Collusion in Major League Baseball In November 1990, one

Collusion in Major League Baseball
In November 1990, one of Major League Baseball's (MLB) most
controversial episodes in its
troubled labor history concluded with a $290 million settlement.
The settlement required teams
to pay players $280 million with Major League Baseball Players
Association (MLBPA)
governing the distribution of damages to players. How Major
League Baseball reached this point
is grounded in peculiar history. Baseball historians divide the
history of the MLB into distinct
eras. These eras represent shifting bargaining power between
the players and owners over a 150-
year period.
Era 1
The early days of baseball were characterized by an absence of
any institutional structure that
limited bargaining by either players or teams. Some star
players— termed revolvers— switched

teams frequently. In some cases, a would change teams from
one day to the next. Some
apocryphal stories claimed that some players switched teams in
the middle of a game. Typically,
players profited much more than owners did in this era. As a
result, both teams and leagues were
fragile with many quickly coming into and out of existence.
Leagues made some attempts to
limit pay, but rival teams and leagues would quickly emerge to
bid away the best players. And
often, more successful players and owners would simply ignore
the rules. Teams that employed
revolvers won more games, but often did not make a profit.
Teams that did not pay premiums for
the best players usually initiated a downward spiral of losing
followed by attendance declines,
which ultimately led to team dissolution. Indeed, few teams
lasted more than two years. Player
salaries showed large fluctuations. As new leagues and teams
were formed to compete with
existing leagues, player salaries went up, but then declined as
teams and leagues folded.
Era 2

Eventually, enough owners realized that unless they cooperated
in controlling player wages, that
few, if any, teams or leagues would have long-term
sustainability. critical turning point was the
formation of the National and American Leagues. In both
leagues, the owners vested more
centralized authority in the league. This centralization increased
dramatically after the 1919
World Series scandal where several players were later convicted
of having taken bribes to alter
the outcomes of games.
Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was appointed Commissioner
of Baseball and given broad
powers over the American and National Leagues as well as all
affiliated minor leagues and
teams.
The fundamental rule that governed bargaining between players
and teams during this era was
the reserve cause. The reserve clause was first used in 1879 but
by the early 1900s it was
universal in Major League contracts. A 1960s version of the

reserve clause follows:
"On or before January 15 . . . the Club may tender to the Player
a contract for the term of that
year by mailing the same to the Player. If prior to the March 1
next succeeding said January 15,
the Player and the Club have not agreed upon the terms of such
contract, then on or before 10
days after said March 1, the Club shall have the right... to renew
this contract for the period of
one year (Helyar, 1994, p. 36). "
The explicit meaning of the reserve clause was that teams could
not negotiate or contract with
players who were presently under contact with a team or who
had previously been under contract
to a team within the last year However, the reserve clause for
much of this era was perhaps
universally understood to mean that a team could not negotiate
or contract with a player whose
previous team had not sold or otherwise renounced its rights to
employ the player. In other
words, most thought that the reserve clause gave a team the

exclusive right to employ a player in
perpetuity. Thus, a player unhappy with his present team could
not offer his services to other
teams. Teams could, however, buy and sell the contracts of
players with each other, a practice
known as trading players.
There were some early legal challenges to the reserve clause.
Several courts split on the
constitutionality of the reserve clause, but a Federal Appeals
court ruling that it was
constitutional was upheld by a 1922 Supreme Court deci sion. In
the decision. Judge Oliver
Wendell Holmes famously opined that baseball was exempt
from anti-trust laws because
"baseball are purely state affairs." Following the Supreme Court
decision, there was little to no
contesting of the reserve clause for over four decades. With few
good for them and for baseball
more generally. The owners instituted other rules besides the
reserve clause that weakened
players' bargaining power. Players were not allowed to have
agents represent them. Also,
contract terms were not public. As a result, many players were

told that they ranked much higher
in pay on their teams than was actually the case. For example,
some players were told that they
were among the highest paid players on their teams when they
were below the median salary of
their teammates. Even some of baseball's greatest stars had little
bargaining power. The
Philadelphia Athletics tried to cut Jimmie Foxx's salary in 1933
after he achieved baseball's triple
crown (the most home runs, highest batting average, and most
runs batted in the same year). Lou
Gehrig did not receive a pay increase a year later after winning
the Triple Crown. Ralph Kiner
received a 25% pay cut from the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1953 even
though he had led the National
League in home runs for seven straight years. Branch Rickey,
the president of the Pirates,
reportedly told Kiner, "We finished last with you. We can finish
last without you." Many
players, even stars such as Yogi Berra, held second jobs in the
off-season. Few players held out
for higher salaries, and when they did, they received little
public sympathy.

Remarkably, there were no organized efforts to change the
reserve clause and representation
rules during this era. The collective actions that players took
during this time were centered on
inconsequential things such as not requiring the players to
purchase their own uniforms. Late in
this era, the players did organize more effectively, but their
primary goal was to create a pension
fund for players.
Era 3
Even though the players' share of baseball's economic pie had
been decreasing for decades, the
players made little attempt to challenge the owners superior
position.
A number of catalysts occurred in the 1960s to begin pressure
for change. The players hired
Marvin Miller, formerly a chief economist for the powerful
Steelworkers union. Miller
immediately saw what the players had long failed to see. In his
view, baseball players were the

most oppressed workers that he had seen in the United States.
During the 1960s, both the NFL
and NBA were challenged by new leagues, the AFL and ABA
respectively.
Overnight, players were being offered unheard of salaries to
jump leagues. This caused both the
NFL and the NBA to respond with dramatic salary increases.
Seeing their peers in other
professional sports receive higher pay led the players to
challenge the status quo in baseball's
labor relations. The owners' aggressive response to players who
spoke out only increased the
spread of militancy among players.
Through a series of court cases and arbitrator decisions, the
reserve clause was defined to mean
that teams did not control a player's rights in perpetuity. An
arbitrator ruled in December 1975
that a player became a free agent one year after the expiration
of his contract. As a response of
the arbitrator's decision, the owners and players reached a series
of Collective Bargaining
Agreements where players could either enter salary arbitration
or free agency (the freedom to

sign with any team) after a specified number of years in the
Major Leagues. Miller designed a
two-tier system of arbitration and free agency with the intent
that there would be a limited
number of free agents in any given year. His reasoning was that
many teams competing for a few
free agents would drive the price of free agents much higher
than if there were many free agents.
The high salaries of free agents would then serve as
comparisons for arbitration cases. Thus, the
free agency would drive up the salaries of not only free agents
but those who went through salary
arbitration as well.
Other rule changes further strengthened the players' bargaining
position. New rules allowed
players to have agent representation. Salary information was
made widely available and was
available to players and agents in salary negotiations. Average
salaries went from $19,000 in
1967 to m average of $371,000 in 1985 (see Table 1 and Figure
1). The minimum salary went
from $6,000 to $60,000 during the same period (see Table 1 and
Figure 2).

Collusion
The spectacular increase in player salaries was a source of
considerable tension for owners.
Broadcast revenues generally increased at the same rate as
player salaries during this period, but
some teams were struggling financially. Some baseball
executives were especially concerned
that, collectively/ teams had over $50 million in financial
obligations to players who could no
longer play due to injury. Long-term contracts were also a
concern. Some team executives
claimed that players were less productive after signing such
contracts.
These tensions led some baseball executives to urge the need
for self-restraint in signing free
agents. Baseball's new commissioner, Peter Ueberroth was
particularly aggressive in
encouraging owners to be more conservative in both signing
free agents and signing players to
long-term contracts. Though Ueberroth was careful to have
attorneys caution owners against

collusive behavior, considerable pressure was exerted on teams
to not sign free agents. Many
teams adopted policies against long-term contracts and signing
free agents. In the off season
between 1985 and 1986, the free agent market was considerably
less friendly to players than in
previous years. Even some of baseball's biggest stars found that
other teams were not interested
in signing them. Remarkably, only four of the 35 free agents
that year signed with other teams.
Those four players were journeymen who were no longer wanted
by their previous team. In
February 1986, the players' association filed a grievance that
came to be known as Collusion I.
The situation did not improve for free agents between the 1986
and 1987 seasons. The teams
began to share with each other their intentions concerning free
agents from their teams. For
example, a team might share with other teams which of their
free agents they intended to re-sign.
Players argued that this was a signal to other teams not to offer
a contract to that player. As with

1986, only four free agents switched teams in 1987. That year
also marked the first time in the
free agency era that average player salaries had not increased
from one year to the next. The
MLB.PA responded by filing a second grievance, known as
Collusion II.
In September 1987, an arbitrator ruled that, in part because of
the precipitous drop in offers of
contracts to free agents/ the owners had been guilty of collusion
between the 1985 and 1986
seasons. However, the arbitrator did not decide on the amount
of damages at that time. The
owners took this as a signal to offer contracts to more free
agents after the 1987 season. Many of
these offers merely matched the offers of the player's current
team. Other offers for free agents
were for less than the player's offer from his current team. Not
surprisingly, the players filed a
third grievance in January of 1988, termed Collusion III. By
this time/ however, the owner's
coordination was showing some cracks. Some owners pursued
desirable free agents out of self-
interest and were slow to inform their peers about their
intentions and actions. Team profitability

had improved also. The ease of economic pressures led some
teams to increase their focus on
winning, which led to more competition for free agents.
Subsequent arbitrator rulings hastened the breakdown of
collusion among the owners. In October
1989, an arbitrator awarded the players $38 million to settle
Collusion II. Later arbitrators added
$64.5 in damages for Collusion Ill followed by the final
settlement in November 1990 of $280
million. Fay Vincent, who was commissioner at that time,
condemned the practices of the
owners during the previous years. Many observers have claimed
that relations between the
players and the owners were severely damaged by the years of
collusion and contributed greatly
to a major strike in 1994 that canceled the last months of the
season as well as the playoffs and
World Series.
LESSON 5: THE EDUCATIVE MOMENT- Narrative Point of
View

Learning Goals:
R1. read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of
literary, informational, and graphic texts, using a range of
strategies to construct meaning;
R3. use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read
fluently;
R4. reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for
improvement, and the strategies they found most
helpful before, during, and after reading.
W1. generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to
write for an intended purpose and audience;
W2. draft and revise their writing, using a variety of literary,
informational, and graphic forms and stylistic elements
appropriate for the purpose and audience;
W3. use editing, proofreading, and publishing skills and
strategies, and knowledge of language conventions, to
correct errors, refine expression, and present their work
effectively;
W4. reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for
improvement, and the strategies they found most
helpful at different stages in the writing process.
M1. demonstrate an understanding of a variety of media texts;

M2. identify some media forms and explain how the
conventions and techniques associated with them are used to
create meaning;
M4. reflect on and identify their strengths as media interpreters
and creators, areas for improvement, and the
strategies they found most helpful in understanding and creating
media texts.
Success Criteria:
Successfully answer the questions after reading the Short story,
“Walking on Water”
Narrative Focus & Voice
➢ Someone is always between the events of the story & ‘us’—a
viewer, a speaker,
➢ Someone is telling the reader what is happening: this
‘someone’ is different from
author
➢ This ‘relationship’ between narrator & audience involves an
‘angle of vision’ &
perspective
acts much like a movie camera does, choosing what we can look
at and the angle at

which we can view it, framing, proportioning, emphasizing—
even distorting.
READER MUST ASK:
➢ Who is telling us the story??
➢ Whose words are we reading?
➢ Where does the person stand in relation to what is going on in
the story?
➢ HOW IS IT APPROPRIATE FOR the STORY’S PURPOSE?
We must pay careful attention to the focus at any given point
➢ is it fixed or mobile?
➢ Does it stay the same angle/distance for all the characters or
does it move around or in
and out?
This literary element is called
narrative focus / the point of view,
and the words of the story
are called the “voice”
Narrative Point of View

Overview
Point of View Advantages Disadvantages
1. First person
(a) Major character
(b) Minor character
Most intimate and involving point of view
because reader “hears” story from person
directly involved in the experience.
Also, reader must carefully weigh what
character says to determine reliability of
her or his information.
Writer can only include information
that this character would know and
cannot include details about events
happening elsewhere or do not include
the narrator.

2. Omniscient Perspective offers reader chance to see
situation from every possible point of
view.
Because writer can tell us what any
character thinks or feels, reader has
little need to interpret motives of
characters, which can lessen
opportunity for discovery and
eliminate the element of surprise.
3. Limited omniscient
(a) Major character
(b) Minor character
Reader has just enough information to
become acquainted with characters, but
not so much information as to miss out on
element of surprise.
Limited information may prevent
reader from becoming intimately

connected to characters and
emotionally involved in story.
Also, perspective of only one character
may restrict reader to one point of
view.
4. Detached or Objective By not getting into minds of
characters,
reader has more realistic perspective
because events in story experienced much
as they would be in life, according to
what is seen and heard.
Writer can only include details seen or
heard, not details about what characters
think and feel, unless they speak about
them.
This may distance reader from
characters, making it difficult for
reader to become involved in their
conflict.

“Walking on Water” By Janet Turner Hospital
Activity Two
Establishing a Context
In this short story, a family "ritual" of walking on the frozen ice
of Lake Ontario provides the context for
an examination of the son's motives for leaving home, and of
the mother's response to it. Her values of
family solidarity and tradition are threatened by his desire to
live in California with his uncle's family.
Structurally the story focuses first on the walk, the climate and
the family's response to the tradition
(especially the mother's feelings); it then shifts to James'
response to an incident that results in the death
of a school mate; and the finally it turns to the mother's view of
her son's leaving.
Reflecting Upon Personal Experience
Write quietly for ten minutes on the following: In a journal,
write about what you value. Proceed by
reflecting on one or more of the following questions: Who are
the people that are most important in my
life? Why are they so important to me? What are the places and
objects that are very important to me?

What makes them important? By what values and principles do I
try to live? Why do I hold these values?
Responding to the Reading
Read (ANNOTATE) the story and reflect about it in the context
of the following questions:
• What conflicts do these characters experience?
• How do these conflicts relate to the ways that James and
Gillian feel about their lives?
• Do they experience any moments of insight?
• Explore the connections between their feelings and their
values.
After reading:
Exploring Content and Form in “Walking on Water”
Submit your answers to the following questions:
1. Were you confused about the time sequence and the
relationship among events when you
initially read the story? Why or why not? How has the story’s
narrative been organized?
What effect results from this?
2. Identify the value behind the participation of each family
member in the year's lake-crossing.

3. Explain Gillian's feelings about James' leaving home. Also,
explain why she feels this way.
4. Explain James' feelings about Stuart Anderson's death.
Explain why he feels this way.
5. What has James learned? What has his mother learned?
6. The focus of much of the early part of the story is on
descriptions of the lake and the climate.
What effect does this create?
7. What does the last line mean? How do the last line and the
title relate to James' situation as
well as his mother's?
8. What associations do you have with the words of the title,
"Walking on Water"? Do you think
it is an effective title? Why or why not?
9. How does this story relate to the following statement
surrounding a learning moment as a
series of connections:
The focus of any learning moment is a relationship: the
relationship between linear thinking and
intuition, the relationship between mind and body, the
relationship between various types of knowledge,
the relationship between the individual and the community, and
the relationship between self and soul.
Any student who can examine these relationships can gain both
awareness and the ability to transform
these relationships where it is appropriate.
-John P. Miller (1993)
Forum Questions: Connecting with the Arts

If you have an interest in music, dance, theatre/visual arts, or
media arts, relate the form and content of
“Walking on Water” to current work in your area of interest.
Would "Walking on Water" provide a
springboard for a composition in the art form you are interested
in? Why or why not?
Connect this moment to another story you have read in the past,
and write about similarities between both
stories.
“Walking on Water” By Janette Turner Hospital
In places where the wind had flayed the snow into fantastic
waves, they would come upon barrens of
black ice, smooth as agate. Earth’s vital fluids, seen through a
glass darkly. And sometimes fish with
startled gills, who had surfaced too close to the edge of winter,
would stare at them out of the clear ebony.
Poor things, Gillian would think, cupping her leather mitts and
calling to the others. “Another one!
Here’s another frozen fish!”
Only the suggestion of her shouting would reach them, an
intimation of being hailed, her voice

flaking and blowing in a thousand directions. Her husband and
children would pause and turn, stamping
feet laced into heavy mukluks, pounding out on the frozen lake
a weird basso counterpoint to the
coloratura shrieks of wind. They were anxious to keep moving,
to get it over with, but she refused to let
them treat the crossing in this grimly dutiful way. She insisted
it be memorable, an occasion: enjoy
yourselves! Savour these extraordinary and freakish sights!
On the line of her will, she reeled them in, and reluctantly they
turned back, sighing into their scarves
but obedient, crouching beside her on the ice and feigning an
interest in snap-frozen smelts.
“See!” She had to shout above the wind. “It’s mouth is open. It
was so sudden.”
“His death of cold!” Allison’s words came to them in a blather
of snow so that the sound stung their
cheeks. “You could say!” She gasped as the air scoured her
lungs. “He caught his death of cold.”
Gillian laughed and hugged her younger child for the act of
cooperation, for the conscientious effort
to wring pleasure from February. She glanced at her son, but
James merely frowned and cradled his
mittened hands under his armpits. Gillian averted her eyes

quickly in case he saw the begging in them.
Of course it was no laughing matter, this instant glaciation. It
happened, they knew only too well, to
people too. There were local faces cratered into braille records
of unplanned exposures (the car stalled in
a blizzard; the cross-country skier stranded with a broken ski); a
nose, an ear, even lips lost to frostbite.
And the boy in a snowbank just a few weeks ago, found smiling
in a sleep from which he would never
waken.
It was not a climate that made allowances for human error.
James was staring back at the fish with
spooked and sombre eyes. Suddenly, scooping up handfuls of
snow from a baroquely curlicued drift, he
brushed a shroud over the tiny death suspended like an air
bubble between winter and spring. His
movements were quick and unconscious, small acts of
instinctive decency.
His father intimated, though not by squandering breath and body
heat on words, that they should
keep moving.
Cats, Gillian knew, forgot their progenitors entirely and mated
with them. Birds left the nest to find

private slipstreams. Every parent knew that high school was a
country of aliens, but James was not quite
15 and how could it be happening already? And if he had to
leave, why the rush? Why in the dead of
winter, when planes skewed themselves on icy runways and fell
out of the sky with a full cargo of deaths,
splattering across the front pages of newspapers? Why now?
California would keep until summer. Or at
least until spring.
All this had been said, of course.
“I’ll be back by spring,” James would point out. “And you can
phone me any day of the week.”
What objection could possibly be made to his spending half a
term in a California high school, living
with her own brother and his family?
She could not say: There is something about the suddenness of
this arrangement that makes me
uneasy.
She could not say: The driving is bad; you might be killed
between here and Toronto. There will be
ice on the wings of your plane; you might not survive takeoff.
Or landing: there is nearly always fog over
Los Angeles, and the flight patterns are too heavy, and what

confidence can one place in substitute air-
traffic controllers?
She could not say: I am overwhelmed by the fragility of human
life, my children’s in particular. I
fear this first separation as I would fear amputation. What if
you never come back? What if you come
back a stranger?
“Why do you want to leave home?”
“Leave home?” He would echo the words with a lift of the
eyebrows. As if he were an exasperated
language teacher who found her misuse of idiom shoddily
unacceptable. “Six weeks is leaving home?”
Well then. At least they would keep this family rite before he
went. She had insisted, although they
all thought it slightly foolish of her. One of her eccentricities,
the annual lake-hike.
“My wife has a thing about ritual,” Bill would tease at parties.
“She thinks it will work like a witch
doctor’s charm. The family that performs secret ceremonies
together stays together.”
“Very funny,” she would say, flushing.

But were not these the events that glued their years together?
When, inevitably, they moved on
again, when the time came for them to ask, “How many years
did we live in that place, that cold place on
the lake?” then an answer would come: “For three winter
crossings.” Or four. Or whatever it turned out to
be. Remember how the wind...? they would ask. And the way
the fish... ? Nostalgia would warm them
like an old blanket smelling of past happiness.
It was not even seriously cold, given the month and place: only
5 below, no more than 20 below with
the windchill factor. Choosing the right day was an art: far
enough into winter for the ice to be safely
thick, yet not so bitter a day that exposure was deadly. She
thought of the crossing as interestingly
arduous.
And so would the others by tomorrow. Walked across Lake
Ontario, they would say casually at
office coffee-break and in the school cafeteria. As far as Wolfe
Island anyway--sheepishly, self-
deprecatingly, as if admitting to reading comic books or
watching Lassie reruns. Walked to the U.S.A.
They would bask in the murmur of tribute, yet next winter
would demand again: “Do we really need...”

“Please,” she would cajole.
And annually they would humour her, enjoying mainly the feat
accomplished.
She, drunk perhaps on the profligacy of oxygen that barreled
along the Great Lakes from prairies to
ocean, had always felt a taut hum of exultation above the pained
protest of her body.
Below us, she would think, where the sluggish lower currents
buffet the lake silt, there is French
gold stamped with the image of Bourbon kings and lost since
the days of Cartier and Frontenac. Below us
are greedy fathoms that have swallowed ships and men and
centuries. Here and there, stirring like
sleepers far below our padded boots, lie American and British
gunboats that foundered in 1812, and
Iroquois canoes slicked with algae, and snowmobiles that skated
on the margins of last year’s thaw.
The thrill of the anomalous had become an annual addiction.
Walking on water.
Walking on history.
And walking south, toward the sun and the countries of their
past.

She turned to look at the town they had left. Domed and spired
and provincial, a huddle of
pretentious limestone, it leaned back from the lakeshore as
prissily as a society matron testing the waters
with a well-manicured toe. Smugness rose from its streets in a
fug of steam.
It seemed very distant now. It had nothing to do with them.
This defines us, she thought. This no-man’s-land, this mere
crust of hardened water temporary as a
few weeks of winter, this dissolving border between nations--in
both of which we have lived, and on three
other continents besides. This is where, if anywhere, we
belongCtrekking over the bones of other
wanderers, French explorers and Indian scouts, the flotsam of
history. We are of that new tribe, the 20th-
century nomads, who live where rarefied specializations and
high technologies demand, transitory as the
glaze on the lake. We have passports, but where is home?
The symbols of our culture are airports and transit lounges. Our
independence is so stunning that we
dream of trees doing headstands on water, their roots trailing
into the sky like seaweed. And therefore this
walk across the lake is our Christmas and our Hanukkah and our
Thanksgiving and our Fourth of July.

She would have liked to join hands with her husband and
children, to form a magic circle and offer
incantations: Here we four are, solitary between border posts,
held by a wafer of ice between the empty
sky and the unstable bowels of earth. We have each other and
the memories we have told and retold,
meting them out to ourselves like a lifeline.
If she could have said that, they would all be safe. Then James
would change his mind, postponing
experiments and adulthood.
James had invented a private term for the way things were:
penalty-shot time. There were only
seconds of play left, packed stands, a tied score, and he in the
hot spot with the ball in his hands.
Everything depended on his getting a basket.
Each morning when he woke he thought: this could be it, and
the end of the game. And he would
pull the sheet up over his eyes to block out Stuart’s face smiling
blue and mournful from its snowdrift.
It’s so unfair, so crazy, he would rage silently to his ceiling.
Why me? I scarcely knew the guy. Why
should I have to be one of the last to see him alive? And by

such a fluke, by such bizarre chance.
James had discovered randomness and found it totally,
obscenely unacceptable.
Benched for five minutes, he had made for the water fountain in
the lobby. Just for a sip, to moisten
his salty mouth, to recharge himself for the last quarter of a
hard night’s game against their archrivals.
And that was where he and Stuart--a kid he knew only from his
science class--had had their last
conversation.
“You can’t come in,” two senior girls were saying. “School
rule, and you know it perfectly well.
You’re drunk.”
“Am not!” Stuart protested angrily. “Am shertainly not! Hey
James! Tell th’ ladies here I’m poziv-
itely not ... ?” He leaned over the desk in front of the girls and
laid his head gently on the small metal box
full of dollar bills and closed his eyes.
“We’ll get the bouncers,” one girl said.
“He’ll be okay.” James knew him only as the quiet kid four
desks away in science, an A student,
diligent and shy. Not the athletic type at all. “You won’t need a
bouncer. He’s not the type. I know him.”

“Oh man,” Stuart groaned, sliding onto the floor. “Not my day,
James. Definitely not my day. C’mon
ladies, lemme into the warm. ‘Sbeen a rotten day.”
He was groping for something by which to pull himself up and
clasped the leg of one of the girls.
She gave a shriek of shock and anger and signaled the bouncer,
who hailed one of the taxis outside the
gym. When the doors opened, the icy air rushed in like a brace
of linebackers. Stuart glanced back at them
all and laughed and made a defiant sign with his finger.
Disturbed, James hesitated, entertained fleetingly
the thought of pulling team player’s rank, of insisting Stuart be
allowed in. Then he went back inside to
the game and instantly forgot about the boy in the lobby. Which
was like forgetting the ball in your hands
during a penalty shot in the last second of play.
Afterward he thought: If I had insisted they let him in ... If I
had been there when he told the driver:
“This will be okay, I’ll walk from here. Cold air will sober me
up. Wouldn’t want my mom to see me like
this.” If I had walked with him by the lake...If I had been ther e
to shake him when he lay down drowsy in
the snow...

Hypothermia. It was a word that had fastened itself onto his
consciousness like excess baggage. He
dragged it through waking and sleeping.
And at night in the dark, after all the other questions, shameful
thoughts would surface. If I had gone
to the water fountain just five minutes earlier. Or five minutes
later. If I had been in a different science
section this year. Then it would have nothing to do with me at
all. Nothing at all.
And then he would begin to get angry. (But at whom?) Why me?
he would demand. Why should I
feel so guilty? Where were Stuart’s friends, why didn’t they ...
How could he, James, possibly be held
responsible? How could he not be responsible?
He knew now that death was not just something that happened
to other people in newspapers. It
waited like a spider on the wall of his 14 years, velvetly
watching, malevolent. Every day, every waking
moment bristled with dangers, anything was possible. In another
second, perhaps, the lake ice would
yawn open beneath their feet and they would sway rigid in their
deaths till spring, gaping like the fish. On
any day his parents might say: we are getting divorced; we are

moving to China; you will have to change
schools; you will have to change languages; your father has
been transferred to Germany. Tomorrow a
policeman might knock on his door: an accident, your parents
and sister, you are all alone.
What would he do if he were suddenly all alone? He had lived
in five countries. Which was home?
Who would take him in? He hardly knew the grandparents who
lived beyond an ocean, or the uncle and
aunt and cousins in California.
In sleep he stumbled over Stuart, lost his hold on the certainties
of each day, careened through
unknown places, down, down. Free-falling through Himalayan
abysses, past the tundra layers, past the
steaming tropical strata of other years of his life, past empty
spaces into a dark nothingness. But then. He
had pulled a cord at his chest, and a silken parachute had bellied
into the wind and snagged itself on a way
station, an explorer’s cabin.
Yes, he thought waking. I need safety devices, I need way
stations. And he had written to his uncle
and aunt in California, ports in a storm. He would establish a

chain of defences, he would be prepared.
He applied himself with a sort of pleasurable savagery to the
walk across the lake. If the ice held
them up this time, if the wind did not shroud their still bodies
with snow on this crossing, it would be like
an immunization. A small and salvific draft of risk that might
ward off greater dangers.
In the restaurant on the island, they drank hot chocolate and
decided to go back by ferry from the
dock two kilometres farther down. Enough was enough. A point
had been made, their eyes were
bloodshot, their hands and feet white with pain.
Watching the under-ice cables and pressurized air smash open a
channel for the ferry, Gillian said
with awe: “When you see how easily it breaks...”
“You know that the fishermen can make holes with only a
handsaw,” James accused. “We could
have dropped through like winter bait!” Gillian was stung. “It’s
not nearly as dangerous as flying at this
time of year. Why can’t you wait until...”
“It’s not safe to wait.”
“Not safe to wait?”

“No one can ever tell when. Don’t you see? I have to get used to
living without you. We don’t even
know our own relatives. What if you and dad were killed? What
if you split up...?”
“James, what on earth are you talking about? If we split up?!
We have no intention...”
“Yeah. Everyone’s parents said that before the divorce.”
She was shocked, dumbfounded.
“Is this what you ... ? Are you actually afraid that we...?”
But now he was red-faced.
“No, no. Sorry, Mom, I’m raving. It’s just ... I have to feel
safer. I’m sorry, I’m just ... lately I’m not
... It’s Stuart’s death.”
“Stuart?”
“Stuart Anderson.”
She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration, and the name
surfaced from a newspaper headline.
“That boy who died from exposure! You never said anything. I
didn’t realize you knew him.”
“Only slightly. He was in my science class. I guess it shook me
up badly, that’s all. I just want to ...

hedge my bets. I want to know my relatives better. I have to feel
safer.”
“But James...” She was going to protest that his plane might
fall out of the sky. That California was
so very far away, that the Los Angeles freeways coiled lethal as
snakes through her imagination, that he
would be beyond her protective reach. Instead she laid her
cheek momentarily against his because it came
to her that all four of them, tentative as waifs, must walk their
own stretches of water.
Janet Turner Hospital. (November 1982). “Walking on
Water.”Toronto: Chatelaine.
Narrative Focus & Voice

Collusion in Major League Baseball In November 1990, one

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