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

by Robert Coover

  She came up to him. He hadn't noticed her there before. She winked cheaply and asked: "How's Damon's pitching arm tonight?"

  "He's dead."

  "Hunh?"

  "Damon Rutherford is dead."

  It was as though he'd struck her in the face. He asked Jake for another. When he looked again, she was gone. He turned to Tim Shadwell. "How's the boy coming along?"

  "Who?"

  "Your son. Thornton. Going to be ready next year?"

  It was the wrong question. Shadwell began to break. Tears bubbled out. "When I saw that boy there today, Barney . . . in that.. . that box ... so ... so dead ... I kept thinking ... I kept feeling . . . my own boy . . . I'm afraid, Bamey . . . he's so young . . ."

  And you're so old. Don't kid me, Shadwell. "He can take care of himself, Tim." As though to make matters worse,

  Sandy struck up "The Happy Hours of Youth," and Tim and the other guys joined mournfully in . . .

  Oh, rookies, come along

  And hear m' sad song!

  Old age is the bane o' mankind!

  So enjoy while ya may

  The fair spring day,

  Cause the blue season ain't far behind!

  Oh, the happy sunny da-hays of old!

  When our feet were fleet and our hearts were

  bold!

  There's nothin' so fine in the world to behold

  As the happy hours of youth!

  When the years're green

  And the hits come clean,

  You're honored among the athletes ;

  But they'll come a day

  When they won't letcha play,

  And like us, you must hang up yer cleats!

  Oh, the happy sunny . . .

  Glorious days, bold hearts: Barney, you're just an old fool like the rest of them. Some of the boys were snuffling, most had a sparkle in their eye, as they harmonized on the chorus. Distantly, he heard Rooney vomiting. Too much drinking—or maybe it was the cheap sentiment. No letting up, that was Rooney's success. Shit maybe, but hard shit, hard as bricks. Rooney had a lot of fire all right, but there was no real life in it. It was fratricidal. Destructive. Divisive. But are you really Bure, Barney? Maybe the old sonuvabitch had the truth after all. Beside him, Tim Shadwell, all choked up, sang brokenly, soddenly, loudly. Nauseating, all right. Yet there was something human there. If Rooney did have the truth, Barney didn't want it. He entered in ... into the soft shit...

  You're a rookie jist once

  And kin beat outcher bunts

  While yer years still number few;

  But the day will come

  When yer legs won't run,

  And you'll bid this League a-huh-dieu!

  Oh, the happy sunny da-hays of old!

  (Oh, the happy happy sunny sunny glorious days of old!)

  When our feet were fleet and our

  hearts were bold!

  (When our cleated feet were fleet and true

  hearts were ever bold!)

  There's nothin—nn' so fine in the world

  to behold

  (There is nothin' quite so fine in the wide world

  ever told)

  As the happy hours of youth!

  (As the happy sunny hours of youth!)

  "Heh-hey!"

  "Ya-hoo!"

  "Oh, that was beautiful, Sandy!"

  "Brings back the old days!"

  "The happy hours of youth!" Tim Shadwell exclaimed and blew his nose, and there were melancholic mutterings of assent around the barroom, and then a soft silence. The moment was ripe, and Sandy probably had a new song ready, McCaffree supposed, for the occasion. Rooney's retching seemed to have stopped. Maybe the old sonuvabitch was dead ... ? Not likely. Even old Gus Maloney, stogie stuffed defiantly in his fat jowls, derby tipped down his bald pate toward his nose, seemed to have a tear in his eye, though one could never be sure, the old bastard may have worked it up for a vote or two.

  The UBA Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree sat alone in his darkened and gloomy office staring morosely at the barroom scene on one of his television sets. Jake Bradley was a loyal Legalist and his bar was a popular hangout, so the installation of a camera there had been a natural for the party. He'd noticed that gatherings like this one always did something to the ones who came. Changed their politics, altered their view of reality, transformed them in subtle but often surprising and upsetting ways, and it was something F«nn had to keep an eye on. Especially since he himself functioned poorly in groups. He was a Legalist, the social construct was his central concern, group behavior was his favorite study, but he was, paradoxically, more of a loner even than Rag Rooney. He'd been lucky after all to get a gregarious son-in-law. Long Lew took on Fenn's public role.

  So, he'd watched them gather, watched Pappy Rooney mix them up, watched Gus Maloney and Patrick Monday politick, seen Monday leave early (tailed, of course), watched Maloney's henchman Jaybird Wall—dentures fastened to the seat of his own pants—play his usual run of practical jokes, eavesdropping for Maloney on the side, had watched them drink and sing and wax sentimental, wondering what it was all going to come to.

  Right now, Sandy Shaw was fingering his guitar lightly, tuning up. One of the old Bridegrooms, back in the days of Winthrop and Flynn and Gallagher. Fenn remembered the first time he had to swing against Sandy, his rookie year. Sandy was the ace of that championship Bridegroom team of XIX. Twenty-two wins that year, best season Sandy ever had. He looked harmless: freckled boyish face, light frame, graceful delivery, mild soft-spoken manner. But Sanford Shaw could really mix them up. Fenn had never seen so many different pitches as he looked at that day. Got called out on strikes three times, before he finally hit Shaw: double against the center-field wall. But by then, the Grooms had the game in the bag, and maybe Sandy was letting up. His major weakness. It was never Fenn's. Sandy started making up folk songs in the XX's to cheer up his teammates, those being grim letdown years for the Grooms... "Cellar Dweller Blues" ... "Where Have All the Base Hits Gone?" ... "Benchwarmer's Lament" . . . "Just A-longin' for Home" . . . "The Day They Fired Verne Mackenzie" . . . "No-Hit Nealy" . . . "Gone Down Swingin' Blues" . . . "When Toothbrush Dusted Gus in the Third" . . . fifty or sixty different songs. In his sixties now. No one like him. It'll be a great loss, when he's gone.

  Sandy looked up now at the boys. They were all watching him. Hushed. They all seemed to sense he had a special number, had been waiting for it. Fenn knew, of course, what it would be, and it troubled him. On the other hand, he reasoned, maybe that was the solution: turn it into folklore. Wouldn't be in the way then. Sandy tucked his chin down into soft neck folds, going over the words once in his head maybe, and a kind of shadow passed over his face; then he looked up, and in his soft mellow tenor commenced—slowly, plaintively, syllable by drawn-out syllable—to sing ...

  Hang down your heads, brave men, and weep!

  Young Damon has come to harm!

  They have carried him off to a grave dark

  and deep:

  The boy with the magic arm!

  We had gathered there to celebrate

  His daddy's great career,

  When an ill-fated pitch struck him down at

  the plate:

  The end of a brave Pioneer!

  Hang down your heads, brave men . . .

  Fenn watched their faces. There they were, men turned into boys, whelmed by awe and adolescent wistfulness. In a way, Sandy did them a disservice, provided them with dreams and legends that blocked off their perception of the truth. But what was the truth? Men needed these rituals, after all, that was part of the truth, too, and certainly the Association benefited by them. Men's minds being what they generally were, it was the only way to get to most of them ...

  Oh, who has it been, brought to such grief,

  While pitching a perfect game?

  Whose life has been so bright, so brief?

  Damon Rutherford is his name!

  Hang down your heads, brave men, and weep!

  Young D
amon—

  McCaffree switched off the volume, paced the floor, one eye on the screen. This killing couldn't have come at a worse time. Just when things were looking up. Not his fault, nothing he could have done to prevent it, yet it was bound to have an effect on elections this winter. Damon had been a wonderful league tonic. The whole process had been slowing down, the structure had lost its luster, there'd been rising complaints about meaninglessness and lack of league purpose. His Legalists, for no other reason except that they were the incumbents, had been dropping in popularity polls. And then Damon Rutherford had come along. He'd captured all their hearts, Fenn's included. Brock Rutherford Day had been Fenn's own idea. The whole UBA was suddenly bathed in light and excitement and enthusiasm. Fenn had foreseen an election sweep. Maloney and his Bogglers didn't have a single new issue. Patrick Monday was a rising threat, but at least four years off. The Guildsmen couldn't find a candidate. Total mandate. And then that pitch. He wasn't sure what he could do about it. Investigate the incident, of course. But what if he uncovered the worst possible fact: that Casey had thrown the bean ball on purpose? All pitchers threw one from time to time. All right, a new law maybe, lower the strike zone an inch or two or something, stiffer penalties, but nobody really wanted that. The only conceivable forms of meaningful action at a time like this were all illegal. Which meant, no matter what happened, he'd have to be on the wrong side, so to speak. Of course, he might be able to pressure Sycamore Flynn and the Knickerbocker management into getting rid of Casey. But then what? Monday or Maloney or somebody would probably make an issue of that. Yes, that's right, Monday didn't have to wait four years now. Boggle, boggle. And the empty Guildsmen candidacy was starting to look pretty attractive, too. Gatherings such as this one tonight in Jake's, he saw, were dangerous. He scanned the familiar faces. Gallagher. O'Leary. Stanford. Any one of them could suddenly emerge tonight as a new political figure.

  And with the glamor of this ceremony attached—gilded—to him. Sandy Shaw himself, for example. Yes, they were all with him right now, to be sure. Some eighty or ninety boys there altogether, a small cut of the thousand or so living UBA veterans who made up the electorate, but enough in concert to wield a tremendous force. Yes, damn it, he ought to break it up somehow.

  Sandy's song was over and they were milling about. Small groups were forming up, dispersing, reforming. They'd heard the song and wept and been released. Things would start getting noisier. Sandy Shaw was drinking over there with Shadwell and Bancroft. Jaybird Wall was up to his tiresome tricks again, and Rag Rooney, apparently revived, was back out there seeking new victims. Here and there, arms over each other's shoulders, groups of three or four men were singing together. Well, there were ways he could do it, ways he could bust this thing up and get them out of there, head them home. He reached for the phone. But he hesitated. Enjoyment. What in god's name did enjoyment have to do with people and life and running a goddamn baseball league? He stared dismally at the TV scene. Then, dispiritedly, he did call. He watched Jake appear on the screen, pick up the phone, glance up at the camera, up at him, Universal Baseball Association Chancellor Fennimore McCaffree, alone and full of sorrow, self-pityingly encased in that dark gloom that would pursue him to his grave. "Jake, this is Fenn. Listen ... set the boys up a couple times ... for me. Will you?"

  Things were livening up. Some of the family men had left; but Jake's was still packed and there were still a good many bottles that hadn't got drunk up yet. The collective eye was on Jaybird Wall, whose own night was nearly done. He was into his old ball-chasing act, imitating himself out in left field, losing a fly ball in the sun. Wearing a ball cap over his eyes so just his big red nose stuck out, detoothed mouth agape, using Maloney's derby for a glove, shirttail out, pants sadsackly adroop, shoestrings untied, he rubber-legged around the barroom, trying to spy the falling ball. Sandy picked up his guitar and played a tremolo on a high string. Chants and shouts. "Look out!" Laughter. "I thee it! I thee it!" Jaybird gummed, scrawny arms upstretched to invoke a fair catch, and then, "Glop!", seemed to swallow something. He lowered his chin, pushed back his cap, crossed his eyes, staggered around clutching his throat, then stuffed one finger into his muzzle and leaned over Maloney's derby. He seemed to be prying something out... POP! (sound effects by Jake)—he smiled broadly, produced a baseball from the hat. Applause and laughter. Jaybird beamed, dropped the ball back into Maloney's hat, and with a drunken weave and flourish, grandly donned the derby: CLUNK! (Jake bopping the bar with a beer bottle) and over he went. Descending whistle (the whole crowd in concert): WHOMP (no sound effects needed)! Not to rise again. Not this night anyway. No matter how they whooped and paid him tribute.

  Trench and Rooney dragged Jaybird out to keep him from getting walked on, popped him onto the back-room cot, kept there for the purpose. Who hadn't slept there? Home away from home. Had been for Trench anyway. Sandy had a song about it . . .

  ... I'm all washed up, boys,

  I got the axe, I got the aches;

  Now you'll find me when you want me

  On the sack in the back of Jake's!

  Mel Trench had ended his playing career here in this town, traded to the Pastime Club by the Excelsiors when his deep belts no longer cleared the wall so often, when they had a way instead of getting caught Difference of ten feet maybe, but it was enough. What was the grave, but a difference of six? He'd watched them lower that boy today, put him under the sod, and he himself had had a pretty sinking feeling. Something like he felt when the Cels traded him off to the Patsies. Nothing wrong with the Patsies, great guys, but a comedown after his heyday with the Cels: five championships in seven years! Oh, they were great, and he, Mighty Mel Trench, the Terrible Truncheon, was the greatest by god of them all! Hell-born Melbourne. Look out! Home-run king and the only man in UBA history ever to win the Most Valuable Player Award two years running. Not even Brock Rutherford had done that. But suddenly he lost it. And the Cels packed him off. He didn't deserve that. All the newspapers said so. A deserving guy. A rotten deal. But he wasn't bitter. They all noticed that. Sweet fellow, they said. Swell Mel. And he'd tried like a bastard for the Patsies, hoping for just one more pennant, but the fences just kept backing off, and the Patsies those years were no real contenders. Toward the end, he wasn't much more than a pinch hitter. Benched Trench. Finally, in XLVIII, they let him go. And then, the next year, the Patsies did win the pennant. No mention of Swell Mel then. He slept back here a lot those days. Hellborn.

  Finally, though, it was his old outfit that rescued him, showed up here winter before last with an offer to manage the Excelsiors. Not too much to work with, but at least he couldn't do worse: they had finished LIV in the cellar. So he accepted and gave it all he had . . . and wound up in the cellar again last year anyway. And that was where they still were today.

  En-Trenched. He had to do something, but he didn't know what. Made him want to cry, just thinking about it.

  But anyway he was glad he had come tonight. Helped him see the bigger picture, loosen up a little. All came out the same in the end, he saw that now. Some won, some lost, it didn't really matter; what mattered was ... well... the Association, this whole thing, bigger than all of them, that they were all caught up in. When he tried to picture it in his mind, it fuzzed into a big blur, but in his heart and when they were all together like this, he knew what he meant. Yes, it was a terrific bunch of guys out there tonight. Most of them were old-timers, ballplayers he'd watched as a kid, old heroes, in their late fifties now, some of them—like Rooney and Wall here—even older. Still looked and talked and laughed like ballplayers, though. Something in the blood or the heart or the balls that made you keep going, no matter what. He heard old Sandy Shaw out there, tuning up his guitar again. In his sixties, and Sandy still looked like a freckly-faced kid. Trench felt his own thick paunch. I'll be dead before any of them, he said to himself. Didn't really believe it, though. He looked at old Rooney. Pappy. One of the greatest of all time. Lean face scarred with deep wrinkles now
. White hair. Crinkled leather skin on the back of his neck looked hundreds of years old. Somebody said he had cancer. And yet look at him: still a terrific scrapper, still out there every day, giving it all he had. Wonderful old man. Hall of Fame. Trench wanted to wrap his arm around him, show the old guy he cared, and that he'd truly be sorry when he died. Tomorrow, Rooney was his worst enemy. If Trench didn't get his Cels out of the cellar, he was through, and he had to start tomorrow, had to knock off Rooney's Haymakers. But still, tonight, he could put his arm around the old bastard and swear blood oaths: I'm with you, man. And he knew, when the chips were down, he could count on Rooney, too. That's how it was in this game.