Page 22 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

Framing the Pitch

Professor Fort received but one response to his notice in the
student newspaper requesting volunteer subjects for his latest
research project. He was unaware that his reputation had been
handed down to succeeding freshman classes as part of the folklore
of Corn State College, reinforced by survivors of his Psychology 101
course and confirmed by colleagues unembarrassed to admit they had
an odd duck among the tenured flock.
His impatience at the delay in obtaining a suitable test case
devolved into alarm when the respondent, arriving at the academic’s
laboratory late one April afternoon, turned out to be a tall shambling
sunburned man in his middle thirties. His hair was short, his sport
jacket flashy and ill-fitting over sloping muscular shoulders.
“Sir, I advertised for a student. There is no compensation offered,
and I require, as stated, a participant in our athletic program,
specifically baseball.”
The visitor looked slightly pained, a half-sheepish grimace
crumpling the leathery skin of his face. He held up his hands in
supplication. They were large, the palms callused and the fingers
abnormally spatulate.
“You don’t remember me, Professor. I’m Luke Matthews.”
Professor Fort, proud of nothing in his physical makeup save his
memory, stepped forward to inspect the man’s face under flickering
fluorescents. In twenty-seven years, thousands of undergraduates had
passed through his lecture hall, entering with expectations of learning
the secrets of the human mind but leaving stuffed with dry droppings
of rat behavior data. Their names were on an attendance and
evaluation list he was required to process as rigorously as any rodent
maze-running scorecard, and he did so assiduously.
“You were in my class in 1987. Eighteen years ago. Flunked. Are
you back in school? You’re not taking my class again.”
Matthews shook his head slowly.

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