Taterskin & The Eco Defenders: Book 2, Chapter 26
Book 2 ("Tell It to Future Generations"), Chapter 26 of 56
CHAPTER 26
That night, as we slept one last time in the carriage house, I dreamt that, instead of how things worked out (using gentle persuasion, the Socratic method, and impeccable logic), the scientists had proposed a baseball game to solve our differences, pitting animals (our side) against humans (their side). They could choose their team, we could choose our team. The winner of the contest would determine whether vivisection (animal torture chambers) would continue or not.
In my dream, Albert agreed, as long as we could field as many players as we wanted to in the outfield. Simon balked at this at first, but then, thinking that having a plethora of critters in the outfield would result in them getting in each other’s way and having violent collisions, with resultant injuries, agreed to it — providing he could swap pitchers at will, and be able to use a pitcher as many times as he wanted throughout the contest (in other words, replace a right-handed pitcher with a southpaw, then later bring the right-handed hurler back into the game — that sort of thing).
We agreed to that, but also stipulated that we could use a PH (a pinch hitter, not a pugnacious Hyena) to bat for any player we wanted, without the player being replaced at the plate having to leave the game.
With those “tweaks” made to the normal rules of baseball, we chose our teams.
In my dream, the all-human team opposing us featured the great stars of the time (1903): Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Joe McGinnity, Roger Bresnahan, Eddie Plank, Nap Lajoie, Rube Waddell, and Christy Mathewson are the ones I specifically remember. This was an all-star team made up of the best players from all those ‘olde-time’ teams, such as the Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Americans, Cleveland Blues, Brooklyn Superbas, and such.
We animals had on our team an Octopus named Acht D. Lieber functioning as our catcher, situated in a kiddie pool set up behind home plate; the ambidextrous Ooga was our pitcher (he switched from pitching right-handed to left-handed based on the ‘handedness’ of the batter he faced); Jubatus the Cheetah played shortstop; a Spider Monkey I didn’t recognize was on 2nd base; an Orangutan I hadn’t formerly become acquainted with manned (or ‘aped,’ I guess) 3rd base; and Chumbawumba “Stretch” Modoc covered 1st base, thus rounding out the infield.
In the outfield, we had human/animal pairs at each of the three positions: left field, center field, and right field (that’s why we stipulated that we could have as many outfielders as we wanted): we fielded an animal to catch the ball (as animals are faster and can jump higher than humans), after which our co-position human would get the ball from us and (having prehensile arms) throw it back in to the infield.
I played center field along with Albert; a Greyhound facetiously nicknamed “Slowpoke” ranged around left field along with Chapawee (who definitely did not ‘throw like a girl’); and finally (last but not least) Terri and Ravelle patrolled right field together. Terri was kind of slow, though, and not especially coordinated, so we were thinking about pulling her for Falcona, as Peregrine Falcons are much quicker and more athletic than Pterodactyls.
We used Chumbawumba as our DH. Only those with prehensile arms, such as humans and apes — or Elephants with versatile trunks — possess the ability to hit a ball with a bat. Chumbawumba could wrap his trunk around the skinny part of a bat and reach any pitch, whether it was high, low, or outside. He couldn’t be tricked with curveballs, sliders, change-ups (slowballs), knuckleballs, or anything else, either. The only way he wouldn’t make contact with the ball — and when he did, look out! The ball would sail clear out of the stadium and out of sight — was when he was awarded a free trip to first base when the pitcher hit him, whether accidentally or on purpose. But that was OK, because it didn’t hurt him much when that happened, he being literally thick-skinned and all.
We also benefited from these intentional walks in that, although he wasn’t the swiftest of runners, when all five tons of Chumbawumba rounded the bases with those wide arcs that he made, all the opposing basemen got well out of his way. For that reason, there was no tagging him out as there was nobody within tagging distance of him to get the job done.
Thus, the pitchers (Cy Young, Rube Waddell, et al) avoided pitching inside, since if they hit him that would basically be an automatic run for our team — after taking first base on the “walk,” he would steal second, third, and then home, with no one brave or stupid enough to try to tag him out. And when it came to a collision at the plate between Chumbawumba and the catcher? Forget about it — even the hard-nosed and normally fearless Hugh Herne of the Brooklyn Superbas abandoned the plate and headed for the dugout area when Chumbawumba came stampeding home, ears flared, trunk raised, and trumpet blaring.
And you can’t blame him for that. It is better to be a live Dog than a dead Lion (or, a live person than a dead person, in his case).
To make a long story short, we won the game. I hadn’t enjoyed a dream that much since the night I dreamt I was a Puppy again, chasing Butterflies through the meadow simply for the fun of it. I made sure to never actually catch a Butterfly in that dream, but I had too much fun (if that’s possible) running and romping and leaping and jumping and yipping and bounding and barking and wagging my tail! Rovette didn’t want to wake me up, because she could tell I was having such a good time, but told me (and our pups) afterward that I would scratch all four legs on the ground and then bark and scrape just my back legs against the floor and appear to be flying through the air like Superdog for a couple of seconds. It was kind of embarrassing for me to hear her tell the pups about it, but it seemed to increase their affection for me; I don’t know why.
So, I awoke in a good mood and was raring to go on to new adventures. Once we all got some breakfast and had done a few calisthenics (running around the barn and play-fighting and such), the double dozen of us climbed into the Zephyr and the Androcles.
Albert and Ravelle set the GPS/CPS of the JNGs they were piloting.
Location: Manhattan, New York
Date: 1911
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