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Show Car Baseball Butch and Fenn Stories 51 runs everywhere. Then, maybe a week later, he'll call one of us from across a street, and when we turn he will throw a couple of tennis balls. "Keep practicing!" he'll call. He throws the balls in high arcs just so he can watch us stagger underneath them and try for the catch. He can put the ball up there far enough that it's hard to judge. I think he steals the balls up at the high school for us; they're new balls. The fuzz on them changes the pace of all our games. "This crap," Butch would say, thumbing the ball, "slows the pitch by half." But this time Parley doesn't ask for just one hit and he's gone, apparently to a rock fight. Butch sits down on the plate. Home base is actually a plate, Tiny's wide pink melmac dinner dish. I sit down. Fenn sits down. "You guys want to go down to the rock fight or finish the game?" "You think we ought to go?" "You want to?" "Parley's down there." "We know that, Fenn." "Rock fight," Butch says. "I don't much want to go to a rock fight," I say, tossing the ball left hand to right hand. "What do they do?" "It's rocks, I guess." |