Page 11 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

World Series

wonder: when I render the verdict, what will the loser do? Dispatch
me on the spot? Lay waste to Earth, in a display of temperament for
which the umpires should be obliged to send him to the showers?
Would the winner protect me, honor my wisdom by allowing me to
return in peace, not pieces, to my cozy little lakeside condo?
“Well, Commissioner?” boomed Korok. He was drumming his
teeth on the railing of the box; it had the sound of tumbril wheels
rolling over cobblestones.
“Yes,” urged Lussessi, with all the sibilance of a dozen gas jets
open wide. “What is your ruling?”
Ugly customers indeed, thought the commissioner. Well, here goes.
“The rules of the game, as you are by now most painfully aware, do
not provide a total mapping of all contingencies.” He cleared his
throat for effect, as was his custom when addressing lecture halls
filled with somnolent underclassmen. “Therefore, authority has been
vested in the office of the commissioner to adjudicate cases where
reasonable doubt inheres in the application of those rules. Your
teams have thus placed their hopes for victory upon the opinion of
an outsider. I feel it incumbent upon me, as the representative of
organized baseball, to warn you of the binding nature of my
decisions. You may take your participation in this sport lightly, but
the cosmos I inhabit will not tolerate any breach of the harmony
between the leagues established at such great cost in the past.”
Admiral Lussessi and General Korok exchanged glances. They had
slipped, and they knew it. The earthling’s mind had jumped onto a
track they had not anticipated. Hastily they upped his level of
contentment, his feelings of irresponsibility, his sense of disbelief.
But Bosconi had seized the bit, and could not be deterred; his
academic experience had disciplined his mind to follow a logical line
through to the end, no matter how he happened to feel.
“Now, in the fourth inning, when the Writher base runner was
declared out at first while touching second, the simultaneity of the tag
with the safe slide is irrelevant, since it occurred after the runner was
technically out.”
“What!” screeched the Writher manager. His heads bobbed and
weaved into dangerous braids. “What are you talking about?”

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