Chapter 5

The next morning I woke up to the smell of bacon frying. Oh, my! The new house was quieter, cleaner, bigger, better in every way than my grungy old apartment, although it lacked a swimming pool, and the only good-looking babe around was Amy.

But Amy was better-looking than any of the young women who haunted the old apartment's pool on weekends, and she was sleeping in a bedroom right down the hall!

And now she was making breakfast!

When I came into the kitchen, Amy asked me to summon Shiggie (it was already 10 a.m.) for breakfast. I found him up and getting dressed, and went into my pantomime routine at his bedroom door -- spooning (presumably bacon) and making silly slurping noises.

Maybe he though we were having noodles.

When we came back into the dining area, the table was beautifully set and I was extraordinarily impressed. Amy told us (in two languages) not to be expecting this every day.

"I'm going to make you guys breakfast every third day, rain or shine," she said. "I'd suggest that the two of you reciprocate, but I can't force you. Either way, you'll get a hot breakfast from me, during home stands, every third day."

"How about if I do all the dishes -- every day?" I asked. "Will you cook two days out of three, then?"

"Nope. I'll cook and clean up -- on my day. And on my day only!"

She told Shiggie the same thing. I think.

We dug in. She'd even made (frozen) biscuits. All this was new to me, and delightful. I was generally a Cheerios guy on days I was too lazy to go out for breakfast.

"I'm going to spend a couple of hours with Shiggie today, working on some English phrases," Amy said. "If you like, you could sit in for part of it, maybe make some suggestions about things he needs to understand on the field."

"Teach him how to say, when the pitching coach comes out to the mound, 'Go fuck yourself!'," I suggested.

"I'm sure that would be extremely helpful in advancing his career."

"OK, then. Tell him, when the pitching coach comes out, he should say, 'Put in Sam Bailey.'... Or maybe he could say, 'Put in Sam Bailey, please, sir!'."

"No kidding, Sam, Shiggie could really benefit from gaining command of a few on-field basics. Let's help him."

"Right. I'm humping like crazy to get into the club's starting rotation, and I gotta help the Veteran Japanese Guy, who's making, like, six times my salary, to take the slot instead."

"You're not really that small, are you, Sam?"

I blushed. "No. I guess I'm not. I like Shiggie, and from what little I've seen so far, he's a Helluva pitcher! If I can help him, I'll help him."

The brilliant smile that I got from Amy then was worth its weight in sunbeams. I decided I'd do just about anything to earn another one of those, sometime in my lifetime.

"We're speaking too much English again," Amy reminded me, and herself. She launched into Japanese for the duration of our time at the breakfast table. I learned the Japanese word for "coffee."

Well, I've forgotten it already. Fuck it. Let Shiggie learn English! He's the one making $2 million a year in his rookie season in the Bigs. Me? I'm making the league minimum. (Which, incidentally, is still more money than I ever expected to see in my life!)

I sat in with Amy and Shiggie for the first 30 minutes of his English lesson, and then curled up on the front porch swing with the latest Robert Crais novel for the next two hours, while Amy continued drilling him.

She finally decided that Shiggie's eyes were glazing over, and dismissed class for the day. It was getting fairly close to time for us to head for Camden Yards.

Amy joined me on the swing. "Better get ready to go to the park pretty soon," I said. "We've gotta be there in just over an hour."

"This is one of the really nice things about this job!" Amy said. "I've got a seat right next to the dugout, where I can translate anything Paul Warren wants to tell Shiggie."

"Good seats!" I said. "Too bad they won't let you sit in the dugout."

"You can see the game better in the stands," Amy said. It's true. The dugout is one of the worst places in the park to see what's happening on the field.

"Anyway, you'd be a distraction in the dugout," I said.

Amy smiled. "You think so?"

"You wouldn't distract me," I said.

"Oh no? Are you immune to my charms?"

"Not entirely, no. But I'll be 350 feet away, in the bullpen. I think I could bear up -- even if you were in the dugout."

Amy gave me the big-beamer smile again. "I'd forgotten about that," she said.

"If they put me in, I'll try to get knocked out early, so I can spend some time in the dugout, close to your spot," I said.

"Yeah, right. I thought when you got knocked out, they sent you to the showers."

"That's just an expression," I said. "Actually, I only shower on alternate Saturdays."

"If that's true," Amy said, "I'm going to have to memorize the phone number of the Yellow Cab Company. That Ford Explorer of yours won't be big enough for both of us!"

"It's an Escape," I corrected. "I'm one of those environmentally sensitive types. My small SUV is a hybrid -- the kind that gets big-time mileage and costs big-time extra bucks."

"A left-leaning baseball player! Well, I never!"