IGMS Issue 45 Read online

  In the quiet desolation of retirement, a baseball player lives with the ever-present glimmer of hope that maybe -- just maybe -- she has one more season left in her. It is a hope that dies only when the body gives up the ghost. A retired catcher with aching, arthritic knees will not consider knee replacement on the will-o-the-wisp hope that he may one day leg out a double, or extend it into a triple, diving head first into a cloud of dust.

  You can find retired football players living comfortably in their mid-130s. You can find retired basketball players still gathering for neighborhood pickup games in their 90s. Baseball players rarely live into their 90s. According to the Major League Players Association, without the benefit of modern medical enhancements, the average lifespan of a major league ballplayer is 79 years.

  Sitting in a specially reserved car on the Loop from Anchorside up to Albany, I think again about the distance I've traveled over the last few days: more than sixty light years, an almost inconceivable stretch of space in an almost insignificant stretch of time. Most of the others are sleeping, wiped out from the long ride down from Rockmount. Gemma looks as peaceful as ever, and I wonder what she might have thought of this journey of hers.

  It occurs to me then that there is a number in baseball that compares to the astronomical distances between the stars. It is a number that goes back to the beginning of the "modern era" of the game, generally agreed to be the turn of the century in 1900. The number is 85. In five centuries of baseball played since 1900, there have been only 85 perfect games.

  A baseball game is considered perfect when no runners on one team reach base. There are no hits, no errors, no walks, no catcher interference. No one makes a mistake. The pitcher and his or her team is perfect. A no-hitter is one step down from a perfect game, but it is a big step. And another big step down from the no-hitter is the shutout.

  But consider the number: 85 perfect games in 500 years of baseball. One baseball statistics expert I spoke to told me that an estimated 2.5 million games of professional baseball have been played in the last five centuries. But only 85 of those games have been perfect.

  Two of those 85 games took place on Nisan, and the first of these came on August 30, 2429.

  Bison manager Evander Neiland used a five-pitcher rotation back then. After Gemma Barrows great relief performance on August 25, Neiland put her back into the starting rotation, and penciled her in for the August 30th start against Waterloo.

  I was covering an Ocean League game that day, the Dolphins vs. the Whalers, and I had no idea what was happening in Creigh, until Sandra Tate, who wrote for the Lapps Island Gazette, and who often sat next to me in the press box, grabbed my bicep in a vice grip and said, "Ed, Gemma Barrows has a no-no going into the sixth against Waterloo."

  No hitters are fragile things, like soap bubbles drifting just above the feather-topped prairie grass. A strong breeze, or a brush against one of those brown stalks, and the bubble disintegrates. When Gemma took the no-hitter into the eighth inning, I gave up all pretense of trying to follow the Dolphins and Whalers. In Creigh, the score was 1-0 and word quickly spread that Nisan might be on the verge of its first perfect game.

  At some point, the Bison game had been put onto the giant screen in center field so that the crowd of 48,000 Whalers fans could see the perfecto-in-action. The entire stadium seem to hold its breath with each pitch, and breathe a collective sigh of relief when the pitch resulted in a strikeout, groundout, or popfly.

  At the top of the ninth inning, with two outs, and Stella Rogin at the plate for Waterloo, the scoreboard looked like this:

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  R

  H

  E

  W

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  B

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  1

  0

  0

  2

  5

  0

  Gemma Barrows had two modes: serene and intense. The look on her face in that final inning was intense. It was the look of someone who had moved to another plane of existence, a plane that only 83 pitchers before her had visited.

  She delivered a ball to Rogin, followed by two strikes. I was on my feet, the entire Whalers stadium was on its feet, and from what I could see on the screen, the entire city of Creigh was on its feet. All eyes were on Gemma Barrows.

  She threw a fastball down the middle. Stella Rogin got under it. The ball shot high up above the infield. Gemma pointed up into the sky at once, directing her teammates to the ball. Kenny Zim charged in from third base, waving everyone else off with wildly exaggerated gesticulations, his head tilted into the sky, his jaw slack. He looked like a little kid trying to catch raindrops in his mouth. He got under the ball, held up his glove, and caught it with a gentle THWAP against the leather.

  Gemma's knees unhinged and she collapsed at the foot of the mound, her face buried in her mitt. For a moment she was alone, shaking in great spasms. Then her teammates flooded the field, surrounding her, and lifting her onto their shoulders.

  When the cameras next caught sight of Gemma, her dust-stained face was streaked with dark tear-tracks.

  Cooperstown sits on the south end of lake Otsego, a long, narrow lake that runs north-south through some of the most beautiful hill country I have ever seen. Over the centuries, the shoreline of the lake has gradually transformed so that today, to the eyes of a baseball-primed observer, it looks like a baseball bat set down in a field of Kentucky bluegrass.

  Handlers from the Baseball Hall of Fame meet us at the Loop station in Albany and escort us by ground car to Cooperstown. We arrive to crowds filling the streets of the small town. A brass band plays "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "The Star Spangled Banner" as we pull up before the main entrance to the Baseball Hall of Fame. More handlers and representatives are there to take Gemma's body and prepare it for burial in Memorial Park. One of them, a tall, lanky man with deep-set eyes and grooved look to his face asks if I would like to escort Gemma's body along its way.

  Vassar Barrows, Gemma's father stands beside me. He didn't speak on the ride from Albany. He just stared out the window, a grim, distant look on his face.

  "I think perhaps Mr. Barrows would prefer to do this on his own," I say.

  Barrows looks at me, and appears momentarily startled, as if he hadn't expected this extra time with his daughter. "Thank 'ee," he says, his prairie accent coming through strongly.

  I step aside and the tall man signals to some others, who take the casket from its van. They attach a small antigrav unit and float it into the building, followed solemnly by Vassar Barrows.

  "Can you direct me to my hotel?" I ask one of the handlers.

  "Of course, right this way," he says.

  "And maybe a good bar, too. I could use a drink."

  The bar is quiet, only a few patrons scattered through the premises this early in the afternoon. Later, I imagine it will be nearly impossible to move through the crowds.

  I'm finishing my second beer, a hoppy Earth beer that tastes nothing like the beer my father gave me on that day, decades earlier, when I first saw Gemma Barrows pitch.

  "Another one?" the bartender asks. She's a large woman with a cheerful smile.

  "Just one," I say.

  She takes a fresh glass and pulls at the tap. As she does this, she looks at me. "You're Ed O'Halloran, the sportswriter, aren't you?"

  "Guilty."

  "You're here escorting Gemma Barrows?"

  "Yes."

  "First time on Earth?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you couldn't have asked for a better place on the planet to visi
t. Sad that is has to be under these circumstances." She knocks the head off the beer and slides the glass over to me.

  "We're proud of our girl," I say.

  "You should be. Two perfect games. I mean, it's unheard of." Her eyes brighten, "Say, were you at either of the games?"

  "No. I was covering another game the day she threw the first perfecto. And the other one --" A smile spreads across my face.

  "What?"

  "September 5, 2429."

  "Good memory."

  "I ought to remember it," I say, "it's the day my oldest daughter, Marsi, was born."

  "No kidding? Same day that Gemma threw that second perfect game?"

  "Same day," I say.

  The bartender leaves me to my beer. Same day as Marsi. Marsi came early that morning, and I remember sitting with her in the hospital room while Janie slept. Marsi and I watched the miracle happen together, she curled into the crook of my arm, eyes still dark, so tiny.

  September 5, 2429, five days after Gemma Barrows' perfect game against Waterloo. The day Marsi was born. And the day the impossible happened.

  Gemma was back on the mound that day to pitch against the Skimmers, her first appearance since the perfecto. The Skimmers were a last-place team in the Prairie League Central division. They rarely filled half the seats in their stadium on the banks of the Hauxet River. But on September 5 they had their first sellout of the season.

  They played the "Star Spangled Banner" before the game, and Marsi cooed in my arm, as if to say, "What's that sound, Daddy?"

  "That's the sound of baseball," I whispered to her.

  Gemma Barrows received a standing ovation when she took the mound in the bottom of the first inning, a magnanimous gesture from a usually hostile crowd. The gesture notwithstanding, the Skimmers were there to win. Johnny Sparhawk moved Red Lasker into the leadoff spot that day. Lasker was the one real star the Skimmer's had on their roster. He had the league's second highest on-base percentage. It was a move that said the Skimmers meant business.

  Lasker was a patient batter, and after three pitches, he was ahead in the count 3-0. Gemma's next pitch was a bullet down the middle that Lasker didn't bat an eyelash over. Then another strike, a mean fastball on the inside corner. She followed that up with her trademark changeup that had Lasker way out in front for strike three.

  From there, the strikeouts began to tally, and by the end of the seventh inning, with the Bison leading 7-0, Gemma had retired all twenty-one batters she'd faced, fourteen of them on strikeouts. It was a milestone of unprecedented moment. Counting the twenty-seven batters she retired in her perfect game five days earlier, and the six batters she retired in relief before that, Gemma Barrows had retired fifty-four consecutive batters, the equivalent of two consecutive perfect games. But she didn't stop there. In the eighth inning, Barrows struck out the side, bringing her strikeout total to seventeen.

  Legend has it that by the bottom of the ninth inning, all work on Nisan -- the entire planet -- had come to a halt. I can neither confirm, nor deny that, although I noticed that when the doctors and nurses came into our room to check on Janie and Marsi, they lingered a few moments to see if Barrows' perfect game would be disrupted.

  Gemma had a scare when Marci Chu (our daughter was not named after her) hit a scorcher down the third base line, but Kenny Zim's reflexed were as perfect as Gemma's pitching. He dove to his right with his gloved hand extended across his body and nabbed the line drive.

  Later, Leland Eisley told a reporter, "I didn't give her any signs in the ninth. She was on autopilot and I wasn't going to mess with that. It was as if we could read each others minds. I knew what she was going to throw, and where, and she never missed, never crossed me up."

  Gemma Barrows threw six more pitches that inning, all of them for strikes. She ended up with nineteen strikeouts that day -- and her second consecutive perfect game.

  Gray overcast blankets the skies of Cooperstown on Induction Day. In a perfect world, the skies would be blue, the sun high and warm, the air sweet. But rainouts are as much a part of baseball as anything, and just like a rainy day at the ballpark, we play through.

  I sit on stage with Gemma's father and half a dozen notables, many of whom will be speaking at the induction. Before us, thousands of people spread across a lawn of grass greener than anything I've ever seen. Perhaps my eyes are just used to the prairie yellow, or rusty brown color that all grass on Nisan takes. On Earth, everything seems green and vibrant.

  Each speaker takes his or her turn at the podium, offering thoughts, remembrances, and encomia to Gemma Barrows. I'd been asked if I wanted to speak, but declined. I am a sportswriter, not a public speaker, and besides, this day is about Gemma Barrows, not Ed O'Halloran.

  So I sit quietly listening to the words, and touching my jacket pocket nervously, feeling for the folded scorecard within. Over the years, that old scorecard had become my own special part of Gemma Barrows. I remember wondering what good an autograph would be when I first got it. Now, I think I knew. At some point, I had decided that I would donate the scorecard to the Hall of Fame, to keep among their collection of memorabilia, so that others might share in Gemma's generosity.

  The last person to speak is Gemma's father, Vassar Barrows. He is 101 years old, but doesn't look a day over sixty. When he rises to speak on behalf of his daughter, the entire field rises with him. He strides to the podium amidst a rumbling percussion of applause, his head bowed, and he plants his large hands on the polished wood. The rain is now a gentle mist. A silence spreads over the audience, and for a moment, it is like the quiet that had taken Whalers field when Gemma was dealing the final pitch of her first perfect game.

  "You'll forgive me for my somber mood," Vassar Barrows says. "Please don't take it as bitterness, but as an old man who misses his little girl. I am extraordinarily proud of our little Gem. I can still see her, barely able to hold herself upright by the fence where we kept the sheep. I had a baseball in my pocket, and I rolled it over to her. She picked it up with smile on her face, and proceeded to gnaw on it like it was a rasp-fruit." Gentle laughter bubbles up from the crowd.

  "I suppose that's where it all started, although I'd be lying if I said I knew from the start that Gemma would be a baseball star. She grew to like the game, and then to love it, but so did a million kids, so did I when I was her age.

  "On the farm, death is just another part of life," Vassar Barrows says. From my vantage off to the side, his face looks grave, but I see something else, too. Barrows is not speaking to the audience. He is speaking to himself. "You expect death now and then, but not your children. Never your children.

  "I see a lot of baseball players here today. But I don't see a lot of old ballplayers. Eisley over here might be the oldest among you. Baseball players sacrifice so much for the game that they love. More, I think, than a fan can ever really understand. They often do this alone. My wife, Gemma's momma, would never allow that. But neither would she quash our daughter's dreams. So if Gemma was going to play the game, if she was going to forgo the kinds of improvements that have kept me on the farm for aught hundred years now, well, then Selma was going to give them up, too, so that our little girl would not have to do it alone." He pauses, collects himself, and then continues. "I think Selma's greatest sacrifice was giving up any chance of being here today to see Gemma inducted into the Hall of Fame."

  He pulls a pale blue handkerchief from his pocket, steps back from the podium, dabs at his eyes, and then blows his nose. The sound reverberates across the field.

  "Well, I didn't come here to make speeches. On the trip over I got to thinking how this would be the only time I'd make it to Earth. I'm glad Gemma was able to bring me along with her. But I also realized that I would eventually be returning home alone. Gemma never had any children -- another sacrifice at the altar of baseball -- so what stays behind is all I have left of her. I'd ask you all, as a personal favor to me and Selma, to take care of our little Gem. Thank you."

  After the fune
ral service, I have a private moment in the Hall of Fame Gallery, walking alone among the ghosts of the greatest players that ever played the game. Gemma Barrows' plaque is at the far end of the enormous gallery, the latest of the greats to be admitted in such exclusive company. I walk past hundreds of familiar names to get to her, and as I feel my knees go a little weak, I also feel their presence steady me.

  My footsteps echo off the marble floors, and it takes a long time to reach the spot reserved for Gemma Barrows. When I get there, she is smiling down at me in bronze from the wall, a ceiling spotlight fixed perfectly upon her rueful countenance. Below her face is the following inscription:

  GEMMA ("GEM") MILLET BARROWS

  Waterloo, P.L., 2413-2417

  Creigh, P.L. 2417-2432

  Won more games (289) than any other woman in the history of baseball. Played in 4 Nisan World Championships with a perfect 8-0 record. Had a lifetime 2.87 E.R.A. 3-time Cy Young Award-winner. From August 30 - September 5, 2429, she pitched two consecutive perfect games.

  I feel a pair of eyes behind me and when I turn, Gemma's father is standing quietly at a respectful distance.

  "Didn't mean to startle you, son."

  "You didn't. I was just about to head out."

  "Going back to Nisan?"

  "Yes. I grab the Loop back to Anchorside this evening. I miss my . . ." The words trail off. I was going to say that I miss my girls.

  Vassar Barrows gives me a wistful smile. "You get home safe now. I'm sure your family misses you, too."