Chapter 8

Paul Warren and his little family lived just north of Bowie -- a Baltimore satellite city that supported the Orioles' Double-A farm, the Bowie Baysox. Warren had managed at Bowie for three seasons before having been awarded the Big Club's managerial job this past winter.

The new manager's family was still in Bowie -- an easy commute to Camden Yards for Warren.

Amy, Shiggie and I were right on time for the cookout. We were the first guests to arrive, and we found our boss and his wife in the huge back yard, preparing a big outdoor grill for action.

"This is my wife, Orlie," Paul said, presenting us with a small, dark, beautiful Latina woman with gorgeous long black hair. Orlie had a kind smile, and she shook each of our hands -- Amy first, then Shiggie, and finally me.

"Paul tells me you two guys are the backbone of the New Orioles," Orlie said. "I've seen both of you pitch, and I don't think he's exaggerating."

Amy dutifully repeated this in Japanese for Shiggie. I thought maybe her praise was a bit overblown -- at least to the extent she'd included me in it -- but Orlie Warren seemed like a nice lady, with nothing phony about her. Anyway, what the hell? Somebody says something nice to you, accept it!

Shiggie, through Amy, informed Orlie that I should be a starting pitcher. "He says that in Japan, Sam's pitching style would make him a star," Amy told Orlie. "He says that he -- Shiggie -- pitches like an American, but that Sam -- the real American, pitches Japanese-style."

I laughed. "All that just means I don't have much of a fastball," I explained to Orlie.

Some other players and their families were arriving, and Orlie excused herself to go and meet them. I was surprised to see some of the team's top stars showing up for a backyard cookout. Our third baseman, Melvin Mora, was there with his six children -- five of them quintuplets! Another adult was with them -- probably a nanny to help keep the half-dozen little guys in line.

Amy was entranced by the Mora children, and went off to meet them individually. Shiggie and I just smiled and kept our distance, although the kids seemed very well-behaved.

All the coaches and trainers showed up, including former Oriole outfielder B.J. Surhoff -- a former teammate of Paul Warren's when he had been an Oriole infielder, and now our new manager's choice as the club's batting coach. I didn't get too many chances to converse with Surhoff, he being stationed in the dugout and concerned with our offense, while I sat in my little corner of the bullpen for days on end, waiting for disaster to strike, so I could pitch.

But I struck up a conversation with him that night. Ballplayers -- even callow rookies like me -- don't say such things out loud to other ballplayers, but Surhoff had been one of my childhood heroes. It was great to find out that B.J. was a friendly, outgoing guy off the field. At the ballyard, whether as coach or player, he was pure concentration.

We met Paul and Orlie's daughter, Maria, and she and Amy became fast friends. Maria was around 14, and it was easy to see that she was going to be as beautiful as her mother. I listened in to her conversation with Amy and it gradually became clear that Paul Warren was her stepfather. He and Orlie had only been married for the past three and a half years, Maria told us, but as far as she was concerned, Paul was just plain "Dad." The couple had met and fallen in love during Paul's first season as a manager -- at Bluefield in the Appalachian League. Maria had been instrumental in their initial meeting.

The party was huge -- well over half the players showed up, along with all the coaches and umpteen family members. Orlie and Paul had quite a bit of hidden-away catering help inside their house, but they did all the barbequing themselves, working and sweating for well over an hour to get everyone served.

Their spacious yard was adequate to support an impromptu post-meal baseball game -- played with plastic bats and balls and featuring preschool children making up double-play combinations with major league all stars -- and when darkness came, Paul surprised the children by turning on a pretty decent set of high-mounted outside lights that permitted the game to go on.

Icy buckets full of bottled beer were brought out from the house and strategically distributed around the yard (one set out close behind second base as the game wore on). All the barriers seemed to come down -- the veteran players and their wives were going out of their way to be nice to us newcomer/interlopers, and Paul and Orlie tirelessly circulated through the crowd, seeing to the needs of their many guests.

The three-game losing streak, courtesy of the usually hapless Cleveland Indians, was never mentioned.

Heading back home near midnight, the three of us agreed that it had been an unusually cordial and happy occasion. I suggested that it was Orlie, Paul's lovely wife, who was most instrumental in creating the Era of Good Feeling that everyone seemed to share throughout the evening.

Amy had heard -- from Maria -- the story of how Paul and Orlie had met, and she related it, in detail and in two languages, on our way home. She demonstrated her facility with the Japanese language by telling the story simultaneously to Shiggie and me, with each of us being required to wait after alternate sentences or paragraphs for the other to be brought up to speed.

Despite the awkwardness of the United Nations treatment, it was a romantic little story, and Amy told it well.

Twice.

When we got home, Shiggie excused himself and went up to bed. We had a 1 p.m. charter flight to Toronto the next day, Monday, and a day game Tuesday to start the three-game series with the Blue Jays.