“Now batting for the Fort Worth Armadillos, number 42, Trent Masterly,” the voice said over the loudspeaker.

I swung my bat twice before making my way to the batter’s box to the sound of a roaring crowd. But there was only a smattering of fans in the stands, none of them clapping. Most were on their phones. The cheering, like the announcer, was artificial, made for TV. You’d never guess it was game seven of the World Series. Funerals had more excitement.

The robot umpire took its place behind the catcher. They, the people that ran the Majors, finally realized they didn’t need humans to call balls and strikes. People had agendas and egos and personal biases. The AI game mind didn’t. Was the pitch in the strike zone or not? There was no judgement. No room for questioning. No humanity.

“Play ball,” the voice growled from behind the plate like an umpire from days of old. Cigar rasp wrapped in a Brooklyn accent. The kind of voice you'd expect an umpire to have. Maybe a little too on the nose. That’s how I knew it wasn’t real. That’s how everyone knew. 

The pitcher was a tall lanky guy from the Dominican Republic named Orozco. I had played against him before. He was good, but I was positive I could get under his skin. He nodded his head at his catcher, wound up and let the ball fly. I could tell from his release it was a change-up. I probably could have hit it, but I let it go. Strategy. Something the bots hadn’t taken away.

“Ball one.” The blinking light on the “chest” of the robot umpire flashed. A replay of the pitch on the same screen confirmed the ball was outside the virtually displayed strike zone.

The game was faster now, less interruptions and there were other changes too. There were less ejections. That was good. I’m one of the few players who still remembers real umpires. My rookie season was the last year for them. Tech companies touting the benefits of streamlining sports in general sold the idea of more equitable play after years of questionable calls, and the league jumped in with both feet. No more than a year after installing the game minds, they fired 90% of the officials. The ones they kept were in a room somewhere, monitoring the calls that didn’t need to be monitored. It was for appearances. Just like the fake cheering.

I zeroed in on the pitcher who checked down to first base. My teammate had a suicide lead. I knew Orozco wouldn’t try to tag him. It was just a fake to get me off my game.

He wound up and let it go. Low fastball. I swung and whiffed. The robot ump pointed his mechanical finger indicating a strike. A graphic of the words “Strike One!” flashed in the opposing team’s colors. There was a collective yell of approval from the speakers. The dozens of people in the stands looked like they didn’t care, glued to their phones. They may have been watching the game. They may have been playing Solitaire. 

I picked up some dirt and rubbed it into my hands when I stepped out of the batter’s box. The robot ump held its hands up to allow me the extra time. 

“C’mon, man. It’s getting hot,” the catcher said. 

Three games apiece. Game seven. I’m gonna savor this. Twenty years in the game and in my last year, I finally made it. It was probably my last game, my last at bat, for that matter. As much as I loved what I did, it was time to go. I was a relic still wishing for the 7th inning stretch and designated hitters. Peanuts and Crackerjacks got supplanted with plant-based protein dogs and matcha. There was no drama, no engagement. Replacing the officials was just the first step. They’d be replacing the managers and the groundskeepers. It wasn’t farfetched to think players would eventually be replaced too. There’d be nothing but a simulation left. When that happened, it would all be over. We’d float around on hover devices and get fat like that kids’ movie from back in the day with that nice robot. There were no nice robots, and no mean ones either. They had all the personality of a fire hydrant. Kids’ movies ain’t like real life.

I knocked the dirt from my shoes with my bat and stepped back into the box. I nodded at my opponent, letting him know to bring it. He didn’t wait. He spit, wound up and slung the ball directly at my head. I had just enough time to bailout and hit the ground to avoid being smashed. The pitcher shouted something in Spanish and pointed at me. Being surrounded by a team of Spanish speakers my entire career gave me no greater understanding for the language, except the swear words, and the pitcher’s tirade at me was laced with them. If I could have dodged them like the ball, I would have. They hadn’t taken foul language away yet either.

With mechanical speed the umpire was already between us holding up its skeletal metallic hands. A stop sign was flashing on the screen on its chest. I had no intention of rushing the mound, but that’s what the machine thought we, ball players, did on occasion. That’s what it was programmed to think. 

The catcher gave me a look daring me to fight.  

Staring right back in his eyes, “Tell your boy to bring his shit.” I swung my bat and spit.

Orozco rolled his shoulders with his glove under his arm, rubbing the ball with both hands. He sighed. That’s it. That’s all it took to get him rattled. Next pitch would be dead center. He was going to try to show the old man up. I’d take him yard and that would be the cherry on top of my career. Grand slam homer in game seven to win the whole damned thing. It was like a childhood dream come true.

I couldn’t help smiling when I got in my stance, which infuriated Orozco even more. Years from now, he’d tell stories of how he pitched against me, how I got in his head. Ball players were an egotistical bunch of crybabies, but we also recognized greatness when we saw it. The good ones did, anyway. Those guys that stuck to their guns about how bad a player was weren’t remembered for anything other than being poor sports. There’s nothing worse than a poor sport.

He huffed and checked down each base. He turned his head back to me and narrowed his eyes. I licked my lips. He brought his skinny leg up to his chin for the wind up. Orozco leaned back like his spine was a bendy straw. The hand holding the ball nearly touched the ground, and he let loose his body behind the pitch. His wiry body was a bullwhip snapping the air. 

There’s a moment when you connect with the ball where you can’t tell if you feel the vibrations from the bat or hear the crack of wood first. It’s a microsecond of liminal space that I still, after a life dedicated to the game, can’t figure out. At times, I swear I can see it all before I make contact. That fragment of a fragment in time might be when I’m at my most content. I’ll miss that.

With a crack of wood on leather, the buzz crawled from my palms to my chest. I didn’t wait to see where the ball was going, but the activity from the opposing team told me it was fair. I used to be able to tell from the crowd’s reaction where the ball was. A rising excited yell followed by a quick low pitched “aww” meant it was an easy to catch pop fly. A quick gasp with accompanying applause was a single, and so on. With the artificial screams generated from an amalgam of every baseball game ever played patched together by non-human intelligence, I couldn’t tell what in the hell was happening. But I ran thinking of nothing else but winning my last game. Scoring the winning run. Being world champion. 

I hit the bag on first base and glanced to see the outfielder running to the ball. It had gone over his head but not out of the park. I dug deep and sprinted with everything I had to get to second. My knees protested. Base running was always a strength, but I wasn’t a rookie with fresh legs anymore. My heels never touched the ground.

I blew by second going for a triple. I was halfway to the bag when the third base coach wound his arm like a windmill urging me to go for it. An inside the park homerun? Weirder things happened in the history of America’s pastime. My legs cramped. My lungs burned. I could feel my heart in my throat. Something I ate early that day began its ascent into my esophagus. If I made it, we would win. I would win. Finally.

I could hear my breath and blood rushing through my ears. I pistoned my legs into the dirt, urging my body to run like it did when I was a youngster, when I had idealism about what the game was and what I could do for it. This was a fitting end, regardless of what happened. Big risk, big reward. Be the hero. Score and retire a legend. Or get tagged and walk away with no excuses. I can live with that. 

The smartass catcher was standing to the side of the baseline. His body tensed. He raised his glove and angled his back foot to sweep himself and tag me out. I dropped myself into a slide arching as much of my body away from the radius of his arm as I could. I laid against the ground and stretched my foot to the plate. Momentum propelled me forward as jolts of pain reminded my knees that this wasn’t something I could do anymore. That was fine with me. 

The dirt flew around me. In my eyes. In my mouth (it was wide open, and I was yelling apparently). The scrapping on my back would take time to heal, but who cared? I vaguely felt my cleat hit something hard as the catcher smacked me with his glove. It’s a common misconception that a tie goes to the runner. That’s a playground rule. The actual rule is that the runner has to beat the ball to be safe. He either is there before the ball, or he is not. In other words: a tie goes to the catcher. 

I stood, covered in dust. There was no cheering. Both I and the catcher looked at the robot umpire for the call. It stood stock still on its track treads showing an image of the mitt and my foot coming together in slow motion. It was too close to call. I looked safe, but that’s why I’m not an umpire. I’d be the best player that ever lived if I was ruling for myself. It played it again. Slower. Then again. Slower. Then again.

The seconds ticked away, and the umpire zoomed in on the image. It repeated the same replay even slower. I began to feel the sizzling in my muscles. The strain of my last athletic feat caught up with me. My joints tightened. My throat battled to keep the bile down. The umpire kept replaying the image. Each time zooming a little closer and showing it a little slower. 

I willed myself to stay conscious as the image started to become clearer. On its chest, the robot showed a magnified still in clear high-definition detail, at a near microscopic level of the gloved hand of the catcher with the ball inside touching my foot one one millionth of a second before it touched home plate. The robot made a fist with its metal hand indicating I was out. The end of my career flashed on the robot’s torso. Alternating between OUT and GAME OVER, both in my opponent’s colors. 

The catcher let out a whoop of joy. He and Orozco ran at each other the way long lost lovers do. They hugged and cried and shouted and screamed and enjoyed their camaraderie and victory despite the language barrier. The rest of their team joined them slamming into the duo. Soon there was only a pile of writhing bodies all smiling with exhilaration at being champions, hollering with glee at my defeat. 

I was so close. Too close. The picture was so clear it was irrefutable. A person could have made a mistake. A real umpire might have had sympathy for an aging veteran playing his last game. They might have made a balancing act in their mind and awarded me the run and my finest moment. But here comes the infallible game mind to crush my dreams of winning it all. A dream I had for as long as I can remember. That machine didn’t have dreams or ego or sympathy. All it had was unfeeling fairness. Justice run amok. 

When did the rules of the sport become more important than the spirit of the game? I stood alone watching a group of other people celebrate what was supposed to be mine under the cheers of a made-up audience. 

I picked up the bat I used for my last hit. Considering I was called out, it wasn’t a hit. The stats wouldn’t remember it as one. That robot umpire, void of emotion just sat there with the blinking lights on its chest reminding me it was done. I was done. My chance to be a champion, gone. All in the pursuit of fairness. 

I swung. The pictures I saw later showed me with a horrible scowl of hatred. Red faced and screaming with foam flying from the corners of my mouth, but I felt serene as if I was floating in water. The bat collided with the robot’s head. Bits of plastic, glass and metal exploded from the umpire in slow motion. I swung back and more pieces, bigger pieces, flew off. The screen began to blink “GAME OVER”, “STRIKE TWO”, “TIME OUT”. It was maybe the most satisfaction I’d ever felt.

It backed away, approximating some kind of programmed survival. But it didn’t feel pain. It didn’t feel my pain, that’s for sure. I bashed that machine into nothing but splinters before my teammates wrestled me down. By that time, the ump was a sparking mess of wires and jagged debris. 

I calmed down but it took a while. The press, automating in on micro drones acting as proxy for real journalists, declined to speak with me. For unfeeling objects, they simulated fear just fine. My teammates congratulated each other and me on a great season. They said “See you next season.” But not to me. 

I waited until everyone was gone and changed. I didn’t take a shower. It was hours later. The parking lot was virtually empty. There was a time before the game lost its soul to progress that a few diehard fans would be outside waiting to tell me how much they loved watching me play. How I was their favorite ball player using my name alongside Pudge Rodriguez and Shohei Ohtani. This time, the lot was silent. A reminder that I was done with the game and it with me. What was it that one song said? Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.

My car was alone in the lot. I saw a security guard in a golf cart across the lit up black top. I waved. He didn’t see me. Even from this distance I could see he was on his phone. Maybe doing his job checking cameras. Maybe scrolling cat videos. I unlocked the door and got in. I wasn’t ready to go home, but I didn’t want to go anywhere else either. One more game. One more play, even. 

“Hello, Mr. Masterly,” the message on the dash appeared. “Tough luck on the outcome of the game.” I gripped the wheel wishing it was a baseball bat. 

“You know what?” I said. “Go ahead and go home without me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I think I’ll walk.”

I got out of the car and watched it drive out of the parking lot. The late-night air was cool. I zipped up my jacket. 

“Hey.” I heard a voice from behind me. I turned and saw the lanky silhouette of Orozco back lit by the moth swarmed lights above. I tilted my head. He was drinking a beer and holding a big bag over his shoulder. “Good game.” His accent was heavy and slightly slurred. He’d had a few. I couldn’t fault him for that. Under other circumstances, I’d be the one getting drunk. 

“Yeah. You too.” I nodded my chin. 

He set the bag down, pulled out another beer and offered it to me. I side eyed him half expecting a trick. He made a show of rolling his eyes and held it out again. “Si.” I didn’t need to know Spanish to recognize the annoyance in his voice.

I took it. “Salud,” he said and took a sip. I wanted to ask him why he was still hanging around. Why he wasn’t celebrating elsewhere. He seemed content sipping lukewarm beers in the parking lot in silence even after winning it all. A few minutes of awkward quiet went by. Orozco reached into his bag again, I thought he was going for another beer, but out clattered a bat and a smaller bag of balls. “Listo?” he pointed with the bottom of his beer can at the bat. He walked what was probably exactly sixty feet and six inches away rubbing a ball in his hands. 

I finished my beer in one gulp and picked up the Louisville slugger. It felt heavier than it had. Like when I was a kid. I took a test swing and lined myself up in my stance facing Orozco. “Bring your shit.” 

I don’t know how long we stayed in that parking lot dueling, and I don’t know how Orozco knew it was exactly what I needed. It was the right sendoff. No synthetic referees and their inerrant calls. No facsimile of a crowd’s appreciation. Just two men and the game.