Chapter XX:
The Ogres’ Stadium

THIS TENURE WITHOUT Sandy at my side lasted a solid three months, clear into May, when I hit upon another idea to improve the Knights’ fortunes but craved his advice to bring the idea to fruition. Since all the teams’ manager positions were filled for the season, including the Knights’ fateful hiring of the knowledgeable but ever so dour (and therefore unattractive to me) Ewan McBain to replace Sandy, I chanced upon the latter shuffling through an unemployment queue one day.

A side word, if I may, kind reader, before I recommence my history. As Our Lord Jesu Christ foretold, “the poor you shall always have with you,” so it is even to this day upon the shores of this alien century into which I have been cast. The Church having failed in its sacred duty to minister to the needs of these unfortunates—through no fault of its own, since there exist millions more than the system was ever designed to accommodate—it has fallen upon civil governments to fill the gaps. Hence the phenomenon of the unemployment office, a sad sea of resigned individuals who appear every week to collect their dole. The honest ones make an honest go of attempting to secure whatever work is reported to be available, be it parking cars or mucking toilets; the dishonest nod their way through the compulsory interview, collect the proffered card inscribed with name and number and address of the portajohn company with openings that week, pocket their cash, and depart without a backward glance. The sidewalk outside was white with portajohn cards being scuffed around in a parody of a football game between the folks in the queue.

Amongst this sorry lot I found my Sandy shuffling and scuffling and snuffling along with the rest of his “peers.” I sidled up next to him, ignoring the whistles and leers directed my way, and tried to attract his attention. He gave me an odd, puzzled look, as if he believed I were somebody else, and whispered, “Is it really—you?”

I chuckled. “Of course, you silly adorable lug. Who else?”

Sandy gave his head a slight shake. “I thought you were my—that is, I was just thinking about…” His expression grew frank. “Why are you haunting me?”

I forgave his understandable peevishness, dismissed his strange choice of words (though later wished I hadn’t), and asked him whether he would consider being rehired as my special assistant. The poor dear eagerly said he would, and thus did I welcome him back into my court.

This prompted a veritable riot as men and women clamored round me, begging and pleading for jobs, and cursing me when I refused them. Sandy was a complete daisy through this, bellowing at people to back off and threatening to punch them if they did not. Since I wanted no trouble with the constabulary, being as two or three were demonstrating an interest in the proceedings, I enchanted the minds of the unemployed troublemakers to make Sandy seem as an ogre to them—massive and ugly and terrifying,—and to a man they meekly shrank away. To the bobbies of course I let Sandy appear as a normal if angry man. As soon as the crowd dispersed, so also did Sandy’s anger, and the bobbies resumed their beats, if not the beatings to which they thought they might have been treated.

My grand idea, as I explained to Sandy in the limo as we flew away, after a tender and satisfying reunion that is no one’s business but ours, was this: improve the Knights by improving our farm teams. Better farm teams, I reasoned, must produce better and more cost-effective prospects for the big club, and a better fan base because these dedicated folks tend to buy tickets to watch “their boys” progress all the way up the ranks.

Better farm teams, however, require better ballparks, as I learned when Sandy escorted me to inspect the facilities of the first team on his list, Odiham, a mere forty-five minutes from New Wembley and home of the single-A Odiham Ogres.

On the way to Odiham, Sandy related the team’s history as the first London farm team, established in 2025. Back then, it was deemed most cost-effective to plant the farm club where it could be cheaply overseen. At the time of our visit, threescore years hence, being in such close proximity to the parent club meant Odiham did not draw many fans, but in fine English tradition the team never had been disbanded, even after its fortunes had spiraled into the abyss.

Aloud to Sandy I vowed to change that. I did not ken his cryptic smile until our limo arrived at the Odiham “stadium” (for want of a better term), and I found it to be an utter sty: salacious writings and pictures covered the columns and walls, the car park was no better than a cow pasture, and the entire place—walkways and seating areas alike—writhed ankle-deep in a melded morass of spilt soda, popcorn, peanuts, hot dogs, and cotton candy. One stretch was so bad that I prevailed upon Sandy to carry me across. He gave me a half-mocking look of long-suffering forbearance as he gathered me into his strong arms, but I knew he was enjoying the moment, as was I. Our entourage of reporters cheerfully up-streamed videos of us the whole while.

Populating the sty was a staff that, from the team manager all the way down to the ticket takers, was as surly as any nine real ogres combined. And the players—Holy God, I could have enchanted a herd of hogs and watched them play much better than these men did. From the hoots and howls of the forty-two spectators, it appeared they shared this opinion.

 

“I could have enchanted a herd of hogs.”

 

 

I brandished the single most effective magical tool in my arsenal, the team checkbook, and set to work.

First on the docket and most important, for no other work could proceed otherwise, was the hosing out of the stadium. And I do mean “hosing” quite literally: fire brigades bringing miles of high-powered hoses, and God knows how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of water—so much so that the Odiham locals jested about gathering gopher wood. Yet it was jesting of the pleasant rather than derisive sort, for after the last truck had pulled away and the last drops had drained, it could not be denied that the place looked shiny and new once again, better than it had in recent memory. Even the graffiti had been scoured off.

Next came the stadium’s parking surfaces, for, I was informed by the facility’s manager—who transformed from a churlish ogre to a personable human being the instant he learned I would be investing in improvements—the fields became as muddy as any true sty in the realm after a typical rain. I witnessed this phenomenon first-hand after the cleansing, for all that sticky, icky spilt soda and popcorn and cotton candy, and the water for sluicing it from the stadium, had to go somewhere. While Sandy and the stadium staff puzzled over what to do with the mess, I ordered it to be paved over once it had dried to a workable state.

Third—and by far the most popular, though the idea was met with the most resistance by the stadium manager—was my decree to institute Free Beer Fridays: a pint of draft to any holder of a valid adult ticket for that same day, presented with picture proof of age, on every Friday the Ogres played at home during the remainder of the season. The beer vendor was obligated to collect the ticket to ensure the same patron did not try to obtain a pint at another vendor’s stand, and these stubs would serve as proof of how many free pints had been distributed so the vendor could collect reimbursement from the team after the game. Naturally such a measure entailed hiring extra security personnel to patrol the stands and deal with the drunken brawls that would break out from time to time amongst spectators during the game; even so, ticket sales soared so dramatically that I did not feel obliged to raise prices to cover the increased overhead costs. Everybody won—the Ogres themselves, most especially, for it becomes an entirely new matter of pride to perform for an audience of fourteen thousand, rather than forty-two.

In fact, Free Beer Fridays was such a rousing success that the practice became adopted at stadiums across Europe, Asia, and most of the Americas, with the notable exception of the Bible Belt of the southeastern United States. Their loss.

What we all—except the Bible-Belters—discovered, however, was that additional funds had to be spent at the ballparks to build onsite jail cells for the most violent drunkards, and drunk tanks for the verbally bellicose ones, and to hire magistrates to be on duty during games for determining which species of drunkard had to be caged where. The request for prisoner facilities to be built at Ogre Stadium came straight from the Lord Mayor of Odiham himself. Yet compared with the annual bumper crop of cash revenues and better players from which to choose for one’s own club or for trading to another, it was but a trivial investment.