Chapter 9

Several interesting things happened just before our third home stand in D.C. We had survived a tour of the South and even managed to win two games from the Marlins before a crowd of dozens, but we were yet to win two in a row and three players had gone on the 15-day disabled list. One of them, I was sure, was malingering.

Then, in early May without so much as a fare-thee-well, Charley Freeman, the high-priced and well-regarded relief pitcher who had nearly won the Cy Young award twice, left the team, saying he was hurt. He just did not show up. His ERA was five-plus at the time, and he had blown three saves in a row. They put him on the 'unable to perform' list. He claimed, according to the Times, that he had torn his shoulder apart, from overwork he said, but I thought he just quit. He may have had some sort of a private deal with Greeley Jepperson; at least that was the rumor. Anyhow, one day he was gone. We had no closer. The leaking ship blew out another seam and began taking on water very fast. People began looking for life preservers and calling for help.

The second odd thing was that we had a fistfight in the dugout. Since I was out in the bullpen minding my own business that evening, I had no idea what started it, but before the dust, sunflower seed and tobacco shards settled, almost everybody except the batboy had gotten involved, either throwing punches, kicking over Gatorade coolers or trying to separate combatants. One of the young outfielders lost a tooth, and Jojo ended up with a huge mouse under his left eye, but nobody, absolutely nobody, would talk about it, not to the reporters, not even to the bullpen crew. "Racial slur" was all that made the papers, and that quote came from a fan who sat near the dugout and claimed he heard one player call somebody a foul name that included what the papers now called the "N" word.

The third odd thing was that I had dinner with the boss's wife, and that turned to be really peculiar. If that had not happened, I sure would not be telling this story, and I might be back driving a truck. If anybody had looked at that occurrence from the outside, not knowing what was going on, it would have appeared to be a very strange "date." A beat-up old man with a bald pate and a threadbare sports jacket and a well-dressed blonde young enough to be his daughter were out on the town, dining tete-a-tete as they say in the Style section of the Post, in one of the tonier neighborhood restaurants. And she paid.

She called me the morning after we got back in town. I was barely awake and still burned up about some errors behind me the night before, another losing game even though it did not go on my record. My stomach hurt so I had two Tums and some ersatz coffee for breakfast. The skies had cleared and there was a mild feel to the air, a good change after Atlanta's mugginess. I had just cranked open a window in my Silver Spring apartment and was admiring the maple trees' pale leaf buds and trying to figure out where the tireless mocking bird was hiding when the phone rang. I am pretty sure it was the first time anybody called me since I moved in and got the land-line phone installed. No one had my number as far as I knew, no one but the team I mean. I did not own a cell phone and did not want to own one.

"This is Andrea," a soft voice said. "Andrea Jepperson, we met."

I nodded and said I remembered. Before the exhibition game with Baltimore, they lined us up in front of the dugout, and she had touched my hand in a long line of hands as Buzzy said our names, one right after the other, getting about half of them wrong as we smiled and tipped out hats, repressing lecherous thoughts. He had introduced me as "this feller used t'be a pitcher."

"I want to talk to you," she said quietly. "My husband did not exactly suggest I call you, but he did say you might be able to help. I mean, you've been around for a while, that's what he said, you were a man of some experience."

"Sure," I said, still a bit groggy, "anytime." I looked across the entrance hall at the mirror and shook my head at myself. Unshaven, what little hair I had going off in all directions and my pot belly showing atop my pajama pants, I was not proud of my appearance. I sucked in my gut, but it did not help very much, and my pajamas nearly fell off.

"There's no game today," she said quickly, "so let's have dinner."

"Okay," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Okay, lets." I guessed she might invite me to come to her house for a meal, maybe with some other players. Lady Bountiful feeding the masses was what my mind entertained.

"What do you like?" she asked. "Chinese, French, Tex-Mex, what?"

"Me," I said, surprised, "oh, Italian I suppose."

"Good, me too," she purred. "There's a nice place over on Connecticut Avenue, near the Zoo, Angelo's, Northern Italian mostly, a good wine list they say; a friend of mine told me about it." She gave me the address. I wrote it down quickly as she went right on talking. "Can you meet me there about seven or should I send a driver out to pick you up?"

"Angelo's on Connecticut," I said. "Seven o'clock. Right. I'll see you then."

"The reservation will be in your name," she said. Then the phone went click-up, that sound it makes when the other person hangs up.

I said "good-bye " out of habit and put the phone down, my head still full of cobwebs.

I got my washing done and wrote my son a short letter, paid some bills and smiled when I noticed my bank balance, looked in the paper at cars for sale and did a few other mundane things while some part of my mind worried about what the young woman wanted. Late that afternoon I called a reporter for the Post, one who had written some good stuff about my comeback.

"Sportsdesk," he answered, and I told him who I was.

"Uh huh, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"What do you know about Jepperson's wife?" I said.

He laughed, and I could hear his chair creaking while he choked back his chuckles. "Oh, she's a beauty, a first-class, number-one beauty," he said.

I told him that I knew that since I had seen her. "She an airhead, a bubble-brain, Valley-girl?"

"No, don't think so although some folks make her out to be; you know, that's the dumb blonde thing. Not really fair in her case."

"Okay," I said, unsatisfied with generalities. "What makes you think that?"

"She asks interesting questions," he said, "and I've seen her needle him when he was getting pompous about something."

"She educated?"

"Community college, couple of years maybe, San Francisco area I think."

"Then what?"

"Modeled, some TV work, soaps mostly, no Playboy. We looked."

"How old is she?" I asked.

"No idea," he said. "She's young. I don't think she's thirty; twenty-seven, eight, something like that based on when she was in school. They've only been married a year I think, perhaps a bit less."

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Nope, no scandals, no fooling around, no dope or booze. She's a good girl, better than he deserves, the rich twerp."

I laughed, thanked him, shaved, found my one and only necktie, hiked down to the Metro station and caught a Red Line train that went down into the city and then looped north. I got off at the station near the National Zoo, figured out which side of the street I wanted and found Angelo's. It was a small storefront place tucked between an upscale dress shop and a dry cleaner's, not far from the Uptown Theater. Framed menus hung in the window by the door.