“Whoa,” said George. “Boosted your what average to what?”
I elaborated the obvious: one hit in three turns, .333.
“Where’d you get that notion?” George demanded.
“That’s not the right way,” Andy said, and explained that a player’s run total was divided by the number of games he played. The result was expressed in terms of “average and over.” “For example,” he said, turning to Millar, “what’re my striking averages?”
The reporter thumbed through the sheets. “Three and forty-five,” he said. “Against two and thirty-three. Third highest on the regulars.”
“What’s this against business?” I asked.
“You compare your runs average against your outs, or ‘hands lost’ average,” Andy replied. “I’m averaging three runs and forty-five over —that is, three point forty-five runs against two outs and thirty-three over. Let’s take you; how many times’d you make your run?”
“Just once.”
“So in three games you’re averaging oh and thirty-three runs against oh and sixty-seven outs. Not good, but you ain’t had much chance.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Tell him who leads the nine,” said George, grinning.
“You tell him,” Brainard snapped, several seats away. “You puff your figures in your head before a match is even done.”
George looked grim but said nothing. I began to wonder if the club was still big enough for two stars.
Millar said, “George leads the strikers with five and one against two and five. He also leads in making his base at four and twenty.”
“How many times up?” I said, getting out a pencil. “How many hits?”
“One hundred twenty-seven striking opportunities,” Millar said. “Eighty-six safe blows.”
I figured George’s batting average. Jesus, .677. “How many homers?”
Millar counted. “Five on tour, twelve in all.”
Twelve homers in twenty-four games. Against top competition. No other Stocking had half that many. George was a Babe Ruth in his own era, no doubt about it.
“This runs-against-outs business,” I argued, “doesn’t allow for all the times you hit but don’t score, or drive in runs, or score on errors. All it reflects is whether you stepped on the plate.”
“That’s the object,” said Andy. “How many outs it takes to score how many runs. All the rest is trimmings. A ballist’s freezin’ to make his run every time up. Harry’s averages tell how often he did it. But accordin’ to your way, all that’s required is gettin’ to first. Why go any farther?”
Well, he had a point. Sort of. “Another crazy thing,” I said. “You guys count an out against a forced runner instead of the hitter who forced him.”
“But it’s the runner who’s out” said George. “Got to show in his averages.”
“Even when it’s not his fault?”
“Able runners don’t get forced so often—for one thing they’ll steal the base to prevent it. So that shows up in the averages too.”
Stymied, I decided to let it drop.
Later Millar proudly showed me his homecoming article for the Commercial. It began:
God’s noblest work is a perfectly developed man of refinement and education To demonstrate this was one of the designs of the tour.
What tripe, I thought, and scanned the rest. Millar lavished praise on our “wholesomeness”—either he was blind or a hypocrite if he hadn’t noticed behavior incongruous with “wholesomeness” on the part of certain Stockings—and he gushed about the record crowds in the East, the turnout of respectable ladies and gentlemen, the audience with Grant, and finally trumpeted, “A new era has dawned upon baseballdom. . . .”
“Nice work,” I told him. “Very laudatory.”
Glasses glinting in the lamplight, Millar looked quite pleased.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Partly it was the train’s jouncing; partly the knowledge that a new phase of my life would begin the next day. I lay in my berth watching the curtains sway, trying to think about what I wanted to do. Gradually a plan took shape. I decided to broach it to Harry and Champion in hopes of extending what little continuity I knew in this strange existence. As I lay there it seemed that the railway car was like my life—being rushed through the darkness by an engine of fate toward whatever waited ahead.
The hoopla began at Loveland, twenty miles outside the city. A delegation flushed with our victories and their own liquor swarmed aboard. I was ignored until Harry introduced me as the savior of the Haymaker match, then was welcomed as a companion in arms. Cincinnati awaited us in a state of frenzy, they said. One rotund backslap-per confided to me that although he didn’t know much about baseball, “Glory, but you’ve advertised the city—advertised us, sir, and helped our business, sir.” I assured him that it was my pleasure.
We curved into the city along the muddy swell of the Ohio, on which increasing numbers of vessels trailed black plumes of smoke. The air grew thick as we passed through an industrial area. Very thick. I glimpsed people holding handkerchiefs over their noses. Eyes stinging, I felt like I used to when I drove into Los Angeles.
Gesturing with sweeping flourishes at a scow carrying iron scraps below us on the river, Hurley recited sarcastically:
“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burnt on the water. The poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. . . .”
Then he pretended to choke, gagging and clutching at his mouth. Champion was not amused.
“What’s that about?” I asked Andy, who explained that Cincinnati was notorious for burning a soft coal that permeated the air with soot. An hour of walking outside soiled your clothes and lined your eyes, nose, and mouth with grime; people breathed through fabric when winds didn’t ventilate the city.
When we pulled into the Little Miami Station I got a fuller picture. The city filled a bowl-shaped delta cradled between a wide bend in the river and steep encircling hills. Over it rose towers of smoke to a dark ceiling that obscured the sky.
“I didn’t imagine so many factories,” I said. “This is how I’d picture Pittsburgh or Chicago.”
“Oh,
