The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsella

Author:W. P. Kinsella
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780795351006
Publisher: RosettaBooks

Five verses later we grind to a halt, amid wild cheers from the crowd. Sweat trickles into my eyes as I make my way to the bench. Arsenic O’Reilly throws his final warm-up pitches.

Frank Luther Mott, dressed in a black suit and a high silk hat, takes his place behind the pitcher; from there he will call the whole game.

“Play ball!” shouts Mott.

The leadoff man for the Cubs is the Human Mosquito, Jimmy Slagle, the center fielder.

Henry Pulvermacher holds up a beefy finger as a signal; O’Reilly winds and fires.

“Strike one,” intones Mott. The crowd roars its approval.

A sweeping curve ball breaks in for strike two. The fans roar louder. O’Reilly must appear ten feet tall as he winds up, leaning back so far it looks as though he might topple backward. He fires a fast ball straight down the middle of the plate. Slagle strikes out. I imagine the crowd can be heard all the way to Iowa City.

Jimmy Sheckard, the Chicago left fielder, taps the first pitch, an easy roller to Oilcan Flynn. Two out.

O’Reilly strikes out Johnny Evers on four pitches. The fans both roar and sigh as the inning ends, an eerie, animal-like sound, hollow, wild.

“We’re as good as they are,” a fan says. “Haven’t I been tellin’ you that all along?”

William Stiff, the lithe young left fielder, is the leadoff batter. He walks back from where he was swinging two bats and stands awkwardly in front of me. Almost apologetically he reaches toward me. I take off my cap and he touches my damp hair, then proceeds to the batter’s box.

“He’s almost as blond as I am,” I say to O’Reilly, who is sitting beside me. “Why not use him as your mascot?”

“Because you’re an albino,” he says crossly, sweat running into his eyes. He wipes his sleeve across his forehead. “You be careful, Gideon. You be careful them church folks don’t get ahold of you. They got some strange ideas about Gideon leading them to the promised land. I wouldn’t tell them my name if I was you.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” I say.

On the fifth pitch, William Stiff strikes out, a mile in front of a “slow ball,” what I would call a change-up. Dean pops up. Oilcan Flynn taps back to the pitcher.

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