Page 10 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

World Series

spaghetti-like winding spread before the flailing Writher shortstop.
And the Arthrodonts were circling the base path. Two runs scored,
and the game was over.
Or was it?
“Dead ball!” croaked the Writher manager in Bosconi’s ear,
pointing with one head at the plate umpire’s call.
“No way,” objected Korok. “Our man hit the ball fair and square.
He still had part of the bat; just like fisting it. Unquestionably a fair
ball.”
“Your man destroyed the ball!”
“Bah! Your pitcher must have sabotaged it first. I’ve never seen a
ball act like that on a second swing.”
The commissioner looked from one manager to the other; now he
had two conundrums. As mellow as he felt, he still could not avoid
noting the ferocity with which the opponents pressed their suits.
They are like Hindu gods, he decided, with benign, rational aspects
rapidly transmogrifying into terrible masks of wrath and vengeance.
How it must cost them to repress those powerful urges to rip and
tear each other apart! His lower brain called for a shudder; the order
almost got through.
“Now, let me see,” began Bosconi, pursing his lips and furrowing
his brow most judicially. “If I rule that the Writher run in the fourth
inning should have been allowed, and the Arthrodont runs in ninth
should not, then the Writhers win the game and the Series. On the
other hand, if I return two opposite decisions, the Arthrodonts are
the World Champions. The umpires have delivered what amounts to
one ruling in favor of each of you, based on their purely legalistic
knowledge of the game. So I must review those decisions in the light
of my own experiences on Earth.”
The managers sat and waited, forgetting to re-adjust the human’s
slipping level of unreality. By the time Bosconi had finished his
preliminary remarks, it was again occurring to him that certain out-
of-the-ordinary elements of his immediate situation strongly
suggested his participation in a dream. At the same time he could not
avoid recognizing the depth of his involvement in a very detailed and
coherent argument concerning the outcome of a baseball game
between alien species on a planet other than his own. He began to
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