leaped through the years like a jet plane leaps through
space you might be quite astonished, perhaps, and for a
while you might not be good for much of anything, until
things calmed down.
But Boley was born calm. He lived by his arm and his
eye, and there was nothing to worry about there. Pay him
his Class C league contract bonus, and he turns up in
Western Pennsylvania, all ready to set a league record for
no-hitters his first year. Call him up from the minors and
he bats .418 against the best pitchers in baseball. Set him
down in the year 1999 and tell him he's going to play in
the Series, and he hefts the ball once or twice and says,
"I better take a couple of warm-up pitches. Is the spitter
allowed?"
They led him to the buUpen. And then there was the
playing of the National Anthem and the teams took the
field. And Boley got the biggest shock so far.
"Magill," he bellowed in a terrible voice, "what is that
other pitcher doing out on the mound?"
The manager looked startled. "That's our starter,
Padgett. He always starts with the number-two defensive
lineup against right-hand batters when the outfield shift
goes"
"MagUI! I am not any relief pitcher. If you pitch Bole-
slaw, you start with Boleslaw."
Magill said soothingly, "It's perfectly all right. There
have been some changes, that's all. You can't expect the
rules to stay the same for forty or fifty years, can you?"
"I am not a relief pitcher. I"
"Please, please. Won't you sit down?"
Boley sat down, but he was seething. "We'll see about
that," he said to the world. "We'll just see."
Things had changed, all right. To begin with, the studio
really was a studio and not a stadium. And although it
was a very large room it was not the equal of Ebbetts
Field, much less the Yankee Stadium. There seemed to
be an awful lot of bunting, and the ground rules con-
fused Boley very much.
Then the dugout happened to be just under what seemed
to be a complicated sort of television booth, and Boley
could hear the announcer screaming himself hoarse just
overhead. That had a familiar sound, but
"And here," roared the announcer, "comes the all-
important nothing-and-one pitch! Fans, what a pitcher's
duel this is! Delasantos is going into bis motion! He's
coming down! He's delivered it! And it's in there for a
count of nothing and two! Fans, what a pitcher that
Tiburcio Delasantos is! And here comes the all-important
nothing-and-two pitch, andandyes, and he struck him
out! He struck him out! He struck him out! It's a no-
