Chapter 1

It wasn't hard to find the training camp since there was a huge banner hanging on the chain link fence that stated, in fancy blue letters ten feet high, Home of the New Nats. I eased through the tall gate and looked around at the busy scene, enjoying the familiar sounds and hoping to see someone I knew. A few men lounged in the sloping stands, well back in the shade, and fifty or sixty players in t-shirts were shagging flies pumped out by three ball-throwing machines. A few men were skylarking near the wooden fence, practicing goofy throws and circus catches.

Buzzy Harder spotted me before I saw him and ambled over, rolling like a schooner in a heavy wind, belly well out before him. I wiped at my forehead, settled my hat and waited, canvas bag in hand, trying to look more confident than I felt. My stomach began to churn and my mouth got dry. Hell of a thing at my age.

"What'chu doin' here?" Buzzy asked, fists on his wide hips, head cocked to the side.

"Hi'ya Buzzy," I managed, "good to see you again." I stuck out my hand. He ignored it and spat a brown gob off to the side.

"Ain't you still suspended or somethin'?" he asked, looking up at me with one eye closed. "Screwed up, didn' ya?"

I shook my head. "Time flies," I said hopefully. "Heard you might be looking for an arm or two."

He snorted and shifted his considerable weight. "Not yours. We ain't that hard up."

"Really," I said, trying to sound friendly. "Not what I read. Post said the guys you got in the expansion draft came in lame and halt, sore shoulders and trick elbows."

He shook his head and scuffed at the orange dirt. "Most a'them's aw'right, not all but some's pretty good. We got twenty-some pitchers right now. Don' need no more."

"I'm here to offer my services." I conjured up a smile at his pockmarked face. "Like to get a shot at a job." He looked sort of like the late Don Zimmer might if he fell nose first into a pile of gravel. "I work cheap."

"How old are you?" he asked, pushing his cap askew and squinting at me, his hands now stuffed into his back pockets. Buzzy Harder thought he was the second coming of Casey Stengel, and he often walked around like that. Most folks said it made him look like a ruptured pigeon.

"Let's say nobody's carded me lately." I kept my worn-out Oriole hat on my balding head, aware that its well-worn cartoon bird gave away its age. The hair I had left had gotten plenty of Grecian Formula to hide the gray, and I had shaved extra close in my motel room since some of my stubble looked kind of white. "I can still bring it," I bragged. "How old was Palmer when he quit, I mean the first time? Or Nolan, or Clements for that matter." I smiled. "You don't remember Bobo do you? Saw him when I was a kid. Or old Satch, what was he fifty when he quit?'

"Ho," he said, spitting off to the side. "Ho, that's a good one. Palmer! Jeez'us, you din' have nothin' five years ago." He rubbed the tobacco juice into the dirt.

"I've been resting," I said, still trying to look pleasant. "How about it?"

He shook his head and sniffed, turning away.

"Five batters," I said, trotting after him, holding his arm, "come on, you can call 'em from behind the backstop. Ten minutes, that's all." The players were moving around and the flyball barrage had ceased. The ground crew rolled out the batting cage while two men set up the screen in front of the mound.

"Why not," he said, "somebody's got t'throw battin' practice. But remember to duck. Don' wan'cha killed by no liner." He sniffed and rubbed his deeply-lined face, turned on his heel and waddled away. I had known Buzzy, off and on, for at least twenty years and must admit it hurt my pride to beg him for a try-out. He had kicked around the league forever, playing second banana to a string of failures, and now he had the opportunity to show what he had learned at incompetents' knees.

I sat, put on the my steel-cleated shoes with the well-worn rough-leather pitching toe, pulled my battered Stan Musial glove from my bag, tied up a loose lace and walked out toward the mound, hopping over a hot grounder on the way. I was wearing some faded khakis and a dark gray t-shirt, hoping the flapping shirttail might conceal my beer belly and the long pants my scarred legs. One knee had taken a liner when I was in the minors, ruining the patella, and the ACL in the other one just plain failed, right when I stepped on first. I could still hear it snap in my memory.

"Mumford, yo," Buzzy yelled, "you bat next, then Skeeter and JoJo."

The young catcher came out from behind the plate with his hockey-style helmet under his arm. I shook his hand and introduced myself.

"I've got your rookie card," he said with a big grin. "By damn."

"I'm going to throw a slider, then an overhand curve, a four-seam fastball inside, a circle change and then I'll probably turn one over so give me a steady target, inside half. If we go to six on a batter, I'll think of something. A flick of the glove means a curve."

He nodded, spat and pulled down his oddly painted mask. "By damn," he said again. In a game in which change takes place at glacial speed, catchers' equipment had improved a lot in my two decades, but it was still a nasty job.

I don't think most men could play baseball if they were not allowed to spit, and the game still has its snuff users, tobacco chewers and bubble gum addicts and let's not forget sunflower seeds. Although my mouth was dry, I spat just to get into the right frame of mind. I felt at home, comfortable as I did some gardening with my cleats at the front of the mound, working on my landing spot, calming myself, shutting down my head. I bent over, took a deep breath, put the ball behind me, turned it over a few times, felt the seams, and narrowed my vision so I only saw the catcher's light-tan glove and segmented chest protector clearly, everything else became peripheral. I could not have told you what color his shin-guards were.

Charley Mumford stepped in, tapped the plate and smiled out at me. I had pitched to him before when he was maybe thirty pounds lighter and ten years younger. Now his arms were bigger than my thighs, and he was pretty thick around the middle.

"You wanna warm up?" Mumford yelled out at me, whipping his bat like a tiger's tail.

I shook my head, put my foot in front of the rubber and waited until he was set. I was not going to tell anybody that I had been paying a kid ten dollars to catch me for an hour every morning for the last month, including this morning. I offered up a small prayer, stretched, coiled, pushed off hard, kept my left shoulder closed and threw a pretty good slider that dove very late, almost into the dirt.

He swung, reaching out as the ball moved away from him and lost his grip on the bat. It windmilled out toward third and somebody laughed. One of the coaches tossed the bat back to the big outfielder, and he dug in again, looking serious as I got another ball from the mesh box. I knew he was probably in the last year or two of a long career. The owner of the new Nats was certainly spending money freely. My fingers felt the seam, looking for the right place to grip, spreading, adjusting, digging in my thumbnail.