Chapter 2

So I climbed up the cement steps toward the three men who were sitting back in the shade of the pavilion roof. I was aware that my knee hurt and worked hard for it not to show. The one in the middle was short, smooth-faced and looked about twenty years old. He had a lot of slicked-back hair that enveloped his ears, and wore frameless sunglasses and a watch with a dial made from a silver dollar. The other two appeared to be twice his size and age, but they were very deferential to the younger man. I knew the one on the left and wondered if he would remember me, half-hoped he would not. The older men's khaki pants were wrinkled and their knit shirts limp. The young man's dark jacket hung sleekly on his chubby body and his ice-blue silk necktie was tightly knotted against his flawless collar. He looked air conditioned. His shoes glowed. His cuff links glittered. His skin was pink, his eyes pale when he lifted his dark glasses to look at me.

I introduced myself and said I was looking for a job, a pitching job. I avoided a begging tone, but feared I would come off subservient no matter how I explained myself. Since I was deeply in debt I really did not give a damn how it looked.

"Uh huh," said the wealthy young man whose name I already knew was Greeley Jepperson. I had been buying Washington newspapers for two weeks. He crossed his ankles, restored his sunglasses and cocked his head, examining me in the way you might study a car you were thinking about buying. "You know him?" he said to the dark-jowled man on his right. He never asked my name so they must have been talking about me before I mounted the steps. Nobody asked me to sit.

The fellow in the wrinkled trousers and running shoes looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes and nodded. "I know him, Greeley. He worked for me for three years in Chicago. Earned his pay, every penny." The Birds had dealt me to the White Sox when they went on a youth movement.

"Good to see you again," I said to him, moving up another step. I swallowed and made my mouth smile. We shook hands.

He nodded, cold-eyed.

"How much do you want?" asked the lean man on the aisle. He looked like an accountant except he wore lizard-skin cowboy boots and wrap-around Ray-Bans. The little hair he had left blew around his ears.

"League minimum, one year with options." I smiled, trying not to beg.

"That's fair," said young Jepperson, nodding, "if you make the team; no minor league deals."

"Of course," I said, relaxing some. "Just the usual daily until then."

He nodded again and waved me away, turning toward the man who had signed me to two good contracts that brought me almost a half-million dollars. I wondered where it had gone. I actually knew but hated to admit I knew. I had tried hard to forget her name.

I clacked carefully down the steps and behind the batting cage found Buzzy Harder again. "He hired me," I said carefully, "who do I see about a uniform?"

He just shook his head and pointed toward the clubhouse

"What do I call you?" I asked, being as pleasant as I could.

"Skip," he said after he spat to the side and made a sour face, "some call me Buzz but most of 'em call me Skip." He looked very tired with dark bags under his rheumy eyes. Thick blue veins criss-crossed his forearms and hands. His mouth seemed to flinch or squirm now and then and his left eye flickered steadily. I wouldn't have hired him to clean the men's room.

"Right," I said and headed for the pre-fab green building in the outfield. The white-haired equipment man was hard at work along with one of his sons, a man of fifty or so who was called a clubhouse "boy." I introduced myself, both men squinted at me, measuring, and I said I needed a uniform and a locker.

"Number matter?" the father said as he stuffed towels into a oversized washing machine.

"Plenty of cubicles. They's coming and going fast around here," said the younger man. "Been through least a hundred."

"Any number," I told them, "about a forty-two I suppose." I looked around. It was like going back to the place where you were born and finding very little had changed. The smell brought back a lot of memories and some regrets.

The man handed me a shirt with number sixty-seven on it and said, "You wear 'em up or long?"

"Knee high," I said, "thirty-six belly I think," and he got me some socks and some britches, a belt, wide waist jock strap and a hard plastic cup. Everything was new. His son found me a hat that fit and handed me a carefully folded undershirt with a white body and dark blue sleeves. I looked at the red-piped script W on the Air Force-blue cap. It had been a long time since Washington had a team. The uniforms were going to be red, white and blue I noticed. I was happy they had not followed the recent trend of pastels, purples, tangerines and teals.

Properly attired and feeling very good about it, despite the cup, I trotted back out on the field just about the time they broke for lunch. I barely had time to run a few laps in the outfield and work up a sweat. The spread was not much, mostly industrial ham, cold cuts and sliced cheese, fruits and lettuce, but it was free, and I enjoyed sitting back and chewing someone else's bread, drinking someone else's Coke. I tried to recall exactly how much I had left in the checking account as loud conversations swirled about me, very few of them about baseball.

George Junkins came across the room and plunked himself down, shaking the bench. He offered me his big hand and I took as much of it as I could. It was like grasping a wide of piece of knotty old lumber. I half expected to get splinters.