Root actually laughed. “Yeah. Sure. Like I did in Chicago.”
And he followed his teammates into the shadows of the dugout, where Charlie Comiskey stood glaring hotly at them.
The Babe trotted to his own dugout. Lou and the other guys slapped his back and congratulated him on the big winning blast. One of the black players, Mays, raised his hand up above his head, palm outward. The Babe didn’t know what to do.
Hank Aaron, looking slightly embarrassed, demonstrated a high five with Mays. The Babe grinned and tried it.
“Okay!” he laughed.
About an hour later, Connie Mack and Charlie Comiskey stood on the mound, staring out toward left, talking it over. Both men were in a good mood. Mack had proven his point, and said so to Comiskey.
“I told you he’d do the right thing, Charles. You wouldn’t believe me, of course, but I was confident.”
“Oh, that’s all right, McGillicuddy, that’s all right,” said Comiskey with a wave of his hand. “I never thought he’d bunt, but it’s turned out all right for me. Some of my fellows proved they really belong on my team, you might say.”
Mack smiled. “Well, I suppose that’s true, Charles. But you do remember what George said just before he went back to bat.”
“What he said?”
“Well. Yes. You heard him. He said he wasn’t doing it merely for himself. It was for all of them.”
Comiskey scratched his jowly jaw. “Yeah, I remember. What’d he mean by that?”
“What he meant,” said Mack, “was that he wants all the players—yours as well as mine—to be free to choose which team they want to be with from now on.”
“All the players? Mine? My players?” Comiskey sputtered. “Never! He can’t do that! It’s against our rules. Each player is bound to the team that owns him. The reserve clause—”
“The reserve clause is ancient history, Charles,” said Mack patiently.
“What in hell do you mean?”
“I’ve already spoken to the Commissioner. The reserve clause that you insisted upon has been stricken from each player’s contract.”
Comiskey just gaped at Cornelius McGillicuddy. “You can’t! You—it’s not fair! Dammit to hell, it’s not fair! Those players signed their lives away. To me!”
Mack shook his head ever so slightly. “Those poor souls are free, Charles. The Commissioner agreed to the terms George requested. And with that bunt, the Babe freed them.”
Comiskey’s face was redder than fire. “You engineered this, McGillicuddy! You knew—”
“I hoped, Charles,” replied Mack softly. “And the Babe came through for me. And for all of them.”
Stamping his cloven feet in fury, Comiskey snarled, “This isn’t the end of it! You’ll see!”
“Oh, goodness gracious, yes, I know. You’ll make an offer that some of the players can’t refuse, Charles. Some of them will want to stay on your team, of course. That’s up to them.”
Comiskey shook his fist under Mack’s nose. “Wait till next year, McGillicuddy. Wait till next year!”
Connie Mack smiled. “Next year the Babe will be managing my club. I’m being moved . . . eh, upstairs.” And Mack began to shimmer, his form slowly losing its solidity, becoming transparent.
“Oh, and Charles,” he added while slowly fading away. “It’s my understanding that you’ve been moved to a new assignment, too, something a little slower paced; cricket, I believe. And if you do well there, then, perhaps, next year you’ll be back to face the Babe. I do hope so, really, for your sake.” And he was gone.
Comiskey, furious but helpless, could only stamp his foot in anger and shake his fist at the sky, where the dark clouds that had rumbled and threatened rain all day were now, finally, blowing clear and letting the late-afternoon sun shine through.
GREENHOUSE CHILL
Meanwhile, back on Earth . . .[1]
What would drive the sons and daughters of Earth out into the cold and dangerous depths of interplanetary space? The lure of profit or power or just plain adventure might be enough to draw some daring souls, but for a significant expansion of the human race across the space frontier, there must be some powerful force (or forces) driving people off-planet.
Shortly after I finished Mars I began work on a novel that featured Dan Randolph, the hard-driving visionary founder of Astro Manufacturing, Inc., a corporation involved in space transportation and manufacturing. In this novel, Empire Builders, I postulated a looming global ecological disaster: the greenhouse cliff.
Most scientists around the world are convinced that the Earth’s climate is heating up, and that the human race’s outpouring of greenhouse-enhancing gases such as carbon dioxide are a significant factor in the global warming. A small but insistent minority of scientists protest that global warming is largely illusory, or at least its impact has been grossly exaggerated.
For my Grand Tour novels, I speculated that global warming is not only real, but that its impact will hit suddenly, over a matter of a decade or so, not the gradual, centuries-long effect that most people expect. A greenhouse cliff, with a sudden, drastic rise in sea levels that floods coastal cities worldwide, leading to a collapse of the electrical power grid that is the cornerstone of our industrial society. Together with shifts of climate that wipe out large swaths of farmlands, the greenhouse cliff causes a global catastrophe of unparalleled proportion.
Visionaries such as Dan Randolph try to develop the resources of energy and raw materials that exist in space to help rebuild the Earth’s shattered society. Others, such as Martin Humphries, want to use those resources to further their own schemes of power and profit.
But what is happening on Earth? We get a glimpse of this in “Greenhouse Chill.” Incidentally, the possibility that a greenhouse warming can lead to a new ice age is now an accepted concept among many scientists; see William H. Calvin’s A Brain for All Seasons (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
But I published first!
