"George Alec Effinger - Naked to the Invisible Eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

NAKED TO
THE INVISIBLE EYE
The one thing a dying institution does not need is an overly brilliant performer.

There were less than a thousand spectators in the little ball park, their chatter nearly inaudible
com-pared to the heartening roar of the major league crowds. The fans sat uneasily, as if they had
wandered into the wake of a legendary hero. No longer was baseball the na-tional pastime. Even the big
league teams, roving from franchise to franchise in search of yesterday's loyal bleacher fanatics, resorted
to promotional gimmicks to stave off bankruptcy. Here, the Bears were in third place, with an unlikely
shot at second. The Tigers had clinched the pennant early, now leading the second-place Kings by nine
games and the Bears by an even more discouraging number. There was no real tension in this game—oh,
with a bad slump the Bears might fall down among the cellar teams, but so what? For all intents and
pur-poses, the season had ended a month ago.
There was no tension, no pen-nant race any longer, just an inexpensive evening out for the South
Carolina fans. The sweat on the batter's hands was the fault of his own nervous reaction; the knots in his
stomach were shared by no one. He went to the on-deck circle for the pine-tar rag while he waited for
the new pitcher to toss his warm-ups.
The Bear shortstop was batting eighth, reflecting his anemic .219 average. Like a great smoothed
rock this fact sat in the torrent of his thinking, submerged at times but often breaking through the rac-ing
surface. With his unsteady fielding it looked as if he would be out of a job the next spring. To the players
and to the spectators the game was insignificant; to him it was the first of his last few chances. With two
runs in already in the eighth, one out and a man on first, he went to the plate.
He looked out toward the kid on the mound before settling himself in the batter's box. The pitcher's
name was Rudy Ramirez, he was only nineteen and from somewhere in Venezuela. That was all anybody
knew about him; this was his first appearance in a professional ball game. The Bear shortstop took a
deep breath and stepped in.
That kid Ramirez looked pretty fast during his warm-ups, he thought. The shortstop damned the
fate that made him the focus of at-tention against a complete un-known. The waters surged; his thoughts
shuffled and died.
The Venezuelan kid looked in for his sign. The shortstop looked down to the third-base coach, who
flashed the take signal; that was all right with him. I'm only batting .219, I want to see this kid throw
one before ...
Ramirez went into his stretch, glanced at the runner on first ...
With that kid Barger coming off the disabled list I might not be able to . . .
Ramirez' right leg kicked, his left arm flung back ...
The shortstop's shrieking flood of thought stilled, his mind was as quiet as the surface of a pond
stag-nating. The umpire called the pitch a ball.
Along the coaching lines at third Sorenson was relaying the hit-and-run sign from the dugout. All
right, thought the shortstop, just make contact, get a good ground ball, maybe a hit, move the man
into scoring position ...
Ramirez nodded to his catcher, stretched, checked the runner ...
My luck, I'll get an easy double-play ball to the right side ...
Ramirez kicked, snapped, and pitched ...
The shortstop's mind was silent, ice-cold, dead, watching the runner vainly flying toward second, the
catcher's throw beating him there by fifteen feet. Two out. One ball and one strike.
Sorenson called time. He met the shortstop halfway down the line.
"You damn, brainless idiot!" said the coach. "You saw the sign, you acknowledged the sign, you
stood there with your thumb in your ear looking at a perfect strike! You got an awful short memory?"
"Look, I don't know—"
 "I'll tell you what I do know," said Sorenson. "I know that'll cost you twenty dollars. Maybe your