm!

  They’d wager “Death to Moby!” with old Ahab at the helm.

  But Flask preceded Ahab, and likewise so did Stubb,

  And the former was a midget, while the latter was a nub.

  Behold! the stricken multitudes in silence pent did swoon,

  For when, oh when would Ahab rise to hurl his dread harpoon?!

  First Flask let drive a gaffing hook. The wonderment of all!

  Then much-despised Stubb’s right arm brought blood and bile and gall!

  But when the mist had lifted. Ishmael saw what had occurred:

  Flask stood safe in the second boat, while Stubb clutched to the third.

  Then from the gladdened whaling-men went up a joyous yell,

  It bounded from the tidal hills and echoed in the dell,

  It struck upon the soaring wave, shook Pequod’s mast and keel,

  For Ahab, mighty Ahab, was advancing with his steel.

  There was ease in Ahab’s manner as he stepped into his place,

  There was pride in Ahab’s bearing and a smile on Ahab’s face;

  The cheers, the wildest shoutings, did not him overwhelm,

  No man in all that crowd could doubt, 'twas Ahab at the helm.

  Four dozen eyes fixed on him as he coiled the hempen rope,

  Two dozen tongues applauded as he raised his steel, their hope.

  And while the writhing Moby ground the whale-boats with his hip,

  Defiance gleamed from Ahab’s eye, a sneer curled Ahab’s lip.

  And now the white-fleshed monster came a-hurtling through the air,

  While Ahab stood despising it in haughty grandeur there!

  Close by the sturdy harpooner the Whale unheeded sped—

  “That ain’t my style,” said Ahab.

  “Strike! Strike!” Good Starbuck said.

  From the longboats black with sailors there uprose a sullen roar,

  Like the beating of mad storm waves on a stem and distant shore:

  “Kill Starbuck! Kill the First Mate!” shouted someone of the band.

  And it’s likely they’d have done so had not Ahab raised his hand.

  With a smile of Christian charity great Ahab’s visage shone,

  He stilled the rising tumult and he bade the Chase go on.

  He signalled to the White Whale, and again old Moby flew.

  But still Ahab ignored it. Ishmael cried, “Strike! Strike, man!” too.

  “Fraud!” yelled the rebel sailors, and sea-echoes answered, “Fraud!”

  But one scornful glance from Ahab and his audience was awed.

  They saw his face grow pale and cold, they saw his muscles strain,

  And they knew that Ahab’s fury would not pass that Whale again.

  The sneer is gone from Ahab’s lips, his teeth are clenched in hate,

  He pounds with cruel violence his harpoon upon his pate,

  And now old Moby gathers power, and now he lets it go.

  And now the air is shattered by the force of Ahab’s blow!

  Oh, somewhere on the Seven Seas, the sun is shining bright,

  The hornpipe plays yet somewhere and somewhere hearts are light;

  And somewhere teachers laugh and sing, and somewhere scholars shout,

  But there is no joy in Melville—mighty Ahab has Struck Out.

  Robert Coover is a major literary voice as a novelist and writer. He has published a dozen novels and dozens of shorter works for publications like Harper's and the New Yorker, and his novel. The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop, is one of the cornerstones of modern baseball fantasy. In this story, Coover gives us a pitcher trapped inside a poem that only he seems to understand, and in that understanding he gives vent to sharp satire about baseball scholars, literary criticism, poetry, and the national pastime. As McDuff notes, there's always something richly ludicrous about extremity. And wonderfully so.

  McDuff on the Mound

  Robert Coover

  IT WASN’T MUCH, a feeble blooper over second, call it luck, but it was enough to shake McDuff. He stepped weakly off the left side of the pitcher’s mound, relieved to see his catcher Gus take the job of moving down behind the slow runner to back up the throw in to first. Fat Flynn galloped around the bag toward second, crouched apelike on the basepath, waggled his arms, then bounded back to first as the throw came in from short center. McDuff felt lightheaded. Flynn’s soft blooper had provoked a total vision that iced his blood. Because the next batter up now was Blake: oh yes, man, it was all too clear. “Today’s my day,” McDuff told himself, as though taking on the cares of the world. He tucked his glove in his armpit briefly, wiped the sweat from his brow, resettled his cap, thrust his hand back into his glove.

  Gus jogged over to the mound before going back behind the plate, running splayl
egged around the catcher’s guard that padded his belly. McDuff took the toss from first, over Gus’s head, stood staring dismally at Flynn, now edging flatfooted away from the bag, his hands making floppy loosewristed swirls at the cuffs of his Mudville knickers. Gus spat, glanced back over his shoulder at first, then squinted up at McDuff. “Whatsa matter, kid?”

  McDuff shrugged, licked his dry lips. “I don’t know, Gus. I tried to get him.” He watched Flynn taunt, flapping his hands like donkey ears, thumbing his nose.

  The hoodoo. Rubbing it in. Did he know? He must. “I really tried.” He remembered this nightmare, running around basepaths, unable to stop.

  Gus grinned, though, ignoring the obvious: “Nuts, the bum was lucky. C’mon, kid, ya got this game in ya back pocket!” He punched McDuff lightly in the ribs with his stiff platter of a mitt, spat in encouragement, and joggled away in a widelegged trot toward home plate, head cocked warily toward first, where Flynn bounced insolently and made insulting noises. Settling then into his crouch, and before pulling his mask down, Gus jerked his head at the approaching batter and winked out at McDuff. Turkey Blake. Blake the cake. Nothing to it. A joke. Maybe Gus is innocent, McDuff thought. Maybe not.

  Now, in truth, McDuff was not, by any standard but his own, in real trouble. Here it was, the bottom of the ninth, two away, one more out and the game was over, and he had a fat two-run lead going for him. A lot of the hometown Mudville fans had even given it up for lost and had started shuffling indifferently toward the exits. Or was their shuffle a studied shuffle and itself a cunning taunt? A mocking rite like Flynn’s buffoonery at first? Had they shuffled back there in the shadows just to make Flynn’s fluke hit sting more? It was more than McDuff could grasp, so he scratched his armpits and tried to get his mind off it. Now, anyway, they were all shuffling back. And did they grin as they shuffled? Too far away to tell. But they probably did, goddamn them. You’re making it all up, he said. But he didn’t convince himself. And there was Blake. Blake the Turkey. Of course.

  Blake was the league clown, the butt. Slopeshouldered, potbellied, broad-rumped, bandylegged. And a long goiter-studded neck with a small flat head on top, overlarge cap down around the ears. They called him “Turkey,” Blake the Turkey. The fans cheered him with a gobbling noise. And that’s just what they did now as he stepped up: gobbled and gobbled. McDuff could hardly believe he had been brought to this end, that it was happening to him, even though he had known that sooner or later it must. Blake had three bats. He gave them a swing and went night off his feet. Gobble gobble gobble. Then he got up, picked out two bats, chose one, tossed the other one away, but as though by mistake, hung on to it, went sailing with it into the bat racks. Splintering crash. Mess of broken bats. Gobble gobble. McDuff, in desperation, pegged the ball to first, but Flynn was sitting on the bag, holding his quaking paunch, didn’t even run when the ball got away from the first baseman, just made gobbling noises.

  Vaguely, McDuff had seen it coming, but he’d figured on trouble from Cooney and Burroughs right off. A four-to-two lead, last inning, four batters between him and Casey, two tough ones and two fools, it was all falling into place: get the two tying runs on base, then two outs, and bring Casey up. So he’d worked like a bastard on those two guys, trying to head it off. Should’ve known better, should’ve seen that would have been too easy, too pat, too painless. McDuff, a practical man with both feet on the ground, had always tried to figure the odds, and that’s where he’d gone wrong. But would things have been different if Cooney and Burroughs had hit him? Not substantially maybe, there’d still be much the same situation and Casey yet to face. But the stage wouldn’t have been just right, and maybe, because of that, somehow, he’d have got out of it.

  Cooney, tall, lean, one of the best percentage hitters in the business: by all odds, see, it should have been him. That’s what McDuff had thought, so when he’d sucked old Cooney into pulling into an inside curve and grounding out, third to first, he was really convinced he’d got himself over the hump. Even if Burroughs should hit him, it was only a matter of getting Flynn and Blake out, and they never gave anybody any trouble. And Burroughs didn’t hit him! Big barrelchested man with a bat no one else in the league could even lift—some said it weighed half a ton—and he’d wasted all that power on a cheap floater, sent it dribbling to the mound and McDuff himself had tossed him out. Hot damn! he’d cried. Waiting for fat Flynn to enter the batter’s box, he’d even caught himself giggling. And then that unbelievable blooper. And—bling!—the light.

  McDuff glared now at Blake, wincing painfully as though to say: get serious, man! Blake was trying to knock the dirt out of his cleats. But each time he lifted his foot, he lost his balance and toppled over. Gobble gobble gobble. Finally, there on the ground, teetering on his broad rump, he took a healthy swing with the bat at his foot. There was a bang like a firecracker going off, smoke, and the shoe sailed into the stands. Turkey Blake hobbled around in mock pain (or real pain: who could tell and what did it matter? McDuff’s pain was real), trying to grasp his stockinged foot, now smoking faintly, but he was too round in the midriff, too short in the arms, to reach it. Gobble gobble gobble. Someone tossed the shoe back and it hit him in the head: bonk! Blake toppled stiffly backwards, his short bandy legs up in the air as though he were dead. Gobble gob—

  McDuff, impatient, even embittered, for he felt the injury of it, went into his stretch. Blake leaped up, grabbed a bat from the mad heap, came hopping, waddling, bounding, however the hell it was he moved, up to the plate to take his place. It turned out that the bat he’d picked up was one he’d broken in his earlier act. It was only about six inches long, the rest hanging from it as though by a thread. McDuff felt himself at the edge of tears. The crowd gobbled on, obscenely, delightedly. Blake took a preparatory backswing, and the dangling end of the bat arced around and hit him on the back of the head with a hollow exaggerated clunk. He fell across the plate. Even the umpire now was emitting frantic gobbling sounds and holding his trembling sides. Flynn the fat baserunner called time-out and came huffing and puffing in from first to resuscitate his teammate. McDuff, feeling all the strength go out of him, slumped despairingly off the mound. He picked up the rosin bag and played with it, an old nervous habit that now did not relieve him.

  His catcher Gus came out. “Gobble gobble,” he said.

  McDuff winced in hurt. “Gus, for God’s sake, cut that out!” he cried. Jesus, they were all against him!

  Gus laughed. “Whatsa matter, kid? These guys buggin’ ya?” He glanced back toward the plate, where Flynn was practicing artificial respiration on Blake’s ass-end, sitting on Blake’s small head. “It’s all in the game, buddy. Don’t forget: gobble and the world gobbles with ya! Yak yak!” McDuff bit his lip. Past happy Gus, he could see Flynn listening to Blake’s butt for a breath of life.

  “Play baseball and you play with yourself,” McDuff said sourly, completing Gus’s impromptu aphorism.

  “Yeah, you,got it, kid!” howled Gus, jabbing McDuff in the ribs with his mitt, then rolling back onto the grass in front of the mound, holding his sides, giddy tears springing from his eyes, tobacco juice oozing out his cheeks.

  There was a loud moist sound at the plate, like air escaping a toy balloon, and it was greeted by huzzahs and imitative noises from the stands. Flynn jumped up, lifted one of Blake’s feet high in the air in triumph, and planted his fallen baseball cap in the clown’s crotch, making Blake a parody of Blake, were such a thing absurdly possible. Cheers and courteous gobbling. Blake popped up out of the dust, swung at Flynn, hit the ump instead.

  “Why don’t they knock it off?” McDuff complained.

  “Whaddaya mean?” asked Gus, now sober at his side.

  “Why don’t they just bring on Casey now and let me get it over with? Why do they have to push my nose in it first?”

  “Casey!” Gus laughed loosely. “Never happen, kid. Blake puts on a big show, but he’d never hit you, baby, take it from old Gus. You’ll get him and the
game’s over. Nothin’ to it.” Gus winked reassuringly, but McDuff didn’t believe it. He no longer believed Gus was so goddamn innocent either.

  Flynn was bounding now, in his apelike fashion, toward first base, but Blake had a grip on his suspenders. Flynn’s short fat legs kept churning away and the dust rose, but he was getting nowhere. Then Blake let go—whap!—and Flynn blimped nonstop out to deep right field. Gobble gobble gobble. While

  Flynn was cavorting back in toward first, Blake, unable to find his own hat, stole the umpire’s. It completely covered his small flat head, down to the goiter, and Blake staggered around blind, bumping into things. Gobble. The ump grabbed up Blake’s cap from where it had fallen and planted it defiantly on his own head. A couple gallons of water flooded out and drenched him. Gobble. Blake tripped over home plate and crashed facefirst to the dirt again. The hat fell off. Gobble. The umpire took off his shoes and poured the water out. A fish jumped out of one of them. Gobble. Blake spied his own hat on the umpire’s soggy head and went for it. Gobble. The ump relinquished it willingly, in exchange for his own. The ump was wary now, however, and inspected the hat carefully before putting it back on his head. He turned it inside out, thumped it, ran his finger around the lining. Satisfied at last, he put the hat on his head and a couple gallons of water flooded out on him. Gobble boggle, said the crowd, and the umpire said: “PLAY BALL,!”

  Flynn was more or less on first, Blake in the box, the broken bat over his shoulder. McDuff glanced over toward the empty batter-up circle, then toward the Mudville dugout. Casey had not come out. Casey’s style. And why should he? After all, Blake hadn’t had a hit all season. Maybe in all history. He was a joke. McDuff considered walking Blake and getting it over with. Or was there any hope of that: of “getting it over with”? Anyway, maybe that’s just what they wanted him to do, maybe it was how they meant to break him. No, he was a man meant to play this game, McDuff was, and play it, by God, he would. He stretched, glanced at first, studied Gus’s signal, glared at Turkey Blake. The broken end of the bat hung down Blake’s sunken back and tapped his bulbous rump. He twitched as though shooing a fly, finally turned around to see who or what was back there, feigned great surprise at finding no one. Gobble gobble. He resumed his batter’s stance. McDuff protested the broken bat on the grounds it was a distraction and a danger to the other players. The umpire grumbled, consulted his rulebook. Gus showed shock. He came out to the mound and asked: “Why make it any easier for him, kid?”