player with inches and inches to spare for the out. But
the umpires declared interference by a vote of eighteen to
seven, the two left-field umpires and the one with the
field glasses over the batter's head abstaining; it seemed
that the first baseman had neglected to say "Excuse me" to
the runner. Well, the rules were the rules. Boley tightened
his grip on his bat and tried to get a lead on the pitcher's
style.
That was hard, because the pitcher was fast. Boley ad-
mitted it to himself uneasily; he was very fast. He was a
big monster of a player, nearly seven feet tall and with
something queer and sparldy about his eyes; and when
he came down with a pitch there was a sort of a hiss and
a splat, and the ball was in the catcher's hands. It might,
Boley confessed, be a little hard to hit that particular
pitcher, because he hadn't yet seen the ball in transit.
Manager MagiU came up behind him in the on-deck
spot and fastened something to his collar. "Your inter-
com," he explained. "So we can tell you what to do when
you're up."
"Sure, sure." Boley was only watching the pitcher. He
looked sickly out there; his skin was a grayish sort of
color, and those eyes didn't look right. But there wasn't
anything sickly about the way he delivered the next pitch,
a sweeping curve that sizzled in and spun away.
The batter didn't look so good eithersame sickly
gray skin, same giant frame. But he reached out across
the plate and caught that curve and dropped it between
third-base and short; and both men were safe.
"You're on," said a tinny little voice in Boley's ear; it
was the little intercom, and the manager was talking to
him over the radio. Boley walked numbly to the plate.
Sixty feet away, the pitcher looked taller than ever.
Boley took a deep breath and looked about him. The
crowd was roaring ferociously, which was normal enough
except there wasn't any crowd. Counting everybody,
players and officials and all, there weren't more than three
or four hundred people in sight in the whole studio. But
he could hear the screams and yells of easily fifty or sixty
thousand There was a man, he saw, behind a plate-
glass window who was doing things with what might have
been records, and the yells of the crowd all seemed to
come from loudspeakers under his window. Boley winced
and concentrated on the pitcher.
"I will pin his ears back," he said feebly, more to
reassure himself than because he believed it.
The little intercom on his shoulder cried in a tiny voice:
"You will not, Boleslaw! Your orders are to take the first
pitch!"
"But, listen"
