The Brooklyn Nine: Second Inning

Stuart’s skittishness was understandable, if a little tiresome. Louis had been there for Stuart’s rookie engagement in the Civil War—what the career men called “Seeing the Elephant”—and had seen Stuart come away the worse for it.

Louis bounded up the steps into the store but froze inside the door.

Heedless of the shopkeeper’s gun, he strolled through the aisles, surveying the goods like he was shopping.

But that was plenty enough for a first-rate feast, and when they returned, Louis and Stuart were hailed by their fellow soldiers as heroes to the nation.

“It was all Louis,” Stuart told them, regaling the rest of the Brooklyn Fourteenth with the story as he lazed by the fire, licking the chicken grease off his fingers.

“Lucky nothing—where’d you come by so many Confederate bills?” asked Corporal Bruner.

He’d battled the graybacks at Chancellorsville, spent three days dodging bullets at Gettysburg, fought in the Battle of the Wilderness, and been in half again as many skirmishes in between.

He was a stout man, as most generals were, with a hulking brown mustache, long tall nose, and receding line of dark curly hair.

He was a stout man, as most generals were, with a hulking brown mustache, long tall nose, and receding line of dark curly hair.

“On many a weary march, and many a hard fought field, I have personally seen your courage and devotion. Your name is a household word in the army. You are the elite of our division.”

“You original members who mustered in during the formation of your regiment—you who have survived Bull Run, South Mountain, Falmouth, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Rappahanock Station, Chancellorsville, Sulphur Springs, Gettysburg, Groveton, The Wilderness, Gainesville, and Spotsylvania Court House—twice—you brave few who remain have earned your nation’s respect and gratitude. You have also earned your release from the Army of the Potomac.”

“Tomorrow morning you will take a train to Baltimore, and thence to Jersey City and home to Brooklyn, where your city fathers are even now, I am told, making ready a celebration of some consequence.”

I do swear, I have never known a regiment so full of shrewd devices to avoid unnecessary hardships as the Brooklyn Fourteenth.

The fly rule was agreed upon, as most players thought catching the ball on the fly was more manly anyway, but “stealing” bases, a new practice introduced by Ned Cuthbert of the Philadelphia Keystones, was deemed unsportsmanlike and prohibited.

General Doubleday was solicited to call balls and strikes, but he had other companies to see and so the teams made do with Lieutenant Tinker.

Louis was eager to have another go at Bruner’s dastardly “dew drops,” the balls that seemed to float across the plate as leaves descend to the forest floor, and his mates cheered him on from the sidelines.

When dusk fell there was no clear winner, as was so often the case in engagements like this, and Lieutenant Tinker received orders to break camp and retreat.

Louis marched with his company two miles inland under cover of night, and they set up their tents by a small stream. The camp canard had the rest of the regiment moving on to North Anna, some two days away, while Louis and the rest who had received their release would be transported to the nearest railway station when it was safe and then ferried northward and homeward.

He reached instinctively to touch the baseball in his haversack, then remembered it wasn’t there.

The shape grew closer, and with his ears attuned to every little sound, Louis heard a man’s boots scraping along the hard dirt path.

“Be you grayback or bush hog, show yourself, varmint!”

“Just keep down this road, then take the right junction at the forge. You’ll come along the advance pickets, and they can get you into camp.”

“Much obliged, Private.” Louis gave the man a quick salute, and they parted ways.

He stayed on guard the rest of his walk, but if the corporal hadn’t seen any Confederates, ambling along at his cripple’s pace, Louis figured he wasn’t likely to meet the Army of Northern Virginia on the way.

In Louis’s late-night skulks back to battlefields he had always made a point of waiting until well after the surgeons had finished their business.

His blind eyes searched the darkness eagerly, hoping for some shape or shadow that might give him his bearings.

Killing this boy here and now would be akin to murder—even if he might have been the one to take Stuart down in cold blood.

Why not take him back to the Union camp as a prisoner of war, maybe see if he could get a promotion out of it? Even on the eve of going home, a promotion would mean a better pension, which his family could sorely use.

The boy was so profuse in his thanks Louis began to feel sorry for the lie, but there was no other choice.

Not a broom handle or a whittled-down tree limb, but a real, honest-to-God lathe-turned hickory bat, such as Louis had only seen in the hands of the finest players on the Excelsiors.

“What about bunting?” Jeremiah asked. “Do your teams look upon it favorably, or—”

There was more rustling, which Louis took to mean they were no longer in the sentry’s sights.

“I uh, I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have forgotten the password.”
“I think I can forgive my guardian angel that one transgression,” Jeremiah said.

We weren’t supposed to fire, you know. We were just watching the game on a lark. Then Samuels got twitchy and went and shot that boy, the center fielder.

This time Louis kept his eye out for sentries and spotted a campfire through the bracken before the picket spotted them.