'So, look, Jimmy, I'm thinking we can do some business. You come down to the shop, we cut an ad or two, and I make you a sweet deal on a new car, you know?'
Jimmy stood slowly, continuing to smile as he towered over the salesman. 'I think that's worth talking about, Phil, but right now I'm here with my friends, you know.'
'Sure, sure, I gotcha. Look, why don't we all go to dinner? My treat.' Phil glanced at the rest of us, then looked back up at Jimmy. I let the Old One's dislike of Phil and his plastic wife bleed into my voice. 'Actually, we were going to be dining outside the club, Phil. A private party.'
Phil didn't get my message, but his wife did and gently tugged on her husband's shirt. 'Honey, let's let these nice folks get back to their party, okay?'
Phil looked at Maggie as if her suggestion was a wild pitch, but when he glanced at Jimmy he saw that Jimmy had blasted it out of the park. 'Yeah, okay, well, look, can I call you?'
'Just call the team office and they'll direct you to my agent. She arranges all those things.' Jimmy shook Phil's hand again. 'I'm sure we can work something out.'
'Right. Have a good night, folks.'
As they departed, Valerie shivered. 'When I get home, his credit rating will die.'
Jimmy smiled. 'If you can do that, I can guarantee you a lot of business from the other players on the team.'
Lynn raised an eyebrow. 'That doesn't happen very often, does it?'
'More often than I'd like to admit, I'm afraid.' Jimmy shrugged and jerked his head in my direction. 'When anyone approaches me I have to be thinking 'What does he want me to buy? What's in it for him?' That's really tough, especially when it's a kid wanting an autograph, because dealers are known to use kids to get players to sign holopics they later sell for big nuyen. Most of the time folks are just nervous and genuine, but there are clunkers in the bunch.'
Lynn covered my left hand with her right and gave it a squeeze. 'So what did you think Wolf wanted when you first met him?'
'He was different. None of this fake camaraderie or an apologetic 'You don't know me, but…' He just introduced himself and asked, explaining he'd already told someone else I'd do the signing. Most folks would have then tried to play on my sympathies, begging me to get them off the hook. Wolf just said, 'If you're willing, great, if not I'll have to think of something else.' '
I grinned sheepishly. 'You remember it better than I do, I think. I seem to recall some stammering on my part.'
'No, man, you were cool.' Jimmy chuckled lightly. 'Instead of wanting something from me, Wolf was giving me a chance to do something nice for someone. I asked him what was in it for me, and he just smiled like he is now. He said he didn't have much, but he'd owe me. I got the feeling that being in his debt wasn't a bad thing at all.'
Lynn gave me a peck on the cheek. 'It's not been for me.'
Jimmy smiled, then nodded to me. 'At least he treated me like a human being. Too many players get tightly identified with the players whose statsoft they use. I guess it's like trid actors being identified by their roles instead of their true names. For the guys who like that, it's great-Babe being a fine example of that. For the rest of us, it's a pain.'
Lynn frowned. 'I guess I don't understand why you have to use statsofts when you play.'
Valerie's eyes brightened. 'It's really not that hard to follow, Lynn. Back toward the end of the twentieth century baseball started slipping in popularity. A devastating players' strike and a number of betting scandals rocked the game. Because players and managers were betting on games and seen as grossly overpaid, fans started deserting. Baseball officials reacted, taking serious steps. For example, one of the greats, Pete Rose, was banned from the game and initially barred from election to the Hall of Fame because of gambling. Baseball also tried expansion, interleague play, and radical realignment to bring the fans back, but it only slowed the slide. They needed something to reverse it and that need, coupled with two other things, set up the current system.'
Her earlier nervousness banished as we got into a discussion of baseball, she laid out the thinking behind the current system like a professor lecturing from her dissertation. 'When the world changed and magic came back, and with the rise of bioware and cyberware, the potential for rigging games really spiked. Something had to be done to combat that eventuality. At the same time sabermetricians had managed to reduce the game to a stack of stats, and with the proper program you could produce a box score that would be very close to what the true outcome of the game would be.'
Val held her left hand open, palm up, then made the same gesture with her right hand. 'At roughly the same time a great nostalgia for baseball hit. Old-timers' games and replays of old championship series became very popular. The filmField of Dreams and its holovid sequels made lots of money. Suddenly the corps that owned baseball got a great idea.'
She brought her hands together, her fingers interlaced. 'The Hall of Fame produces statsofts for all the players who ever played the game. Teams bid for the services of players in certain years of their careers- guaranteeing a statistical level of performance-and the teams play. It's possible to have Babe Ruth from 1916 pitching to himself from 1927, for example, and that makes for a very exciting game.'
Lynn shrugged. 'But that could be done with a computer simulation. Why do they need players?'
Jimmy nodded. 'Good question. They use us mules because we can get broken, which introduces an element into the game that a computer simulation can't really cover.'
'Even so, aren't the outcomes preordained- statistically speaking?'
I gave Lynn's hand a squeeze. 'They would be except for players like Jimmy here. He's a Legacy player.'
'What's that?'
Jimmy hesitated and Val answered for him. 'There are some players in the annals of major league baseball who never had the chance to play enough games to pro- vide a solid statistical base to make them a good player. The teams bid a lot of money for the headline players, like Babe Ruth and Tom Seaver, then fill out their roster with lesser known players. Legacy players come after that, and their identities are kept secret. That injects more chance into the game and allows folks to guess at who their favorite players are.'
She reached over and gently slapped the back of Jimmy's hand. 'Last year I thought you were playing Luscious Luke Easter from 1953, but this year, I don't know. This season you could be Red Lutz in 1922 or Bobby Lowe from 1894.'
'Good guesses all.' Jimmy smiled at her and I saw Val blush. 'Luke Easter was a great player. I'd like to think,if I were playing him, I could do him justice.'
So would management, and that was the basic problem I'd been asked to help solve. The team wasn't playing up to their averages. Everyone was off their statistical average and even though a few players, like Jimmy, were doing better than they should have, the overall effect was to take the edge off Seattle and that spelled disaster in the upcoming pennant battle with the San Diego Jaguars.
Jimmy leaned forward and brought his voice down into a conspiratorial whisper. 'Look, this place is making my skin crawl. Shall we get out of here?'
'Sure. We can catch something to eat down the street.'
Jimmy's face brightened. 'You know, I'd just as soon head over to that pizza joint on Westlake you talked me into visiting.'
Val looked slightly stricken. 'The Dominion place across from the Jackal's Lantern?'
I waved her concern off. 'Don't worry, Val. The prevailing breeze blows from Dominion toward the Lantern and not vice versa.' I stood and pulled Lynn's chair out for her. 'How did you get down here?'
'Val gave me a ride.'
Valerie smiled as Jimmy held her chair for her. 'Lynn, why don't you go with Wolf. I'll drive Jimmy, if that's okay with you?'
'I'd be delighted,' he replied to her and I had no doubts he would indeed.
II
