Free For Love of the Game by Michael Shaara Page A

today? Look. No. Decisively no. Normal with Birch, but look: he sets himself and watches you and notes the wind and the thickness of the air—learned that from Williams—and all the details, and watches the first pitch with no motion at all, then two,slowly beginning to tick away to the timing zone that was just right, and then comes three, and by then he’s ready, and he might go, certainly by four, don’t ever ease up on four—but he often waits and walks, sensing properly the time when he’ll get nothing at all to hit, so he might as well take the free trip, but today … no free trip today. Today: give him the best. And we’ll see. Does he know? Think he does.
    Well. Nothing better than the smoker. And today’s the day. He won’t expect it on the first pitch. I almost never do. Because I don’t want to give him the timing. So today: fireball one.
    Chapel stepped to the mound. Looked again. Knew: he’ll take the first one. So Chapel threw hard, right down the tube. Strike one.
    Birch changed the position slightly. Ready now. He may go for … anything at all now. Yes. If it’s close at all … the way he’s set … hook to the inside. Off the wrist. The screwball. It took Gus a long time to find the right signal: even Gus wasn’t expecting the screwball, which was not Chappie’s best bending ball, at all at all, unless he was having one of those rare days when everything curved in every direction. Chapel cocked, threw, the pitch broke down and in toward the right-handed hitter: he swung, caught a tiny piece, fouled it back off his wrists. Strike two.
    Haven’t thrown a ball yet.
    Hell of a day.
    Yep.
    What now, sonny?
    Two strikes, no balls.
    He won’t expect one over the plate. He’ll think I’ll tease with a curve or a slider, like I just did. Why don’t we … go to Number One?
    Gus picked the signal. Chapel threw Old Smokey. He fired all there was, it blazed on by. Strike three.
    Birch took it without any motion. Just stood there. He had expected something teasing, curving, bending, had been looking for the waste. He had struck out. He took a long look at Chapel, knew what was happening, put a hand up to his cap as a salute, went slowly away.
    Three out of four strikeouts. Better settle down, ace. Can’t go all the way. But gee … wasn’t that fine?
    No holds barred today, Billy. Throw it all, throw it all. Goin’ home, Billy, goin’ home.
    Music came back into the mind now softly: Goin’ Home, Goin’ Home, I’m just goin’ home. The symphony … of the New World. He began to relax a bit, now that Birch was gone, and did not go back to the fastball for several pitches, since that’s what they all were expecting. It was unnecessary for the next two hitters. They were both tight, set for the heavy stuff, so he went to the big curve, the soft slider, and both grounded to the infield. Inning number two: done. Goin’ Home,Goin’ Home … walked slowly, happily to the bench, sat, tucked his cap down over his eyes.…
    … they went to bed that first night—no—early in the morning. It was the wrong time. Too soon, too soon. There should have been more … time to open. She talked to him for hours about the mess of her life, she poured things out she had told no one else—she said: “I have no friends, and … there is something about you, something in that wide-eyed face.” Across a crowded room. Something gentle and … innocent, the ballplayer, the big kid, and he was somebody she could talk to, and so she talked and eased out from under the weight of it that night and afterward she gave him her body, lay there as a social gift, did nothing but mechanize, exhausted, and he felt strange, missing links all over the place, because
that
woman, when you sat across a table from her and listened to her talk and watched her eyes move and glow and felt her hand come across to touch you, that woman was not the same one in bed that night. In the bed she was a robot. She