Page 2 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

World Series

Commissioner Bosconi thought he was having a nightmare.
Something popped his eyes wide open—a sound, a movement, an
unfamiliar pattern of light and shadow filtering through his optic
nerve. If I’m awake, he reasoned patiently, then I must be in my
bedroom, in my townhouse, on the shores of Lake Michigan; but I’m
not, very clearly not, so I must be asleep.
“The game was played under protest.” Bosconi turned to face the
speaker. Not a face he recognized; not even recognizable as a face: a
bouquet of snakes would be more like it, he mused. Green in the
actinic glare of sunset on a planet closer to its sun than Earth, the
Writhers’ manager wriggled and squirmed angrily.
“By both of us,” rejoined another voice. The commissioner
realized he was sitting in the owner’s box in a stadium he had never
seen before. An oddly eclectic design, he thought, combining the
rough-and-tumble inner-city charm of Cleveland with the high-tech
suburban asepsis of the Astrodome. And this other irate customer:
his uniform identified him as manager of the home team, the
Arthrodonts. Mouth like a backhoe, observed Bosconi.
Secure in the knowledge of his own unconsciousness, he
experienced no fear of his ferocious companions; rather, his mind
was occupied with dispassionate analysis of the dream’s more
obvious symbolism. The leagues had chosen him, an outsider, to fill
the top executive position because his credentials were both
impeccable and lengthy. No scandal or favoritism could attach to the
office while it was tenanted by an ex-dean of the University of
Chicago. Issues affecting player unions, TV rights, expansion teams,
and the rules of the game swirled around him like a playground full
of unruly children while his prestige conferred legitimacy on all the
nasty maneuvering going on behind the scenes.
But, baseball? A metaphor of life in the corporate jungle, perhaps;
an arena for heroics, legalism, and garlands of victory measured in
megabucks, most certainly. The awful, sweaty, joint-wrenching, teeth-
clenching day-to-day grind and squeeze of playing ball in the big

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