Josh Gets to First Base the Hard Way

Naturally, these were the lineup cards presented to the umpire. Each team had a number of reserves in the dugout. The females were the home team, so the men got to bat first.

The women took the field. Ragan played first base. As she had spent time in twentieth century America, she was familiar with the rules and conventions of baseball, and was trying to explain things to the first base umpire, Checkers, who was picked for the job because she had excellent vision but would have trouble swinging a bat.

"OK, Miss Ragan, so I have two things to do. If the ball stops on the side of this white line away from Astra, the line that goes between this white thing called a base and where Josh is standing, then I call it 'foul' and the batter has to try to swing again. If it lands on the side toward Astra, it is 'fair' and Josh tries to run and step on the base. The second thing that I have to do is to see if you catch the ball and touch the base before Josh touches the base. If you can do that, he is 'out', and if you cannot, he is 'safe'."

"That is most of it. The tie goes to the runner, as they say. There are some odd things - there is something called a balk, but you can probably ignore that rule. And one other thing - if Josh keeps running down the line and has touched the base before I get the ball, he is OK, and can stay on first base. If he starts going toward second base, I can try to tag him with the ball and if he is not standing on a base, he is out."

"OK. I think that I have it."

"Now Furry Sarah is going to keep track of what we call the count. If the ball gets by the batter and he swings at it, she will call a strike. It is also a strike if it batter does not swing at it and it crosses home plate in a square bounded by the batters knees, the batter's armpits, and the edges of the plate. If the baseball is thrown outside that square, then it is called a 'ball'. Three strikes almost always means the batter is out and has to go back to the bench. Four balls means that the batter can walk to first base, so it is called a walk."

"OK."

"Now on the scoreboard they keep the count. Balls are first, and strikes are second. So a '3-1' count is good for the hitter, as the pitcher won't want to throw another ball and walk him. A '1-2' count is good for the pitcher, as the batter has to swing at pitches that might not be good just to avoid having the third strike called."

The umpire took a little whisk broom and swept the dust of home plate, and said, "Play ball!"

Astra threw the first pitch in an underarm motion, and the catcher, Elaine, caught it away from Josh.

"Ball." Furry Sarah said.

Josh taunted Astra. "You throw like a girl."

Astra reared back, and threw a wicked screwball that broke in on Josh in a most unfortunate way.

Checkers said, "I hope he is OK. Does that make it a 2-1 count?"

"2-1? Why? Oh. Very clever, Checkers. He gets to go to first base as he is a hit batsman. It looks bad, but as long as he was wearing a protective cup, he should be able to recover."

Back in the men's dugout, Velus was asking Sir Toby, "What do you mean, that we don't have money in the budget for protective cups? How could we can we afford the nice scoreboard and field but not cups?"

"Accounting gets complicated. The scoreboard and field are new and came out of the capital budget. Protective cups are considered an operational expense, and we needed to cut something to make the numbers. Besides that, we needed a cheap joke."

1. And because it is necessary for the plot, Josh recovers enough to walk down to first base. Scott now comes to the plate.

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