It’s Futuristic Baseball, or How It Will Be 58 Years from Now

The decline of sport began, clearly enough, with the World Series in the year 2050, though only now do we know enough to make a guess at what really happened in that fall classic sending the New York Nikes against Tokyo’s Nintendos.

As always, more than 575,000 spectators came to SportsWorld Ballyard, a grand old stadium built in 2013 as the centerpiece of a $1-trillion theme park in the New Mexico desert. In answer to America’s madness for sports, developers had put up a dozen domed stadiums, malls, hotels, retirement communities, virtual-reality arcades, race tracks, pizza places, speedways, space-shuttle launch sites, golf courses, gambling casinos and 1,179 baseball card shops.

With such facilities, SportsWorld became the site of every major sports event on the planet Earth with one exception. Because only Bobby Fischer’s descendants cared, the chess championship continued to be played in a closet somewhere in Hackensack.

Repeating his campaign pledge -- “If we don’t win this time, I’ll buy Japan” -- U.S. President Ross Perot III threw out the first ball of the 2050 World Series. Not since 2027 had an American team won the Series, always losing to teams from Canada, Cuba, Russia, the Dominican Republic and Japan.

Because only 32 teams were invited to the playoffs in 2050 instead of the traditional 128, there were cries of protest from the expansion Pacific Rim teams which paid $1-billion entrance fees and built roofs over their islands to satisfy baseball’s requirements.

Balls, strikes and all other umpiring decisions were made in the 2050 World Series by computers that flashed on every customer’s TV screen a three-dimensional video replay of each pitch’s location, speed and angle through the strike zone as well as giving, for instance, the time and distance by which a baserunner beat a second baseman’s tag. Any player arguing with the computer-video could be suspended for a week, fined $1 million and sentenced to appear in public wearing no jewelry at all.

That Series was played by men and women wearing opti-enhancement eyeglasses that delivered, projected on the surface of the glasses, a series of advertising messages for Air God sneakers featuring teeny-tiny rockets in the heels. The sneakers bore God’s autograph embossed in gold. This autograph was validated as legitimate by the heirs of Michael Jordan, who provided a certificate of authenticity suitable for framing.

All players in that Series were paid $10 million each. Only the winners, however, received all-day passes to Disney World good for them and their families. This was a perk hammered out in winter-long negotiations between players and owners. After talk of lockouts and strikes, the Disney people rescued baseball by giving away the tickets to help settle the nasty dispute.

Some people have forgotten it now, but 2050 was the first year in which aluminum bats were replaced by tetrotitaniumpolytheragraphite bats. Pitchers took to wearing face masks and shin guards as protection against balls hit back at them supersonically. The bases were 100 feet apart, the pitcher’s mound 75 feet from home plate and the nearest outfield fence 425 feet away. Teams used 13 players in the field, four of whom were not allowed to bat.

By 2050, as wonderful as baseball itself was, spectators were not satisfied by the game alone. Every seat in SportsWorld Ballyard came equipped with a television screen that updated pari-mutuel odds with every pitch. By punching in his credit-card number, the SportsWorld customer also could play keno on a live connection with Las Vegas, order groceries to be delivered to his house the next month and buy stock on margin.

Those World Series customers who paid a $1,000 fee above the $2,000 ticket price were given an access code for their favorite players, each of whom were wired for sound so their voices could be heard by fans.

As Elwyn B. White, a pharmacist from Philadelphia, now tells it, it was the 1-900-STAR-TALK connection that ended his love affair with sports.

Until the trouble started, Elwyn was delighted. The Nikes were about to win the Series. They had a one-run lead in the ninth inning of the seventh game. After spending half a year’s salary to make the trip to SportsWorld, Elwyn had won enough bets during the game to buy a new hovercraft.

He had won so much, in fact, that he became intoxicated by the success. He began looking for other bets to make. Turning the TV dial at his seat, he picked up a London-Rio football game and got a bet down on the Londons. Then he saw Alaska beating Hawaii in hockey. And on Channel 176 he took a liking to a sturdy lass named Lizzie Borden, the Wisconsin cow-chip throwing champion.

A generous man, Elwyn alerted everyone in the Ballyard to his good fortune. He did this by buying space on the stadium’s message boards. He used the boards to tell spectators he’d share his good luck if they tuned to his Ballyard-assigned radio frequency. Maybe 400,000 gamblers became his friends immediately.

But in the seconds after Elwyn spoke into his headset to advise his new friends on his wagers, everything went awry. London fumbled away a touchdown and lost to Rio. Hawaii’s power play suddenly sank Alaska. Lizzie Borden’s cow chip disintegrated on launch. And the poor New York Nikes, whose bullpen had been suspect all year, lost to the Nintendos in the bottom of the ninth.

Bad enough, any one of these calamities. But all together, all simultaneously, loss piling upon loss, 400,000 of Elwyn’s new friends losing four ways at once -- and then on his STAR-TALK connection, Elwyn heard the voice of the Nikes’ star relief pitcher. The pitcher said, “Hey, I didn’t want to go to Disney World, anyway.”

All this put Elwyn over the edge. “Next year, I’m going to Jersey for the chess championships.”