"You'll never get that shit fast ball of yours past "Teddy Fucking Ball-Game" Williams snarled. He wiggled his warty bat around, and the model airplane engine blared along in time. The P.A. system blasted. "Two out. Bases loaded.Bottom of the 9th. 2-1 Honkies. 'Bullet Bob' on the mound, three pitches from the World Championship"

Von Welshing heard Ted's bat screaming, Ted muttering obscenities, the crowd roaring hysterically. Time slowed to a crawl. He could see the second hand on the stadium clock, inching from moment to moment, each tick an eternity. An eerie silence fell over the park. He could see heat waves and puffs of smoke from Williams' bat, see his lips move as he spat filthy epithets, watch the fans scream, but all remained silent, as if it were under a glass bell, floating in an airless void.

He saw the catcher's signal, nodded, and began his wind-up. To his surprize and horror, he now saw the stadium, spinning, whirling; divided into thin strips of vision by GIANT, SWEATY FINGERS. The hand gripped him by his threads. He tried to scream, but his mouth was sewn shut. He tried to hang on, but,alas, he had no arms.

Suddenly, the fingers were gone, and he rocketed into the air, tumbling slowly, end over end. The P.A. roared: "He's thrown Ted a screwball. He shouldn't have done that." Aeons passed, and the bat began its fateful arc, approaching in agelong silence as he neared the plate. The engine was the first sound he heard, and also the last....

...Raucous shouts, joyous laughter, all the merry sounds of celebration bounced around inside his aching head. High above him, the huge face of Ted Williams loomed, champagne running over his head out of a bottle held by an admiring teammate. "Mr. Williams, I've never seen anybody knock the shit out of a baseball like that. It was going out of the ball park until it brained that sea gull over the bleachers. I wiped most of it off, though. I thought you might want it for a souvenir, or to donate to the Hall of Fame."

Von Welshing, much the worse for wear, was all too cognizant of his sorry state. Stitches were bursting all over him, stuffing leaked out, and his horsehide cover was smeared with sea gull fluids of sundry, unpleasant varieties. He heard a small, tinkling noise. Small, broken pieces of what appeared to be teeth were falling out of a tear in his cover, and falling into Williams' outstretched palm. "These will suffice nicely. They were all I ever wanted from this numbskull." He tossed the baseball into a dumpster, where it began to vibrate and spin, faster and faster, and turned into the highly disgruntled Von Welshing, beaten to shit and lying on a pile of reeking, well aged garbage.

Ted Williams image blurred and clouded up. Strange lights flashed in the mist, and once more he heard the far off strains of that distant, discordant music that characterized his worst nightmares. These were, of course, the ones that occured when he was not asleep.

Out of the mist stepped the Djinn that Von Welshing had so unwisely fucked with, centuries ago, it seemed. He looked at the teeth with immense satisfaction, and sauntered off,singing: