Chapter 4

Just as Alice had predicted, the kids and their adult coaches were inordinately pleased to meet me. The adult males, even more than the kids, were initially speechless and a little thunderstruck, finding themselves in The Presence of a bona fide major league ballplayer.

Well, this was nothing new. I was accustomed to the hero-worship and the awestruck reactions. Hell, I'd reacted the same way, as a kid, when I got close to a big-leaguer. I knew it would gradually wear off and I would slowly become recognized for what I really was -- just another human being.

I'd be lying, though, if I claimed I didn't enjoy it. Hell, who wouldn't? Sure, sometimes the stares you got in public, or the badly timed autograph requests while you were trying to eat a restaurant meal, could be a pain in the ass. Mostly, though, it was just kinda neat. It was all part of the package. In a better world, heart surgeons or great philanthropists would be the sorts of people who'd get this kind of recognition.

But in our world, the real world, it was jocks, rock stars and Angelina Jolie. Well, it wasn't a world I had invented personally. None of it was my fault. I was just going to lie back and enjoy it, and try not to be such an asshole that I'd eventually be discovered, by all the world, to have clay feet.

Some of the kids in summer league, of course, were not into baseball all that much. They were there because their parents had shoved them into playing ball. For them, I was, perhaps, no big deal. For the committed kids, though, the ones developing a love for The Game, I had made their day, and, as I've said, the fathers, coaches, assorted male volunteers, were, for the most part, struck dumb by the wonder of it all.

Happily, that reaction faded after a little while and most everybody started behaving normally.

I met as many of the kids (there were several girls on the teams, although it was perhaps 80 percent boys) as I could. We talked baseball. I had to forecast an Orioles' pennant. I demonstrated a few simple techniques I thought the kids could use -- mostly fielding tips for the outfielders. Hitting was trickier. It's harder to teach, especially to kids still growing into their bodies.

I'm pretty sure my presence got to be simply a distraction, after awhile, and I finally managed, twenty minutes before game time, to withdraw into the bleachers behind the Red Sox' dugout. Alice was busy with her team, but I sat beside another woman I'd seen conversing with Alice earlier.

This woman, a few years older -- maybe 38 or 39 -- also looked kind of butch to me and I thought perhaps she and Alice were a couple. I also thought I'd seen her somewhere before. It wasn't clear where.

"It was great of you to come out here to see the kids," she said. "I'm Margaret Hughes."

She extended her hand and I took it. "Haven't we met somewhere?" I asked her.

"You probably saw me at the hospital, when you met Alice," she said. "I'm a nurse on the staff up there. I remember seeing you, the day you came in."

"That must be it," I said.

"Alice told me you might come out sometime. This is actually the first opportunity to see one of our games, since you met her. I'm impressed that you came so soon."

"I'm going to try to get involved a little," I explained. "During the season, our playing schedule is impossibly tight, but I felt that it was important to at least try."

"I hope it doesn't prove too much for you," Margaret said. "I hope you find it energizing."

"Interesting you should use that word -- energizing," I told her. "You know, playing every day, traveling all the time, grinding it out all season, finding things to energize you is the hardest part. I mean, there's usually plenty of time to rest your body, to get enough sleep, and so on. But the schedule is so wearing, your... your soul can run out of steam, after awhile."

"Understandable," she said.

"Yes. But at these prices -- the kind of money we're paid to perform? It's just like, well, like a performer on the stage. We ought to be expected to get up for it, every game. Every performance. Even if that's pretty hard to do, sometimes."