Being a lifelong sports fan, and especially a baseball one, when I read that Father was going to take his son to a game I was very excited. I expected none other than Honus Wagner or Ty Cobb to come marching in to the Polo Grounds, and just so happen to talk to Father and the boy. Instead, we get a rivalry game between Boston (pre-Ruth) and the Giants. Father only picks up on the ugliness of the sport, the fighting, the cursing, spitting, etc. Attention is specially paid to the team "mascots," Boston's midget, and New York's fool. Charlie Faust, the Giant who is mocking the game delusionally was actually a real member of the Giants in 1911 by the way. Towards the end of the game Father thinks to himself that, "What he saw was not baseball but an elaborate representation of his own problems accounted, for his secret understanding, in the coded clarity of numbers that could be seen from a distance" (231). And I think he is right, in part.
I too saw the connection of this game to Father's life, though more so in the events of the game than the numbers they created. Essentially, the way Father describes it, fans are paying to watch the violent intensity of the game. They egg on the players, cheer when one side draws the blood of the other, and will go home happy when a hard fought (literally) game was put on for their amusement. Indeed sports have often been explained as a metaphor for war, only one more socially acceptable than say gladiators fighting to the death. Is this not what is happening in New Rochelle? Coalhouse starts things off by attacking the Emerald Isle Fire Station. After that the other side responds with a manhunt. But things really start once the press gets involved. Coalhouse saves one of the firemen in an attempt to extract Conklin's location. But this also allows him to report the events in detail to the police, and the press. Coalhouse also delivers two letters to the press within the hour of the attack. He wants the public spectacle, he wants "the crowd" cheering him on like they do during the baseball game's fight. After his second attack on Fire Station No. 2, the New York press come into town to cover the story. Here the tale of the vengeful Coalhouse reaches national notoriety, much like say a big baseball game.
Ultimately the game serves as a tangible representation to Father of the two sides of the fight that he is watching unfold right in from of him. There is Willie Conklin, the home team, who abuses his authority under the belief that the fans will "root, root, root for the home team." Then we have Coalhouse as the away team interloper, upsetting the balance of New Rochelle. When Conklin overplays his hand, the townspeople abandon him, and then only focus on the violence, locals living in fear of it, nonresidents watching in earnest. It would seem Coalhouse defeats the home team, but then they both go to the New York for a continuation of The Series, this time on Coalhouse home field. Who's going to win the pennant? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I really regret that we didn't get to discuss this chapter in class. It exists in the novel as almost a self-contained short story, and at this point we were knee-deep in the Coalhouse affair, and it just got passed by (it was in my notes! we just never got to it!). I wrote about this chapter a bit on my blog, in the context of nostalgia, but I didn't pick up on all of these connections to Father's own "spectator" situation in the events taking place in New Rochelle. The old cliché about baseball being a metaphor for American life here takes on a new dimension--and, as you note, all the interesting stuff Doctorow digs up has more to do with the cultural context for baseball, the spectacle, than with the sport itself (the Little Boy is the one who knows the pitchers, their stats, understands the game, has a stake in its outcome).
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