sufficient force or friction to draw blood. We scored each catch, but did not keep a running tally; the game ended when we had drawn too much blood, or when we broke one of my grandparents’ windows.
Off the Roof was our variation on Wall-Ball. The “batter” threw the ball onto my grandparents’ roof, and the fielder tried to catch it when it rolled off. This was tougher than it sounds, thanks to my grandparents’ rain gutter, which, we discovered one day, caused the ball to hop at impossible heights and angles. You got a hit if the fielder missed the ball, were “out” if the fielder caught it, and lost your turn at bat if you threw the ball over the roof. We scored it like a regular game, but never completed an official one, each effort being called sometime in the middle innings, when my grandfather got tired of getting the ball out of the gutter.
Perfect Game was an effort by a pitcher—usually Huey, as either Jim Bunning or Chris Short—to throw one, that is, to record twenty-seven straight outs. The catcher called the pitches as well as the balls and strikes—and, for that matter, also the play-by-play—which meant that every game ended with the nearly intolerable suspense of a full count on the twenty-seventh batter. Almost every effort was successful, thanks mostly to the propensity of the imaginary batters to chase and foul-off even the wildest pitches. The only exceptions occurred when the pitcher would refuse the benevolent products of the catcher’s imagination; the pitcher would then show remarkable fortitude in overcoming the adversity of one walk or sometimes even two.
Double Play was really not much more than our practice of that baseball play. Whichever one of us was the first baseman would throw a groundball to the other fielder, who could be either a shortstop or a second baseman, depending on his identity on that particular day: when Huey was Bobby Wine he played shortstop, when he was Tony Taylor he played second base; I was always Cookie Rojas, who could play any position. The middle infielder, whoever he was, would tag second base, and relay the ball to the first baseman, who would decide, based on a very complex mathematical calculation involving various laws of physics and also little kid’s moods, whether the throw was in time to complete the double play. The middle infielder did not always agree with the call, and that prompted occasional rhubarbs, as the infielder went nose-to-nose with the first base umpire, who, of course, used to be the first baseman, but who had now assumed a distinctly antagonistic persona. Things would get particularly heated—and complicated—when the first baseman would rematerialize and join the fray, and sometimes the combined force of their arguments would persuade the umpire to change his mind. This rarely happened, however, and the rhubarbs were mostly just an excuse to practice cussing. Double Play usually went the full nine innings, the exceptions occurring only when games were suspended on account of the adults overhearing the rhubarbs.
All but one of our games were designed to be played by just two people; the exception was Rundown. Rundown required two fielders and a baserunner: the fielders, stationed at first and second bases, threw the ball back and forth, and the baserunner would at some point attempt to leave first base and get to second or, once caught in a rundown, at least make it safely back to first. There were no points and no scoring; the runner either made it safely or not.
Huey and I could be the fielders in Rundown, but we needed a baserunner, and neither my grandparents nor Huey’s mom were generally up to the task. Fortunately, however, Huey’s folks had planned ahead, and they provided Huey with a kid brother named Michael, and while Michael was generally no more useful than any other kid brother or sister—his primary function seemed to revolve around whining, which was either the cause or effect of our general indifference to his existence—-still Michael made a perfectly adequate, and eventually an absolutely perfect, steady runner in our game.
What was so perfect about Michael was that he was always “out”: in all the games of Rundown we played, he never once stole second, nor even made it safely back to first. This required, admittedly, some ingenuity on our part: he seemed, sometimes, like he was going to be safe, as when one of us made a wild throw, and he seemed, on other occasions, like he might actually be safe, as when he appeared to be standing on second base before the ball’s arrival, but invariably fortune intervened, and Mike would accidentally trip in the base path over our outstretched arms, or overrun the base, propelled by some mysterious natural force that looked strangely like Huey or me. When these physical phenomena were not denying Michael his due, fate nonetheless conspired against him; either Huey or I had invariably called “time-out” (whether or not Michael actually heard us), and “time-out” meant, by rule of course, that the game had to start over. It is a wonder, given his steady misfortune, that Michael continued to play with us, but he did, and he always seemed to have fun.
For Huey and me there was something a bit too crude and obvious about our schemes against Michael, and I suspect we would have soured on them over time. But it never became an issue, thanks to Richie Ashburn, who was a radio announcer for the Phillies, and who explained, as Huey and I listened intently to what was probably another Phillies loss, that some hapless Phillie player had been tagged out at first even though he had apparently singled because, after crossing the bag, he had turned the wrong way. Huey and I looked at each other the instant we heard the call, and we smiled.
A little knowledge can be dangerous, and the knowledge we gained that day was certainly hazardous to Michael’s hopes for Rundown success. We had Michael caught in a rundown early in our next game, when Huey’s throw bounced off my glove and rolled to my grandparents’ fence. I retrieved the ball and threw it to Huey, but Michael had arrived at second base well ahead of the throw. Mike stood on the base and waited. He must have been surprised that Huey did not try to drag him off, and then downright stunned that I did not start yelling, “time out.” And as the seconds passed, his bewilderment must have yielded to a sense of triumph, as he stood there on second base, and turned to revel in his victory over his former oppressors. And all of that must have merely compounded his sense of frustration, when Huey slapped him in the chest with his glove, and said, matter-of-factly, “You’re out; you turned the wrong way.”
Mike, relentlessly gullible, buried his head in his hands. “Good try, Mike,” we said, probably less to console him than to maintain his interest in the game. But it was hardly necessary: we could not have deterred Mike if we had tried. With grim determination, Mike dug in for another try.
But, of course, there was no hope. All day long, try as he might, he simply could not avoid turning the wrong way. To his left, to his right, clockwise, or counterclockwise, every way was the wrong way. First base or second base, off the base or on it, he was “out.” And what stands out most about that day is how Huey and I ended up laughing about it, soon hysterically, and then so hard that we could barely sputter out what had become Mike’s motto. Eventually we didn’t even need to say it, we just started laughing and walking toward Mike with the ball, except for the times that we were laughing too hard to walk, and had to crawl. And Mike was laughing so hard that he ended up on the ground with us, and I thought that it was just because Huey and I were laughing so hard, but now I realize that he always knew exactly what we were up to, and that the joke all along wasn’t really on him, or even on Huey and me: it was really our joke—it belonged to all three of us.
For a brief while, Huey and I tried our rules outside my grandparents’ backyard. We played baseball one day with a bunch of other kids, and Huey was playing first base and I was at second, and a kid on the opposing team got a hit, and I, with uncharacteristic bravado, yelled that the kid turned the wrong way. Huey marched up to the kid and tagged him and said, “you’re out,” and eventually all the kids on our team caught on, and they started yelling, “that’s right,” and “he’s out,” and “he turned the wrong way.” And the kid complained a little, but it hardly mattered: he was out—he had turned the wrong way.
We kept this up for about a week. Once a game, no matter which way some kid would turn, Huey or I would yell that the kid turned the wrong way, and Huey would tag the kid out. The kid would look puzzled, and somebody on our team would say something about how you have to know the rules, and the kid’s teammates would shrug like “hey,
