King of Diamonds

Baseball Excerpt

Baseball is unique among team sports in that it's a game without a clock.

Even chess, say baseball's detractors, has a clock. Baseball, its defenders retort, is slow only to slow minds. A curious argument: sports are not usually promoted for their intellectual appeal. But the diamond's unique blend of cerebellular and cerebral challenges may well be what catapulted it onto its pedestal as the National Pastime (in, say its detractors, a national past time).

Ossified as the sport may be, it demands athletic prowess in several aspects, as well as strategy and concentration. Most athletic contests - basketball, soccer, hockey - are all action; only football rivals baseball in its cycles of inaction punctuated by action, and in football the action is predictable, starting when the center snaps the ball to the quarterback. In baseball, inaction is shattered by a surprise explosion.

Take today's Mutant game, with Whizzo Mark Salot IV dueling the lowly Woodpeckers, of whom Foo Foo McGonigle said, "The reason they're in last place is, their hitters don't get to hit against their pitchers, and vice versa." The Woodpeckers' team ERA over the past month bordered on double digits, but in 7 2/3 innings today the Mutants had managed only one run against their hefty lefty, Gas Can Gustaria.

That was one more run than the Woodpeckers had scored off Whizzo. That was also one more run than the Woodpeckers had collected hits off Whizzo.

With two gone in the Mutant eighth, Bimbo Terwilliger worked the count to 3-1. But in the broadcast booth, Bluster Hyman's attention was on Whizzo Mark Salot IV, who sat in the dugout engrossed in earnest conversation with the batboy. "I don't know what they're talking about," Bluster informed the folks at home; "do you suppose it's a prayer to the gods of no-hitters not to lose Whizzo's shot at fame and glory in the final inning?"

Sportscasters and writers forever talk about no-hitters in terms of fame and glory and immortality, as if they were as rare as a nun with a bad habit. As a rabbit in a habit. A rabbi in a habit. As a nun cohabiting a habit with a rabbi and a rabbit. While it's true that hitless games are less common than, say, guttersnipes, or the common cold, or common-law marriages, scarcely a season passes without three or four hurlers attaining no-hit "immortality." Nolan Ryan tossed seven of them by himself. Johnny Van der Meer chalked up two in a row in 1938. Bobo Holloman no-hit the Philadelphia Athletics in his first big-league outing. Fred Toney and Jim "Hippo" Vaughn once threw them at each other in the same game. Look at the ever-burgeoning roster of no-hit pitchers: how much fame and glory sticks to the names of Ed Head, Weldon Henley, Nixey Callahan? A no-hitter is a Day in the Sun, like a grand slam or a 5-for-5, not an instant ticket to Cooperstown. Immortality may be bestowed in an instant and fade into the October sunset at season's end.

Terwilliger flied out. Whizzo jogged to the mound and started his warmups. He fanned Nada Pinson looking and disposed of the always-dangerous "Dos Pesos" Dos Passos, pinch-hitting for Gas Can, on a fly to center. Lorenzo ("Hector") Cacavaca had a good at-bat and walked on 12 pitches.

Charley Orange was thinking that Hector Cacavaca on first, who hadn't been lifted for a pinch-runner, was nonetheless a prime suspect to try to steal second base. The situation called for it, and Cacavaca, not an everyday baserunning threat at 35, was wily and still capable of bursts of speed. Pyjamas Rowland, the Woodpeckers' "little ball" manager, would almost surely send him. Charley, a student of Sabermetrics, didn't believe the steal was sound baseball, but Pyjamas did: the cellar-dwelling Woodpeckers led the league in thefts. The only question was, on which pitch would Cacavaca go? Whizzo's Patooties had lost none of their velocity or hop: Charley started the sequence with fastballs.

Whizzo got the sign and commenced rubbing up the baseball, all the while eyeing Cacavaca at first... Whizzo stretched, turned and tossed the ball gently to first base. Cacavaca, who was no more than six feet off the bag, stepped politely back. Now he led off a little further. Whizzo tossed to first again, a little faster; again Cacavaca was back. Then Whizzo faked a snap throw; the ball arrived slowly but Cacavaca went sprawling in the dirt. He got up, dusted himself off, and extended his lead another foot.

"Y'know," Bluster Hyman extemporized on the air, "baseball has its detractors. There are those who claim the game is too slow and boring. Minutes may go by like this with seemingly no action. But while the dilettantes head for the fridge for a beer, true fans can fall mesmerized into the contest within the contest, which might be likened to two cats staking out territorial boundaries down to the last inch."

Whizzo and Cacavaca proceeded to re-enact their entire ballet. By the seventh throw, Cacavaca had edged his front foot out flush with the green carpet. Whizzo lobbed another one over. Another lob; then he fired a bullet intended to nail Cacavaca, whose dive back beat Onions Malone's tag by a nanosecond. But the throw did persuade him to shave three inches off his lead.

Turf established, Whizzo turned his attention to the plate. Romeo Romero took a final swing with the lead doughnut still on his bat, shook the doughnut off, rubbed some pine tar on the handle, rubbed a little more into his batting glove, adjusted his glove, adjusted his wristband, touched his left bicep, on which was tattooed a woman he called his "Good Luck Goddess," adjusted his forearm band, pulled the protective earflap on his batting helmet down as low as he could get it, adjusted his jockstrap as inconspicuously as he could before 50,000 fans and several million viewers on national TV, took another practice swing, glanced toward his third base coach who was touching himself compulsively and clapping his hands like Michael Dukakis practicing the dirty chicken, placed one foot inside the batter's box, swung a few more times, adjusted his grip, and stepped in.

As Whizzo began his windup, Romero stepped out and repeated his ritual. Finally he stood at the plate wiggling the bat. Whizzo stepped off the mound. Two cats squaring off, pitcher and batter each tried to disrupt the other's timing. "Romero, get in there," said plate umpire Buster Hyman. "We're overdue for a commercial already. Do you want to jeopardize a $200 million contract?"

Finally came Whizzo's first pitch, Sweet Patootie, an inch low and away: Ball 1. Strike 1, another Patootie, on the inside corner. The infielders pranced in their cleats, their attention riveted on Romero, on Cacavaca, on the game situation, shifting like nervous thoroughbreds back and forth on the balls of their feet, reviewing one more time: hard-hit, throw to second; in the grass or off-balance throw, go to first...

Still no "action." Only gathering tension. Only concentration, concentration like a rock must concentrate. A 1-1 count; now, Charley decided, Cacavaca would be going.

Charley Orange held the record for best lifetime percentage among active second-string catchers for throwing out runners stealing. It wasn't one of baseball's million-and-one official recognitions, because in an oversight out of character with the collective mind of the Grand Old Game, the Powers That Be had not yet quantified what constituted a second-stringer. But it was in the Guinness Book of Records, thanks to a phone call by Speedboat Jones, the Mutes' injured fifth starter and team clown. The secret of Charley's success at nailing baserunners was his quick feet, especially for a big man. He could set them for an overhead peg in less time than it takes for cream to say howdy to coffee in a cup.

As Charley sprang to fire to second, suddenly the crack of ash wood meeting stuffed cowhide electrified the ballpark like a rattlesnake in the desert air. In the .3 seconds it took Romero's smash to travel 100 feet into the hole between shortstop and third base, Twinkletoes Willoughby at third sized up where the ball would hop, dove toward the hurtling sphere and speared it with his outstretched glove. The crowd roared: this should be the game - and the glory. In the next 1.4 seconds Twinkletoes rose, planted his right foot, shifted his weight onto it, cocked his arm and rifled the ball with all the might he dared muster without missing his target, toward Revenge at Second Base. He allowed another .7 seconds for the arrival of the ball.

Were Twinkletoes to miscalculate by as much as .01 second, the runner would beat the ball. In the majors, this almost never happens.

This time it happened. "Willoughby picks himself up," Bluster Hyman reported, "snaps the throw to second... and sails it over Revenge's head! Here comes Cacavaca to third. Moseley scoops up the errant horsehide in right field and - he bobbles it! Romero heads for second; he's in there without a play as the throw comes to the plate to hold Cacavaca on third. And traffic slows to a halt in Disfunction Junction, Arkansas as the tension mounts at Mutant Stadium. Ninth inning. Two outs. Two on. Mutes up 1-0 behind the rookie sensation Whizzo Mark Salot IV; just one out away from immortality, just one base hit away from losing the game."