OH VILLAIN, VILLAIN, SMILING DAMNED VILLAIN!

By Richard Rosen

There used to be a thrift store on Folsom Boulevard I’d stop at almost weekly when I lived in Sacramento. Mostly I was looking for old clothes which, back in the late 60s and early 70s when this incident took place, were in high demand with the hippie crowd. But I also usually made a quick run through the book section to scan the spines, just in case. I say "just in case" because usually all I found were an assortment of bodice-rippers, war stories with swastikas on the cover, and cook books, but it was a good idea to take the time each week, just in case something good had been dropped off, and since the pricers at the thrift store hadn’t the slightest notion how much certain books were worth, every now and again I’d hit the jackpot and pick up a rare volume for just a few bucks. Well one day I came across a box, sitting on the book shelf, with a bunch of colored-coded cards in it that turned out to be a dice baseball game, the kind where you’d throw three dice and look up the number combination on one of the player’s card. Depending on the numbers, the player would get some sort of hit, or a walk, or make an out, reach on an error, there was even a slim chance that the player could get injured. I had two house mates at the time, and all three of us were big baseball fans, so I plunked down a few dollars and went home, prize in hand. 

As I imagined, my house mates were ecstatic, and we immediately decided to organize a three-team league, I would be the Highlanders, the original name of the Yankees, and my friends would be the Superbas and the Trolley Dodgers, two of the original names of the Dodgers. When draft day came we were all buzzing with excitement. The available players were a mix of old and new, on the one hand Babe Ruth, on the other Sandy Koufax, Rogers Hornsby over there, Whitey Ford right here, you could get Pie Traynor, or Duke Snider. We drew lots to determine who would go first, and happily I won. Now dear reader, put yourself in my shoes, I’m about to build a baseball team from the ground up and I can choose ANY player EVER (or almost ever) to anchor my franchise. Who would you choose?  There are some very logical choices.  Ruth suggests himself immediately, or Ty Cobb.  How about pitching, I could have grabbed Christy Mathewson or Walter Johnson.  I could take my childhood hero (way before I read The Last Boy), Mickey Mantle.  (Was there ever a more perfect name for a baseball player?  Mantle at a news conference after his liver transplant, recounting a dream he had while under, said he dreamed he died and went up to the Pearly Gates. St Peter checked the big book in which all our life deeds are recorded, and said, "Sorry, but you can’t come in," but then quickly reached under the desk and holding out something in his hand, continued, "But as long as you’re here, can you sign this baseball?").  But in the end I had to go with a shortstop, the position I played all through Little and Pony League, and I had to have the greatest one of all, yes, the Flying Dutchman, Honus Wagner (he was actually German).  O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.

But then something very very strange began to happen. As the draft proceeded my house mates, momentarily my despised rivals, again and again chose what were obviously second- and third-tier players, and left me with no choice but to draft one Hall of Famer after another. I don’t now, some 40+ years later, remember exactly who the players were they took, but when the dust settled my roster consisted of perhaps—no, undoubtedly—the most fearsome team ever assembled in the history of the universe. How’s Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Babe Ruth for a starting outfield? Mantle? Yeah, he was on my bench, and I’d start him every now and again for old times sake, but I had another outfielder by the name of DiMaggio, ever heard of him? And not Dom either, but Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper. Infield? Pie and Dutch on the left side, Rogers Hornsby and Lou Gehrig on the right (once they asked Hornsby why he didn’t play golf. "When I hit a ball," answered the Rajah, "I want someone else to chase it"). And if the Iron Horse, slumped I had Bill Terry waiting in the wings. Catcher? Just Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra (I was very heavy on Yankees). I don’t now remember much about my pitching, by the time I put together my everyday line-up I could started Charlie Brown on the mound and still win by plenty. I do recall I had Koufax and Ford, but after that it really didn’t matter. See, my EIGHTH PLACE hitter was Bill Dickey. 

Then the season started and ... and ... and ... the loses started piling up. The greatest collection of hitters ever to gather together on the same table top were failing miserably, Cobb was in the .290s, Ruth homerless, while Johnny Evers—JOHNNY EVERS, for God’s sake—of the Superbas was leading the league in hitting. At first I just laughed it off, just you wait, the law of averages will out, these guys CAN’T NOT hit, the hits were built into their cards, but no, day after frustrating day, week after heartbreaking week, the Highlanders sunk deeper and deeper into the cellar, the league doormats, while the Superbas and Trolley Dodgers battled for first plane. I began to lose sleep and resent my room mates, what once had been a chummy rivalry between guys became an ugly mud fight, I even tried cheating in subtle ways (Lee Marvin to Paul Newman in Pocket Money: "If ya ain’t cheatin’, ya ain’t tryin’"), nothing worked. OH the horror, I had become Casey Stengel, my team wasn’t the ‘56 Bombers though, it was the ‘62 Mets, all I lacked was Marvelous Marv Throneberry. 

Then one day, back at the thrift store, the skies opened and light poured down. There on a shelf was the same exact baseball game, but ... THIS ONE HAD THE ORIGINAL THREE DICE. You see, the house league had been using standard dice all along, and as it turned out, THAT WAS ALL WRONG, standard dice would SKEW THE NUMBERS, turn the world upside down. So I stole the dice, figuring the store owed it to me, and rushed home to share the good news with my house mates. But for them the news was anything but good. "We’ll have to draft again," one of them said. "But why?" I asked incredulously, and he answered, "Because with these dice, YOU’LL KILL US." And then, and then, they showed me the charts they’d made for the draft, charts I had no idea they had, charts they worked out BASED ON THE PERCENTAGES OF STANDARD DICE THROWS, charts they made because they were both experienced gamblers (and the last time I played cards was when I was 6, and it was Old Maid with my grandmother). THAT’S why I ended up with the team I did, because using standard dice my players were lousy, while Sonny Boy Williamson was leading the league in homers. They knew all along why I was losing the way I was, AND THEY NEVER TOLD ME, AND NOW THEY WANTED TO "DRAFT AGAIN" BECAUSE I’D "KILL THEM."  O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!  My tables—meet it is I set it down. That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

Well, I finally gave in and drafted again, but I just wasn’t the same, and it wasn’t the same with my house mates either. One of them I only had known casually, but I knew he was a fierce competitor, so I wasn’t too surprised he’d let me suffer. But the other one had been a close friend for years, and now in retrospect it seems silly, but I never trusted him again, and eventually the relationship ended poorly. I’m not sure this story has a moral, I’m not even sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing had I been in their shoes going up against someone naive like me. So sorry, BD friends, this one has a rather sad ending.