8
The Professor
“All right, fellows,” I told them, once we were out on the dirt and in the sunshine. “The Romans just want to see what baseball’s all about, so I told them they could watch us work out.”
It wasn’t quite as simple as that, but I thought I’d better ease into it, so I was holding a ball in my right hand, tossing it up in the air and catching it while I talked. “These guys here are athletes, fellows, and they tell me they have a kid’s game like baseball. They call it “small ball.” So I told ’em we all started playing this game when we were kids too; but where we’re from, adults play it, and it’s pretty damn entertaining.”
I tossed the ball toward Enos Slaughter, our center fielder and the fastest guy on the team. He’d steal second from his own mother if she looked the wrong way for a second or two, and he had a great glove and a strong arm out in center, as well. He and I usually warmed up together, and today was no different. He caught it, grinned, and threw it back to me.
And the guys knew what to do from there. Everybody broke into pairs and started playing catch, loosening up the arms and stretching out the muscles.
Then, just like a bunch of kids marking off a field when we were ten-year-olds, we put down some caps to mark the bases. We had a rubber home plate with us, and we set that down for starters, and then used caps for first, second and third. Then I went over and found a couple of the rakes the Romans used to smooth out the dirt, and while the guys were loosening up I gave one of them to Bobby Gamin, and the two of us gave the infield the once-over. No grass and it wasn’t pretty, but there weren’t any rocks out there before and the dirt wasn’t too bad. It was playable.
Normally we’d take batting practice then, and I always threw BP; but I was thinking maybe we’d dazzle those Romans a little bit first with some snazzy infield work, and let them see what outfield play is like too. So I had Quentin walk down the first base line with the fungo bat to hit some fly balls to the outfielders, and I used the other fungo to hit some grounders to the infielders.
Taking infield was always one of my favorite things to do, mainly because in some other life I’m a slick-fielding shortstop, backhanding that sharp grounder while I go toward third, and then pivoting on my right leg to bring my body around enough that I can sidearm the ball to first and beat the runner. So lots of times I’d get out there and trade off with Walter or Duke or Bobby and have some fun taking grounders.
But not here, not now. We needed to be at our entertaining best and that meant I was hitting the grounders and the guys were fielding them and looking sharp while they did it. I moved them around, hitting balls to their right or to their left, and hitting rollers or one-hoppers, and then a few infield pop flies. All so the guys could show off their skills. We did three rounds of throws to first, and then three more of turning two at second, and a few more turning two the hard way at first, and then a final round keeping Duke busy at third. Then I called in Quentin from hitting those fly balls and did my job as catcher while he dropped some bunts and then hit the ball to the outfield, and we made some plays at the plate. Our outfield arms were good, and the guys really showed that off. Quentin hit them fly balls they had to run to catch, but made sure they were playable. Then the guys set up the cut-offs and the Warriors were perfect as they threw to second and then to third and then to home. If you knew the game, it was a joy to see it played that well.
If you didn’t know the game, I was sure hoping you’d appreciate what you were watching. Especially Domna. For all our sakes, I hoped to hell that she was up there in that room, looking out the window and liking what she was seeing.
After a half hour of that, I brought the infield in and told the guys it was time for batting practice. Then I grabbed the ball bag and walked out about sixty feet from our home plate and used the heel of the spikes to draw a line in the sand. That was my pitching rubber, and with Quentin wearing the tools of ignorance since we needed a backstop, I started throwing good fastballs right down the middle as the guys came up to take ten swings each. There was a guy at the plate, a guy on deck and another in the hole, and everyone else was shagging flies and grounders and tossing them back into me. As the hitters switched after their ten swings, I’d walk around and put all the balls that had rolled in back into the bag and we’d do the whole thing over again.
The right-handed hitters were having a field day. The way we had it set up, there was a short left field, no more than two hundred fifty feet, I’d guess. Then a good three-eighty or even four hundred to center, and forever, it seemed, off to right. The right-handed hitters were popping the ball over the fence with some regularity, and some of the legionaries and gladiators-in-training who were standing beyond the fence watching us got a chance to shag those balls and throw them back to us. That turned out to be a lot of fun, so much so that they started competing with each other to see who could make a nice bare-handed catch and then who had the best arm to throw it back onto the field. They were all a lot better at that than I’d thought they’d be.
Eventually all good things come to an end, and BP was over. Everybody’d had ten swings twice and most of the boys, even the lefties, had a homer or two to celebrate. I hit three of them out and laughed to think I’d probably ruined my nice level swing by trying for fly balls to left and batting-practice homers. But what the hell, we might not be alive long anyway, I might as well go out with some long balls. It felt good, even if it was a short left field.
I was the last to hit, so I was standing there with Quentin. He was still wearing the tools. The guys were trotting in from around the field. Looked like the workout was over. I wondered what was next? The only thing I was sure of was that it wouldn’t be an afternoon game in Decatur, Illinois.
“Huh,” said Quentin. “New player?”
I looked where he was looking, and there she was. Gone was the sumptuous dress; now she wore a plain grey tunic just like the rest of the Romans. Gone was the heavy waft of classical cosmetics, and her face was clean and shining and free of all makeup. A simple linen headband held her hair out of her eyes.
But more than her clothing had changed; it was her entire demeanor. For a woman—an empress of mighty Rome, for goodness sake—Julia Domna moved a lot like a ballplayer. Now that I knew she was mother to Caracalla and Geta, that meant she had to be mid to late thirties, but she sure as heck didn’t look it.
She walked right up to us and said to me, in Latin. “I like your game. I played something very much like it when I was young. I was happy then.”
Her words were flippant, even through that last part, but I saw a shadow move behind her eyes.
“Yes, Domna,” I said to her. “Many of us play for similar reasons. Joy. Happiness. Childhood.”
“Come then,” she said, “and let us play.” And she walked to her right, picked up Quentin’s glove from where he’d dropped it, slid it onto her left hand, and said, “Give me a fastball, Professor, right down the middle.”
Well, she’d picked that up by listening to us in batting practice, when the guys let me know what they wanted to hit. So I walked toward where we’d left our stuff and picked up my fielder’s mitt and we got started playing some catch, me and the widow of the Emperor of all Rome, the mother of two sons contesting power, the focal point of a power struggle that would decide the fate of an empire and, maybe, the future of Western culture as well. Septimius Severus had managed to hold things together pretty good, but in the history I knew it was all downhill for Rome and the West from this point on. And here I was playing nice with Domna. I wondered, what the hell did she have in mind? Why were we here?
To play some ball, apparently. It turned out that Domna wasn’t too bad. We played some catch and she loosened up, and then she trotted out to shortstop. Me and the guys all looked at one another and they shrugged. Hey, it was her home field. Walter and Bobby and Jake all trotted out to join her and then I hit her a soft grounder. Damned if she didn’t charge the ball, gather it up pretty nicely, and then peg one over to Jake at first. Her arm motion was wrong, the sort of short-arm you see a lot in folks who learned the game late. She didn’t bring the hand and wrist back far enough before firing it over to first.
But then I got a little more daring and hit one into the hole. She sprinted to her right, fielded it cleanly, and threw it sidearm to first. A rocket! “Good Christ Almighty,” I heard Quentin say. He was next to me, catching up the balls as they came in from my odd new infield. “Did I just see what I just saw?”
I shook my head and laughed. “I saw it too, Quentin. She can play some ball.”
“I’ll be damned if she ain’t a pretty good shortstop, Professor,” he said, and then we watched as she went and proved that for another dozen or so ground balls. Sure, she was rough around the edges, throwing to the wrong side of the bag at second when she was trying to turn two. And she had trouble with pop-ups behind her. But, hell, who doesn’t?
Most important, she was smiling, and having fun, and so were the guys. Sure, it was just one more strange thing in a long day of absurdities; but thank goodness she was as good as she was, since we were all still alive, even laughing and joking around, when she was done.
The guys had no idea who she was, which I figured was all to the good. If they thought she was just some rich wife of a Roman senator or something, that was fine with me.
I was about to try her out at bat when a bald man in a white tunic showed up in the entryway we’d all come in through and called out to her. I didn’t catch what he said; by now I was so used to hearing Latin that by the time I realized he was speaking Greek, his words were scattered to the winds. Domna stopped where she was and turned, and a ball bounced past her into the infield.
Her expression had turned ominous. A quick nod to the messenger, another to me, and she was striding off the field with us all regretfully watching her go. Her body language had changed back again on a dime: imperious and commanding, she walked like a lady once more, not a ballplayer, for all that she was still wearing a tunic. At the edge of the field she remembered she was wearing Quentin’s glove and dropped it into the dirt. Without even looking back she raised her hand in a curt signal to the stands, and then she was gone.
And as we all stood there, dumbfounded, the legionaries and gladiators who’d been our audience swarmed over the fence and came for us.
With cries of alarm the boys backed up, came together. Guys without bats snatched them from the ground. I heard Quentin saying, “Hey now, hey now,” trying to calm them and Danny Felton saying, “Not that jail cell again, no way,” and my other boys saying viler things in their fear as those brutes marched towards us.
I took a deep breath, smiled, and stepped forward.
That night, I dined with an empress.
If I lived in Rome for a hundred years, I don’t think I’d ever get used to eating lying down. I managed it for the first course of oysters, eggs, and turtle dove, but when they brought in the roast boar and poached lamprey, I begged and bowed and scraped and with a thousand pardons to my hostess, swung my legs off the couch and sat upright like a barbarian, stifling a belch. Wasn’t sure I could eat a whole lot more of that rich food, anyway. I don’t know how Domna could stay so slim on such a diet, and I felt bad for my boys, who were still back in the Ludus Magnus eating whatever the gladiators ate.
At least they wouldn’t be herded back into the pen later. Tonight, my Warriors would be sleeping in the cells the most favored gladiators got, two men to a room, with a straw mattress each and a window for light and air. It wasn’t luxury, but it wasn’t a whole lot worse than some of the motels we stayed at on the road and was even a step up from sleeping on the bus. And they wouldn’t be locked in. They couldn’t leave the Ludus Magnus, but they were free to wander the halls, go to the latrines, or visit with one another.
Not that they’d be socializing a whole lot. They were dog tired. Turned out that those tough-as-nails legionaries and the even more terrifying gladiators, with all their brawn and scars and deadly swagger, all they wanted was to try their hand with a bat and ball. We’d had ourselves a four-hour pickup game, splitting into groups and trying to train the Romans up, show them what was what on a ballfield.
Not a one had Domna’s skills, or anywhere close to that, but they had strong arms and dexterity and a ton of stamina. They were relentless, in fact. Either baseball had really stirred something within the savage breast, or they wanted to excel to curry favor with Domna. Either way, by the end we had to beg for mercy and it was only dusk that saved us.
I’d already known that the Romans played something like baseball, using a stitched-leather ball just a little bigger than a baseball, smaller than those used in their other ball sports. Roman women played it too, but their version had a lot fewer collisions and relied on finesse where the men relied on contact. But in both cases the players threw the ball, caught it, and even hit it, with sticks not that far different from baseball bats.
And as I was learning from Domna at dinner, her sons Antoninus—whom history would remember as Caracalla—and Geta also played the game and loved it.
Domna’s late husband had been off fighting a war in Caledonia with both his sons when he had taken ill and died. The history I remembered said that it might have been poison. The boys had wrapped up the military campaign in short order, and were now marching their armies back to the Eternal City.
“And so, they come,” she said. “Quarrelling all the way. Sometimes coming to blows, held apart only by their legates and tribunes. They are talking of splitting the body in two.”
I shook my head, aghast. “Not … forgive me, Domna … you speak of the Emperor’s body? Surely you do not.”
Like the Brits and the Americans back home, Julia Domna and I were divided by a common language. I understood her words well enough but her idiom could be impenetrable, and to make it worse she was speaking Greek now. Turns out that Latin was her fourth language, after Punic, Aramaic, and Greek, which at least explained her accent.
Mercifully, she looked amused at my error of understanding. Domna raised a finger, and a slave hurried to spoon more fish onto her plate and fill up her beaker of wine and water. She switched to Latin. “I speak of the Imperium, Magister. They would divide my husband’s empire, and rule half of it each. But that cannot stand.”
I wasn’t sure I liked “magister,” but there were worse things she could have called me. “And so, small ball.”
She was staring beyond me now, into the shadows behind the oil lamps that lined the walls, or perhaps even further back into the past. “My boys. When young, they played all the time. Competing, always, but laughing all the while. And then they grew up.” She sighed. “These past years, it was only Severus who stopped them from killing each other.”
Best to check, even though I thought I understood. “But now …?”
“But now, during the great Games that will begin as soon as my sons return, Rome will play ball. And perhaps my boys will relax and be calm once more, and even laugh, and there will be peace between them.”
Maybe I could take advantage of her reverie. I sat forward. “And so you chose us. But how on earth did you bring us here?”
Her gaze swiveled back to me, and she smiled enigmatically. “By the grace of the True God.”
I considered that. “Which God?”
No God I knew, as it turned out. She spoke of Elagabal, the god of her homeland. Julia Domna was descended from a ruling dynasty of Priest-Kings in Syria, and her father was the High Priest of the Temple of the Sun God there, and so Domna had herself some serious favor with Elagabal. The True God spoke to her. She heard him, and she talked right back at him. Elagabal had told Julia Domna how to summon some entertaining warriors for the Games in the Colosseum marking Geta’s and Caracalla’s return, and even told her where to send the centurion and his guards to find us.
I frankly didn’t know what to think about this ancient-world scripturizing and magicking, but Julia seemed sane enough to me, and we were all here now, and that was indisputable.
And perhaps the real story didn’t matter. Somebody—or something, somewhere—had done an amazing thing, and that was probably about all I was ever going to find out about the mechanism of it.
I nodded diffidently, and with my heart in my mouth but as much confidence as I could muster, I said: “And when I and my Wandering Warriors have entertained you and Rome, and once your sons are reconciled? By the grace of the True God and yourself, we may return home?”
Again, that beautiful but Sphinx-like grin. “If Elagabal wills it,” she said. And that was all I got out of her on that subject.
Using a traveling ball team from the future to heal a horrendous broken family and hold an empire together seemed like a tall order. I raised my own cup to my lips, and then put it down again. No more wine for me tonight. I needed to think.
“If your … boys play anywhere near as well as you do, it will be a great game,” I said. With Caracalla’s fearsome reputation, it was hard for me to keep calling him a mere boy, like a mother would.
Julia Domna shrugged. “They are not bad. They move quickly, think on their feet. Catch and throw the small ball well.”
I nodded. “And today, while we were playing, your slave came to tell you … what?”
She brought those beautiful eyes to bear on me again, and studied me intently. I very nearly blushed. Maybe I even did. All I know is that I tried my best to withstand that gaze while she decided whether to tell me.
Eventually she said, “That ‘slave’ is a freedman. And word travels slowly on the road, and armies ride fast when they are angry.”
“Yes, indeed,” I said expectantly, but she had lapsed back into brooding, so I had to figure it out for myself. “Domna, when do Caracalla and Geta arrive back in the City? Perhaps sooner than you expected?”
“I had thought we had two months to train,” she said. “Yet we have only one. Perhaps even less than that.”
I whistled. “Then I hope your legionaries and gladiators learn fast.”
Domna inclined her head. “With such a magister to teach them, I’m sure they will. But I grow tired of your many questions. Tell me more of … where you come from. Of your time, and the game, and where you play it? There is much that I would know of you and your home year, Magister.”
I hesitated for a long moment, even beckoning for yet another plate of food to give me time to think. But I couldn’t cotton to a single reason to stay silent. Would telling Julia Domna about the twentieth century alter the future? Surely nowhere near as much as having my boys and me sliding back in time.
And if nothing else, I needed the grace and favor of Julia Domna, the absolute ruler of the Roman Empire … at least, until her dangerous, violent sons came home.
And perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to take my own mind off the seriousness of our situation, and brag just a little to a beautiful woman.
So, sure. I started telling her some baseball stories. About how Wally Pipp played through pain to become one of the Yankees’ greatest first basemen, and how Babe Ruth won three hundred career games pitching for the Red Sox, and how Ted Williams was one of the greatest hitters of all time until he got shot down over China when MacArthur crossed the Yalu River in the China War. I told her how baseball was so much a part of life where we came from that we used its terminology all the time, hitting a homer with a new proposal at the office, or striking out if the boss said no. Or touching base with someone if you just wanted to check in with them on something. Or surprising someone during a meeting by throwing them a curve. Or stepping up to the plate if you were going to take responsibility for something.
She laughed, and I hadn’t seen her do that before. “But that’s what you and I are doing here, Magister. We are stepping up to the plate, yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s about it.” And, I thought but didn’t say, this might work out, even though the whole crazy thing was definitely out of left field.
Two weeks later, I crouched behind the plate while Lucius Aurelius, the centurion who’d been sent to fetch us from the banks of the Tiber, delivered a pretty good curveball to me. Sure, he liked the high, hard fastball the best and I couldn’t blame him. He was a soldier and in line for the Praetorian Guard. He didn’t like to nibble at the corners. Straight heat, that was him, and I was having a hard time convincing him otherwise. But his curveball curved, so I was proud of him. And he had the knack of good control. Control is mostly a matter of belief on the part of a pitcher. You can’t aim the ball when you let go, you have to just know that the motion you’re using and the release point that feels natural will result in the ball going where you want it to. It takes a lot of confidence, and Lucius had that in spades.
We had four full teams now, all told: the Wandering Warriors, plus three squads of Romans. Eventually there would be seven Roman teams, one named for each of the hills of Rome, but for the time being, we just had the Palatines, the Aventines, and the Caelians. Today we were practicing all mixed up with the Palatines, who were Praetorians and other favored soldiers. They were okay; strong, disciplined, probably the most skilled, but taking time to gel as a team. The Caelians were a bunch of cheerful duffers, citizens of Rome who had started coming to the public practices out of curiosity and signed up to try the game for themselves. They worked great as a team, but most had no real ball skills. The Aventines were terrifying: gladiators all, they played with brute force and a lack of subtlety and would occasionally thump us or start fights when we got them out.
For the time being, we were playing here and there in the minor arenas around the city and even outside, building up support and interest. We would play our full-up showcase games in front of the co-emperors Caracalla and Geta, maybe a week or two from now. Perhaps even with them playing on the teams, if they wanted to step up to the plate. Domna would be playing with the Warriors and we were glad to have her. That meant moving Walter out of short and putting him in right field, or using him to pinch-hit and pinch-run, but he was okay with that.
She seemed to get better every day on defense. Good glove, soft hands, strong arm, turned the corner great in a double play. She had a flat swing and not much power at the plate, but as a singles hitter, she could spray the ball around and move the runners, and we needed that. Plus, we had to be careful with her, but it was fun to listen to her from the bench yelling at us to just get the bat on the ball, or hit it outa here.
Those showcase games would be played in the Colosseum, in between gladiatorial bouts. It would take some work to get the field ready for baseball after the gladiators had at it and there was blood on the dirt and sand; but the Romans could work miracles with that place, I’m telling you. They showed me how they could stage a sea battle in there, water and all, when they wanted to. I believed them.
I was enjoying the neighborhood games. Not too many spectators, but those who showed up seemed to be sticking around, figuring out how the game worked, enjoying the sportsmanship, applauding some nice work with the glove or a line drive in the gap, and then cheering with gusto for home runs. But the thought of playing in front of a bloodthirsty Colosseum crowd chilled me to the bone.
Nothing I could do about that, of course. Domna’s city, Domna’s rules.
Every day, the armies of the two brothers got closer. And every day I could feel the tensions rising on the streets of Rome.
I talked with Julia Domna most every day now. She was fascinated by us and keenly interested in the land we came from, far away in time: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, a country of cars and airplanes and other marvels, of education for all, of sports stadiums where massive death wasn’t part of the program. Every day she had new questions, and some of them were really good questions that I couldn’t answer.
But if I had to eat much more peacock and lamprey and dormouse, my innards were going to revolt. So whenever I saw Domna’s freedman standing in the archway to the Ludus Magnus arena, my heart sank a bit. Julia, she was good company, but frankly I’d rather have eaten the gruel and plain boiled meat my boys got.
And I’d rather have stayed with the boys for other reasons too. I saw the looks as I walked away from home plate, unclipping my shin guards and chest protector and handing my catcher’s mask and mitt to Quentin. I’d rather be with them, building the team, than have them jealous and muttering behind my back.
But Julia Domna was the boss around here, and if we were ever going home, I’d be doing whatever she said.
I didn’t like going to the Palatine Hill after dark to dine with Domna. I’d be ushered through stinking streets by lantern light, grateful for the escort of the soldiers. The only other men abroad by night slunk in the shadows, mean and vicious-looking, or were carried by in sedan chairs with their own toughs to guard them. On my own and unprotected, I’d not have lasted five minutes.
Today, though, it was still late afternoon, and the streets were bustling with men and women, citizens and slaves alike, all hurrying back to wherever they were going to spend the night, or grabbing a bite in the tiny bars and taverns that seemed to line every street. It wasn’t all Latin I heard on those streets, either; Romans mixed with folks speaking Germanic, Gallic, Greek, Hebrew, and several African tongues. Rome of this era was truly cosmopolitan, and as best I could see no one was being turned away from the pie shops and wine stalls because of creed or color. It looked like Jake and I and the “Cubans” might actually be treated more decently here than at home, which gave me pause, I have to say.
But much as I’d have longed to linger and explore, my soldiers hurried me through the streets and into a tunnel and up some stairs, and before I knew it I was in the palace of Julia Domna once again.
I thought I’d been dreading dinner, but I’d been using that word all wrong. Because Domna’s freedman led me into a room I’d never been in before, and all of a sudden four tough-looking legionaries I didn’t recognize appeared from nowhere.
They kicked my legs out from under me so I fell onto my knees, further pushing my head forward into a kowtow while roughly holding my hands behind my back.
With good old American oaths on my lips due to the pain in my legs, I looked up.
He was a bulldog of a man, his face square and flat and pugnacious, his hair cropped brutally short and his beard barely more than stubble. He walked toward me with his head forward, seeming to lead with his brow. He looked like a man afraid of nothing. No, that's not right: he looked like a man much more used to inspiring fear than feeling it himself.
Caracalla. And Julia Domna was nowhere in sight.
Okay, so this was what dread really felt like.
“Good evening, Imperial Majesty,” I began in Latin, in the politest and most deferential tone I could manage. “My name is—”
Caracalla leaped forward and kicked me in the guts, hard. Knocked the wind right out of me. The soldiers dropped me to the floor, and so I did about the only thing I could think of, which was to curl up into a ball and protect my head when they started kicking me some more.