The big metal box must’ve been about twenty feet in length. It was about nine or ten feet tall, and eight feet in width. Black paint covered its crinkled exterior, and there were a bunch of numbers painted in white, both on the ends and sides of the container. The numbers seemed like random serial numbers with no real meaning. There were two pockets at the bottom of the container meant for a fork lift.

Strangely, all four containers appeared to have landed right side up. All I could think was the System truly controlled everything.

While most of the villages cowered, opting to observe these odd objects from a distance, I shuffled down into one of the craters along with Trevor, and Gak. Proctor stayed at the crater’s edge, watching from above.

There were four gray pipes, for lack of a better term, on one end of the box. They had locking handles attached, super cold to the touch. When I slid the handles in a bid to unlock them, there was a screech of metal on metal. I had to give it a bit of muscle to get them to move. There was satisfying clunk, and I knew the container’s doors were ready to open.

“Careful,” Proctor said. “Anything could be in there.”

His words caused some of the villagers to pull farther back from the crater.

“Do it,” Gak said. “Let us see.”

With my knees bent at ninety degrees, I grasped the left side steel door. It was heavier than I’d anticipated. With an audible grunt, I heaved the flap open, and it swung outward. Trevor the giant gasped, but I think it was just a reflexive reaction, because we couldn’t really see anything given the inside of the container was quite dark when we’d first opened it.

Trevor helped me open the right side door. Once a touch of overcast light hit inside the container, I could see the front of two white bins. One bin lined the left side of the container, the other lined the right. They stood about five feet high, and there was a couple of feet down the middle so you could walk between the bins right to back of the shipping container if you wanted to.

“What did you find?” Proctor shouted at me.

I stepped into the container, and looked into the left side bin first. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The bin was lined with clear plastic, and piled up inside the bin was just a random, chaotic pile of baseball bats. Fat ends of bats jut outward and upward in all directions, just the same as the skinny ends with the round nubby bottom you see on all baseball bats. They were sticking out and jumbled like a giant box of thumb tacks.

“It’s bats,” I yelled back to Proctor, and my voice echoed inside the steel box.

“Bats?”

“Baseball bats.”

When I looked into the bin lining the container to my right, I could see more piles of bats. The container must have held hundreds of them. Thousands maybe? We were never going to run out of baseball bats, put it that way.

They came in two colors, and were all mixed together. There were black ones, and wood grain color. I wrapped my eager hands around the barrel of a wood grain colored bat, and yanked it free of its jumbled pile. As soon as I walked out of the container, Gak reached to me, and pulled the bat from my hands.

The barbarians eyes widened like a child who’s just discovered the cereal aisle.

“Ahh, my, my, my,” Gak said, breathless in tone. “Would you look at this club. ‘Tis beautiful.”

“Not a club,” I said. “A bat.”

“We don’t need your future words,” Gak said. “Oh, those I could avenge with such a weapon. So pure.”

“Alright,” I said, reaching to take the bat back. “Let’s not get carried away. It’s meant for baseball, not your vengeance fantasies.”

Probably not the wisest idea to grab a weapon from the hands of a seven foot reformed killer like Gak, but I suppose my run ins with the Boop Soda machine had me feeling a bit more confident of what I was capable of in this world versus my previous one.

To his credit, Gak didn’t protest when I took the bat from him.

“We have to remember our purpose here,” I said. “We’re to use these for the game of baseball. They’re not meant to be weapons.”

Gak’s countenance sunk a little as he recognized the truth in what I was saying.

“Aye,” he grunted. “Still, they are beautiful.”

I had to agree. They were smooth, and coated in an eye pleasing sheen. You could even smell the freshness of the wood. It was like these bats had just come off the assembly line.

Proctor ventured down, as did a few villagers. People were eager to grasp these exotic items. And, it worried me.

Maybe I had too much of an imagination, but as I watched more people brave the container, and take a bat in hand, I started imagining a scene of carnage where hundreds of villagers start smashing each other with these baseball bats.

A minute later I threw up my hands, just as a couple of men tried carrying clusters of bats in their arms out of the crater.

“Stop!” I hollered, and everyone froze to look at me.

“Bats back inside,” I said. “These are property of the team. Put them back inside the container.”

One of the men carrying three bats in his arms smirked at me. He kept walking to the top of the crater, where as everyone else had done as I’d asked.

“You there!” I yelled at the man. “Stop! Those are not yours!”

He didn’t stop for me, but he didn’t make it another five steps before Trevor put a finger on his shoulder. As soon as the giant did so, the man shuddered as if he’d lost control of his bladder, and the bats fell to the mud. Trevor collected the bats, and brought them to me.

“Thank you,” I said to the giant. We watched the scared man run off with his friends.

“I understand,” Trevor said. “You’re trying to prevent a battle.”

“Gak was correct,” I said. “These could be used as weapons. We should probably keep them guarded. They’ve been sent here for a reason, and I imagine their only purpose is to be used by the team.”

“Understood,” Trevor said. “We can keep them in this cave.”

By ‘cave’, I knew he meant the shipping container, and I didn’t bother to correct him.

Text appeared in my vision as I gripped one of the bats, about to place it back in a bin.

[ATTENTION HUMAN:

You have received a special shipment.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

These are official baseball bats for use in The League, and The League’s Brackets (tournaments).

Note, they meet required specifications.

Each are manufactured of ash wood.]

“They’re made of ash,” I said.

“Interesting,” replied Proctor. “That must be what they use in the major leagues.”

“We have many ash trees,” Gak said.

“Major leagues?” Trevor said. “What is that?”

“We can talk about it later.”

[Your League official baseball bat meets the following criteria:

Total length: 34 inches (86 cm)

Handle length: 11 inches (28 cm)

Barrel diameter: 2.6 inches (67 mm)

Weight: 1 kilogram]

“Shall we check the other containers?” Proctor said. “I have a feeling we’re going to be swimming in equipment.”

“We’ve already got an ocean of bats,” I said.

Sure enough, the second container we checked, was rammed full of baseball gloves. Huge piles of raw hide. They had gloves of all types. Catcher’s mitts, first baseman gloves, third baseman’s gloves. Generic gloves for various fielding positions. There was even a bin full of thousands of batting gloves. To me, they looked like the glove you’d see golfers wearing on one hand, and I suppose they’d be fairly similar.

As entertaining as it’d been to see Trevor handle a baseball bat like it was a toothpick, it was even funnier to watch him try and put a ball glove on his gargantuan hand. Yeah, it wasn’t happening.

“If the glove doesn’t fit-” I said.

“You must acquit,” Proctor finished my thought for me, and we both chuckled.

Trevor frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. A story from the modern world, for another time.

Gak flapped a stiffened black leather glove on his left hand.

“It will not close easily,” Gak said. “What a strange object.”

“It needs to be worked in,” I said. I remembered that phrase from when I was a kid playing little league. You’d get a new ball glove, and spend hours flexing it, getting it loosened up.

Some kids used to rub shaving cream on them. I remember a guy who lived on my block who swore by vegetable oil. Some would put a baseball in the palm of the glove, and then wrap elastic bands around them, and leave them that way for days. Kids would even fold their glove just the way they liked, and then put the thing under one leg of their bed as a way to use the weight to break the glove in. Anything you could do to loosen the thing until it fit on your hand as though it was as much a part of you as your own fingers.

“Once you get it broken in, it’ll feel completely natural to you,” I said. “That’ll take time.”

“Aye,” Gak said. I had no idea if he understood what I meant, but I was happy to see he seemed genuinely interested in the item.

The third container was all baseballs. Thousands, and thousands of baseballs. Really, it made perfect sense, and I felt silly having contracted a procurer, and involving Barkley in trying to supply the team with baseballs in the first place. If you thought about it for more than a minute, you’d realize just how many baseballs you’d go through in the run of a series of games. Not mention how many balls you’d use in practices, or small private training sessions. Of course, the System would supply us with as many baseballs as we’d need to play this sport to their satisfaction.

[NOTE:

This is The League’s official baseball.

You will not use any other type of ball. You will not.

These official baseballs meet the following criteria:

Ingredients:

Wool yarn layer (x3)

Cork inner core (coated in rubber)

Cow hide covering

Red cotton stitching (108 raised stitches)

Dimensions:

Diameter: 2.9 inches (7.4 cm)

Circumference: 9.1 inches (23 cm)

Mass: 5.1 ounces (143 g)]

“Oh my,” Gak said, rotating a baseball over and over in his hands.

“Don’t say it,” I said. “Don’t even think about it.”

He grumbled, and handed the ball to me.

“‘Tis the strangest rocks I’ve ever seen,” Trevor said. “This is the thing you’ve spoken of so often. The baseball.”

“Yep,” I said. “This is it. The thing we’ll be using to manufacture runs. Hard to believe, this little object is our key to freedom.”

“Freedom?” Proctor said.

“Well, a better life, a better existence,” I said.

“And we will strike these with those?” Gak said. And, I knew he was referring to the bats.

“Right,” I said. “And you will catch these with your glove.”

“Ah,” Gak said. “‘Tis if you would allow me to keep one.”

“You’ll be issued a glove of your own, Gak,” I said. “For now we just need to secure these shipments, and keep them in a safe place. You know, organize them? Then we can issue individual players with their own equipment.”

“Aye, good,” Gak said.

The final container we checked held all kinds of useful stuff. There was a bin containing nothing but bases. The System strangely didn’t specify, but if I had to guess I’d say the bases themselves were made from white canvas. Maybe rubber? Maybe both?

Each of the bases were perfectly square. Eyeballing it, I’d guessed they were about a foot in length, and width, or perhaps a bit more than that. And, they were about four or five inches in height.

“These are our fortresses,” I said to Trevor and Gak, recalling back to where I’d first described bases to them.

There were also a bunch of home plates in one of the bins. They were made from white rubber, five sided, and slightly larger than the bases. It had angled edges, and was about an inch thick.

“Home plate,” I said.

“You described it well,” Trevor said. “We touch this, and we make a run?”

I smiled, pleased that the giant retained the information so well. If only he could be a player on the team.

“I shall touch it many times,” Gak said.

“Here’s hoping you’re right,” I said.

The fourth shipping container also had a bunch of miscellaneous items you might associate with the game. There were hundreds of bags of sunflower seeds. Based on Trevor and Gak’s reactions, they’d never seen a sunflower, let alone try its seeds.

There were plastic sleeves of paper cups, as well as a half dozen large water coolers.

“We’ll put well water in here?” Trevor said.

“That’s the idea.”

Probably the most exciting items in the big steel box, however were the baseball cleats, and baseball caps.

Amazingly, both the caps and cleats were midnight blue in color, matching the color I’d chosen for the team a few days back. Freaky to be reminded in this way that the System is always listening.

Thankfully, Trevor’s threatening behavior to the man who tried to steal those bats, had kept the rest of the villagers away from the containers. Anyone who’d stuck around, meekly watched from a distance, and I was glad because when we started pulling pairs of cleats from the piles of them, I worried the villagers would see these pristine items of footwear, and swamp the box. These new cleats were obviously superior than every other bit of footwear available in this stone age village.

Gak held the cleats up to his feet, judging their size. He had a hard time finding cleats large enough to fit him, but the System had sent such an amount, it turned out there were actually shoes big enough. Just a matter of digging through the piles.

“I am not comfortable,” Gak said, and he stood up with his new laced cleats on.

This huge man wearing skins, and furs looked ridiculous wearing modern baseball cleats. He marched up and down the hard floor of the shipping container with his feet click clacking. He raised his knees with every uncomfortable step, and these shoes were so unfamiliar to him, he resembled a dog who’d just been fitted with doggie rain boots.

“I ache,” Gak said. “Must we adorn these for baseball?”

I nodded. “Unfortunately, yes,” I said. “But, the good news is they’ll get more comfortable the more you wear them. You have to work them in.”

“Like your baseball glove?” Gak said.

“Exactly.”

We each tried on a pair of cleats, and yep, they were really stiff. I could see what Gak was talking about. I tried on a few pairs to find the right size. Then we tossed the cleats inside the container, and we closed the big box up. We already closed, and latched the other containers too.

Trevor agreed to find a few of the security people we’d already hired to do perimeter security for the village, and use them as guards for these containers. I wanted them watched around the clock, because I could easily see a scenario where villagers continually stole their contents for their own uses. I’d imagine in that case the System would blame me as well, and not send new supplies to replace what I’d failed to secure.

Not an optimist. Proctor was right.

Once we’d closed up the boxes, Kestrel arrived from the village’s east end.

“Concrete,” he said. He’d become conversant with the word.

“What about it?” I said.

“The wall comes along well,” Kestrel said. “Come and see. You could come with your tea, yes?”

I knew he meant a can of soda.

“You want me to multiply what you’ve got built?” I said.

He nodded.

“Let’s go have a look,” I said to Proctor. “I suppose we should stop by the soda machine first? You have the coins on you, yes?”

“Hoping you receive another water chestnut one?” Proctor said. “You think we should be so lucky?”

“Only one way to find out.”