Field of Fantasies

by Rick Wilber

  “Hype-00!” Red shouted.

  “What was that!” Hiram called to Kirby, jokingly, as if Kirby had thrown some trick junk pitch. But it was just a fastball, a plain fastball.

  Kirby blinked; Rowland had just put down a sign. Two fingers. And Kirby heard Roger’s voice from behind him, in center, where he had probably seen the sign, too, shouting “Come on, give it to him, now, come on now!”

  Kirby threw the forkball. He held onto it a tad too long, and the ball bounced in the dirt, but Hiram had started his swing early, and he golfed at it and missed.

  “Hy-ee! Yer out!” Red screamed and gave a theatrical flourish as he pumped his fist.

  Hiram didn’t joke now. He stared at Kirby all the way back to the dugout. The guys on the bench gave him a hard time, some of them imitating that last duck-assed swing, and laughing. Jose was next.

  Rowland called for the fastball and Kirby threw it. And again, and again. And Jose went down swinging, though it was a better swing. Hoots were coming from the stands now—“I told you none of you could hit the side of a bam!”—and the pitchers were starting to sit up a bit on the bench. Their jocularity was undiminished, but each man began to pay a bit more attention to Kirby’s delivery. They groaned wildly when the third of their number also went down on strikes.

  Rowland jogged out to the mound. “So do we take a break between innings or what?”

  “I just need some water,” Kirby said, and Rowland motioned for one of the bat boys to bring him a bottle. He took a swig, resettled his cap, and was ready to throw again.

  The first batter to hit a ball into fair territory came in the fourth inning, when Hiram came to bat again. This time he swung late at a pitch, but got wood on the ball, and hit a soft three-hopper right to Hatteberg at first. An easy out.

  “Thank god!” Roger shouted. “We’re starting to get bored out here!” But he did not sound bored.

  Kirby, for his part, had stopped counting the outs. There had been no one on base so there had been no need to know when the third out came and cleared them. The breaks were brief. In one, a new catcher came in, had a brief chat with Rowland, but to Kirby nothing had changed. He would set, look for the glove, throw, and then wait for the ball to come arcing back to him. Sometimes he would grip the ball across the seams, sometimes along the seams—that was the only change in his world. Oh, and sometimes the batters were left-handed, but even that didn’t seem to matter since none of them could hit him.

  When it got to be the end of the sixth, he started to hear the shouting again. There was a lot of it, and more of it was aimed at him. “C’mon Kirby, attaboy!” Things like that, from voices he did not recognize. But it echoed against the inside of his skull—he heard it without noticing it. He was too intent on just keeping his motion the same, his leg kick, his follow-through.

  Here was Hiram again. There were no jokes from him this time, no smile on his face. He dug in and waggled the bat. Kirby blinked as his brain did the math. If they had eleven men in their lineup, and this was the start of the third time through, then Hiram was the twenty third man. Almost done.

  Perhaps the thought broke his rhythm or perhaps he was tiring, but the next two pitches were wide of the strike zone by an obvious margin.

  “Whatsa matter, Wilky?” Hiram called, suddenly animated again. “Afraid I’ve figured you out?”

  The catcher called for time and came jogging up to Kirby. Kirby was shocked to realize it was Hatteberg, which meant someone else was at first base, now. He filed that away in his brain as he tried to hear what Hatty was saying. “I’m flying open?”

  “Yeah, your shoulder. Down and hard. Come on.” He gave Kirby a pat on the butt and then jogged back behind the plate. Kirby blinked. It was word for word what he had told many pitchers, many times. Surreal.

  Hatty pointed at him with the glove, pounded his fist in it, and called for the fastball.

  Kirby kicked, fired, it went in for a strike, right down Broadway. Hiram shook his head as if to clear it. Kirby could almost imagine what Hatty was saying, under his breath, to Hiram then, because it was what Kirby would say. “You just don’t expect it to be right there, do you?”

  So now, come back with it again, or try the splitter? The splitter. Kirby nodded, kicked, and brought his arm through his motion. Hatty caught the ball just below Hiram’s knees and then whipped his glove up an inch or two.

  “H—” Red began, but then thought better of it. “Ball three.”

  “Nice frame job,” Hiram said to Hatteberg.

  Kirby kept his eyes trained on Hatteberg’s hand and his glove. Okay, again. This time Hiram tried his golf swing again, but fouled the ball off. Full count.

  Come back with the fastball, Kirby thought, and nodded as Hatteberg thought the same thing. Kirby was already visualizing Hiram’s swing how he would swing late on this extra-fast fastball, and have to go back to the bench, defeated. The sun was hot—the morning breeze always died by mid-afternoon—and Kirby could feel sweat making the sleeves of his undershirt stick to his armpits. Here it comes, he thought.

  As soon as he released the ball, he knew he had made the classic mistake. Trying to put a little extra on it, he had muscled up and instead slowed the ball down, flattened it out. Hiram put a huge swing on it and the ball sailed up and up, straight over Kirby’s head.

  “Roger!” Kirby wasn’t the only one shouting.

  Clemens turned this way and that, everyone on the field, in the whole ballpark thinking, that’s the toughest play a center fielder has to make, the ball hit straight to the middle, but Roger kept going back and back, and finally turned, backped-aling and then stretching back over his head, giving half a leap and snaring the ball in the edge of the webbing of his glove. He somersaulted backwards and then sat up, holding the glove in the air to the whoops and hollers of all assembled.

  “Hot shit! Sign that kid up!”

  “Rocket, who knew?”

  “Yahoo!”

  And Hiram’s voice, too. “No way! No fucking way!” He had already passed second base when Roger made the catch, and as he jogged back to the dugout he did not make eye contact with Kirby.

  Kirby waited for the ball to come back to him, then got a drink. He glanced into the pitchers’ dugout and found most of them sitting in dejected postures, batting gloves strewn about. Hiram was shaking his head and still saying “No way, no way.”

  Red hollered. “Four outs to go.”

  Jose stood in, and barely waved at three pitches before going sheepishly back to the bench.

  “Aw, c’mon!” Hiram chastised him. “Didn’t you see that drive! We’re getting to him now!” But none of the others looked like they really wanted to go through with it. “Gimme that bat.”

  Kirby just shrugged when Red gave him a look like “is this in the rules?” If Hiram wanted to make the last three outs, that was fine with Kirby. Hiram was jazzed now, surely he’d overswing—and indeed, they got him to pop up a high fastball which Hatty caught right between the plate and the backstop.

  “Two to go,” Red said.

  “Dammit,” Hiram said, digging in again.

  They went after him again, with a similar result, this time the pop-up went to Kirby himself. He felt it land in his glove and his pinky twinged horribly. He shook it off, climbed back up on the mound, and waited for Hiram to get back in the box.

  This time he tried to start him off with a splitter, but it bounced in the dirt, Hiram didn’t swing, and it was ball one. Kirby tried to come back with the fastball but it sailed outside, and it was ball two.

  Hatteberg visited the mound, his red eyebrows pale in the strong sunlight. “Do you want to walk him?”

  “What?”

  “Is this the unintentional intentional walk, or are you really just so gassed that you can’t hit the strike zone anymore?”

  “I don’t know. How many pitches do you think I’ve thrown?”

  “Ninety? A hundred?”

  They both thought about that a moment and
Hiram shouted “Come on, guys, we haven’t got all day!”

  “Jerk,” Hatteberg said, but where only Kirby could see it. “Hang in there, let’s get him.”

  But the next one was a fastball that Kirby overthrew and Hatteberg had to jump up out of his crouch to make sure it didn’t hit Red.

  Hiram began to crow. “He’s got a perfect game on the line and he’s going to walk me? Lil’ ol’ me?”

  Kirby coughed. Perfect game, my ass, he thought. This isn't a game. In fact, I don’t know what it is. Then he realized he was about to walk a pitcher, for god’s sake, and if there are cardinal sins in baseball, that had to be one of them, no matter what the situation.

  What am I doing out here, anyway? he thought. This is all about Hiram's ego, not mine. Maybe I ought to just cookie one in there, let him hit the damn thing, that’d make a good story, wouldn't it? How I no-hit them all day until the very last out... ? It was tempting, like he could be Fate for one moment.

  But then he could hear Roger screaming. “Come on, damn it, Kirby, let’s finish this and go home! Just put him away already! Don’t make me come over there and do it!”

  And the people in the stands, the other players, the office girls, everyone, they were all shouting. It didn’t matter this was just a lark, that it didn’t “count.” Kirby suddenly didn’t want to disappoint anyone, either.

  Just throw the hall, he thought. That’s the only part I can control Just throw the hall

  Hatty dropped down two fingers. Kirby adjusted his grip, kicked his leg, and let it fly.

  Hiram, who had gotten stiff standing there while Kirby mused, swung late, just got a little wood on it, and it was another pop-up. Hatteberg screamed “I got it! I got it!” Flung the mask away so hard it hit Red in the stomach and doubled him over, and then he did get it, the ball landing nicely in the round pocket of the catcher’s mitt.

  Hatteberg leaped in the air “Yes!” and ran to give the ball to Kirby. Kirby had pumped his fist as the ball came down, but now seemed bewildered by the rushing, jumping teammates all around him, slapping him on the back—no, pounding him on the back—and shouting. And the next few minutes were a blur, of Hiram shaking his hand and saying well, you know, pitchers can’t hit worth a lick, and Roger signing the ball and getting the other guys to add their signatures to it, and asking what the date was so it could be written on there, and more slaps on the back and invitations for dinner, drinks, rounds of golf on the next off day, as the whole gaggle of players made their way back into the clubhouse finally to get out of the afternoon heat and humidity.

  So it was, flushed with success but with his pinky and his arm hurting like never before that Kirby Wilcox came to his locker to stow the souvenir ball, only to find all his gear neatly packed, the bunting gone, his name gone—though the twenty was still there. Hatteberg stared with his mouth open, but Roger just shook Kirby’s hand—the one without the sprained finger. “Thanks. That was fun. Keep the glove.”

  It was Red who came by and told him he was on the disabled list, officially, and so was booted to minor league camp.

  Kirby ripped down the twenty, suddenly feeling like a gate-crasher. His ticket had been revoked. He couldn’t leave fast enough. He handed the twenty to the bat boy on his way out the door, as he repeated to himself over and over, That’s baseball, that’s baseball

  Edo van Belkom is an award-winning author and editor. He has published eight novels and more than two hundred short stories. He has edited several anthologies, including the influential Baseball Fantastic, which he co-edited with W. P. Kinsella. This story was his first short-story sale and was reprinted in Year's Best Horror Stories in 1991. The story asks, is there a limit to how much arcane baseball knowledge one person can retain? Dr. Doubleday doesn't think so.

  Baseball Memories

  Edo van Belkom

  THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG with Sam Goldman’s memory. Not really.

  He forgot the odd birthday or anniversary but no one ever thought him more than slightly absent-minded.

  Sam remembered what he wanted to remember. His wife Bea could tell him a hundred times to take out the garbage but he never took notice of her, especially when he was doing something important—like watching a baseball game on television.

  Sam liked baseball, not just watching it, but everything about the game. He was a fan in the truest sense of the word—he was a fanatic. He was also a student of the game and as a student he studied it with a peculiar passion that made everything else in his life sometimes seem secondary. Sam was never absent-minded when it came to baseball. Where baseball was concerned, Sam’s memory was an informational steel-trap, a vault containing all sorts of trivial information. Inside Sam’s head were the numbers for hitting averages, home runs, stolen bases, RBIs, and ERAs for just about anybody who was or had been anything in the sport.

  Sam’s head for figures made him a great conversationalist at parties; as long as the talk centered around his favorite subject he was fine. Once he got his hands on somebody who was willing to quiz him or be quizzed on baseball trivia, he never let them out of his sight. The only way to get rid of Sam at a party was to ask him how much he knew about hockey—which was nothing at all.

  Some of Sam’s friends began calling him “Psychlo” because he was a walking, talking encyclopedia of baseball to which they could refer to at any time to clear up some finer point of the game. His friends would be sitting in a circle on the deck in Sam’s back yard talking baseball over a few beers when some statistic would come under question and the discussion’s decibel level would get turned up a few notches. It was up to Sam to turn the volume back down and restore order with the right answer.

  “Sammy, what did George Bell hit on the road in 1986?”

  “.293,” Sam would say without hesitation.

  “And how many homers?”

  “Sixteen of his thirty-one were hit on the road.”

  “See I told you . . .” one friend would say to another, proved correct by the circle’s supreme authority.

  Sam considered himself gifted. He thought that what he had was a natural talent for numbers, something that might, at the very least, get him on the cover of a magazine or onto some local talk show.

  It had begun as a hobby, something he liked to do with a cup of coffee and a book late at night after the rest of the family had gone to bed. Lately, however, it had become something more, something abnormal, if you asked Bea.

  But even though Bea wasn’t crazy about baseball or her husband’s love affair with the game, she put up with it as most wives do with their husband’s vices. She thought it was better for their marriage if Sam spent his nights at home with his nose buried in a baseball fact book instead of in a bar flirting with some woman with an “x” in her first name.

  “As long as he sticks to baseball it’s pretty harmless,” she always said.

  And then one day she began to wonder.

  The two were sitting at the breakfast table one Saturday morning when Sam said something that put a doubt in her mind about her husband’s mental well-being.

  “Why don’t we take a drive up north today and visit your cousin Ralph?” he said.

  Bea was shocked. She looked at Sam for several seconds as if trying to find some visible proof that he was losing his mind.

  “Ralph died last winter, don’t you remember? We went to the funeral, there was six inches of snow on the ground and you bumped into my mother’s car in the church parking lot. She still hasn’t forgiven you for it.”

  Sam was shocked too. He could remember how many triples Dave Winfield hit the last three seasons but the death of his wife’s cousin had somehow slipped his mind.

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. What the hell am I thinking about?” he said and then added after a brief silence. “I better go out and wash the car.”

  Things were fairly normal the next few weeks. Sam was still able to wow his friends with his lightning-fast answers and astounding memory. As long as baseball was in season Sam w
as one of the most popular guys around.

  A co-worker of Sam’s even figured out a way to make money with his head for figures. Armed with The Sports Encyclopedia of Baseball, they’d go out to some bar where nobody knew about Sam and bet some sucker he couldn’t stump Sam with a question.

  “Who led the Cleveland Indians in on-base percentage in 1952?” the sucker would ask, placing a ten-dollar bill on top of the bar.

  “Larry Doby, .541, good enough to lead the American League that year,” Sam would answer. After a quick check in the encyclopedia, the two had some pocket change for the week.

  Sam was astonished at the financial rewards his talent had brought him. He had always thought himself something of an oddball, but if he could make some money at it—tax free to boot—then why the hell not. The prospect of riches made him study the stats even harder, always looking to increasingly older baseball publications to make sure he knew even the most trivial statistic.

  “Well, would you look at that,” he would say as his eyes bore down on the page and his brain went through the almost computer-like process of defining, processing and filing another little-known fact. It took less than ten seconds for him to remember forever that a guy by the name of Noodles Hahn led the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff in 1901 with a 22—19 record. Hahn pitched 41 complete games that year and had two-hundred and thirty-nine strikeouts to lead the league in both categories. No mean feat considering the Reds finished last that season with a 52—87 record.

  The information was stored in a little cubbyhole deep within Sam’s brain and could be recalled anytime, like a book shelved in a library picked up for the first time in fifty years. The book, a little dusty perhaps, would always tell the same story.

  Bea went to see Manny Doubleday, their family physician, the morning after Sam did another all-nighter with his books.

  While it was true Sam had bought her some fine things since he’d been making money in bars, Bea felt the items were bought with tainted money. The fur coat had been hanging in the hall closet since the day Sam had bought it for her, not because it was the middle of summer, but because she was ashamed of it. She never showed it to guests, even those who might have thought Bea the luckiest girl in the world—and Sam the greatest husband.