And the fog
closed in again. It was too unbelievable.
A bell clanged twice and his brain cleared. He saw the scurry of
uniformed figures to the field, the catcher adjusted his mask. The
Greatest Pitcher the World Has Ever Known stood nonchalantly in the box,
stooped for a handful of earth and with it polluted the fair surface of
a new ball. A second later the ball shot over the plate. The batter
fanned, the crowd yelled.
All at once Bean was coldly himself. He knew that Breede sat at his
right; that on his left was a peculiar young woman. He promptly forgot
their identities, and his own as well, and recalled them but seldom
during the ensuing game.
It is a phenomenon familiar to most of us. The sons of men, under the
magic of that living diamond, are no longer little units of souls
jealously on guard. Heart speaks to heart naked and unashamed; they
fraternize across deeps that are commonly impassable, thrilling as one
man to the genius of the double-play, or with one voice hurling merited
insults at a remote and contemptuous umpire. It is only there, on earth,
that they love their neighbour. There they are fused, and welded into
that perfect whole which is perhaps the only colourable imitation ever
to be had on earth of the democracy said to prevail in Heaven.
There was no longer a Bean, a Breede, a flapper. Instead were three
merged souls in three volatile bodies, three voices that blended in
cheers or execration.
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