The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

the word, and the word was ‘Play!’” Thus began the tribute to Mike Masterson, written the day the season ended in tragedy, in the column called “One Man’s Opinion.”)
    The first Aceldama batsman stepped in. Without even taking the time to insult him, to mock him, to tease and to taunt him, without so much as half a snarl or the crooked smile, Gamesh pitched the ball, which was what they paid him to do.
    â€œStrike-ah-one!” roared Mike.
    The catcher returned the ball to Gamesh, and again, impersonal as a machine and noiseless as a snake, Gamesh did his chorus girl kick, and in no time at all the second pitch passed through what might have been a tunnel drilled for it by the first.
    â€œStrike-ah-two!”
    On the third pitch, the batter (who appeared to have no more idea where the ball might be than some fellow who wasn’t even at the ball park) swung and wound up on his face in the dust. “Musta dropped,” he told the worms.
    â€œStrike-ah-three—you’re-out!”
    â€œNext!” Gamesh called, and the second man in a Butcher uniform stepped up.
    â€œStrike-ah-one!”
    â€œStrike-ah-two!”
    â€œStrike-ah-three—you’re out!”
    So life went—cruelly, but swiftly—for the Aceldama hitters for eight full innings. “Next!” called Gamesh, and gave each the fastest shave and haircut on record. Then with a man out on strikes in the top of the ninth, and 0 and 2 on the hitter—and the fans so delirious that after each Aceldama batter left the chair, they gave off an otherworldly, practically celestial sound, as though together they constituted a human harp that had just been plucked—Gamesh threw the ball too low. Or so said the umpire behind the plate, who supposedly was in a position to know.
    â€œThat’s one!”
    Yes, Gil Gamesh was alleged by Mike the Mouth Masterson to have thrown a ball—after seventy-seven consecutive strikes.
    â€œWell,” sighed the Old Philosopher, down in the Greenback dugout, “here comes the end of the world.” He pulled out his pocket watch, seemingly taking some comfort in its precision. “Yep, at 2:59 P.M. on Wednesday, June 16, 1933. Right on time.”
    Out on the diamond, Gil Gamesh was fifteen feet forward from the rubber, still in the ape-like crouch with which he completed his big sidearm motion. In their seats the fans surged upwards as though in anticipation of Gil’s bounding into the air and landing in one enormous leap on Mike the Mouth’s blue back. Instead, he straightened up like a man—a million years of primate evolution passing instantaneously before their eyes—and there was that smile, that famous crooked smile. “Okay,” he called down to his catcher, Pineapple Tawhaki, “throw it here.”
    â€œBut—holy aloha!” cried Pineapple, who hailed from Honolulu, “he call ball, Gilly!”
    Gamesh spat high and far and watched the tobacco juice raise the white dust on the first-base foul line. He could hit anything with anything, that boy. “Was a ball.”
    â€œWas?” Pineapple cried.
    â€œYep. Low by the hair off a little girl’s slit, but low.” And spat again, this time raising chalk along third. “Done it on purpose, Pineapple. Done it deliberate.”
    â€œHoly aloha!” the mystified catcher groaned—and fired the ball back to Gil. “How-why-ee?”
    â€œSo’s to make sure,” said Gil, his voice rising to a piercing pitch, “so’s to make sure the old geezer standin’ behind you hadn’t fell asleep at the switch! JUST TO KEEP THE OLD SON OF A BITCH HONEST!”
    â€œOne and two,” Mike roared. “Play!”
    â€œJUST SO AS TO MAKE CLEAR ALL THE REST WAS EARNED!”
    â€œPlay!”
    â€œBECAUSE I DON’T WANT NOTHIN’ FOR NOTHIN’ FROM YOUSE! I DON’T NEED IT! I’M GIL GAMESH! I’M AN