Chapter 2: Dave

Alex Harrell is our first baseman. The guys call him Moneybags, because he was a second-round draft choice last year -- the same draft in which I was drafted in the fifth round. When you're a second-round pick by a club that finished as low in the standings as the Orioles did that year, it means you were picked pretty high, because the low-finishers get to pick earliest. So Alex had gotten drafted somewhere in the range of 30^th to 40^th overall.

That is pretty high, and it means if you've got an agent, or any negotiating skills at all, you're going to get some kind of signing bonus.

Since practically everybody in baseball except Al Kaline has to spend at least two years in the minors before moving up to the Major Leagues, and most guys spend three or four or even five years or more, bouncing around in the bus leagues, the signing bonus usually is the difference between years of abject poverty and the comforts associated with middle-class living. That's because minor-league pay is ridiculously low. It ought to be against the damned law! Without signing-bonus money in the low minors, you're working for McDonald's wages. Wal-Mart? Compared to us, those folks are in high cotton!

Now, Alex hadn't gotten a big bonus, by today's standards, but he had hired a pretty decent agent to negotiate his contract with the Orioles, and he'd ended up getting a bonus in the $700,000 range. So Alex Harrell (unlike the great majority of his fellow Frederick Keys scufflers) was not wondering where his next hamburger was coming from.

Well -- the rest of us weren't wondering that, either. We knew ours was coming from McDonald's.

But, I've got to give Alex credit. He didn't lord it over us -- having all that money. He was a smart kid, and he'd salted most of his money away someplace, so it was out there, earning more money for him. Sure, his apartment in Frederick was a couple of cuts above the duplex Eddie and I lived in, and it was in a lot better part of town, but it wasn't ostentatious by any means.

It was exactly the kind of apartment I'd have rented, if I'd have gotten a signing bonus.

Which I hadn't.

But Alex was an OK guy, and I got along with him about as well as I did anybody else on the club except for my road roomy, Ollie Parker. Me and Ollie were especially tight. I wasn't exactly surprised when Alex invited me along for a double date one Sunday night, after our game with the Potomac Nationals.

We were scheduled to return to Frederick after that afternoon's game, and the team bus would be heading up there an hour after the game ended. As usual, however, Alex had his personal car with him. You see, Potomac's ballpark is out in the country, there, in the exurbs southwest of Washington, D.C., down Interstate 95. On a map, you'll find it at about 8 o'clock, with Washington at the center of the clock.

Frederick, Maryland is at about 11 o'clock on the same map, and if you know what you're doing, you can go straight there from Potomac, on secondary highways in Northern Virginia, without going anywhere near the District of Columbia.

Alex evidently had spent some of his bonus money having somebody bring his car down from Frederick, since we'd been on the road for nine days, and he had been riding the team bus, just like the rest of us, during the swing through Carolina, playing the southern clubs in the league.

It was an Audi, Alex' car. A beautiful, conservative four-door sedan, pretty as a penny. Ol' Alex had some class. I mean, he could have bought any kind of car, I guess. Maybe a Porsche, even -- but he didn't spend that much of his bonus on wheels.

Just... enough.

Couldn't help but kinda admire the guy. Alex had a nice education, too. Went to Stanford, which had a top-drawer baseball program that he had made even better. Stanford also had a lot more academic pizzazz than, say, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Now, I'm not throwing off on UAB. They gave me what I came for -- a good, solid education and a chance to play ball at a Division I school. I could have played for Ohio State, too, and gotten my scholarship close to home. But, as a rule, the northern schools aren't as prominent in baseball, and it's murder, trying to play ball in March and April, up in Ohio.

So UAB had suited me better. But I didn't kid myself that it was Stanford. Neither was Ohio State like Stanford. I guess, truth be known, even back when I was coming out of high school, the recruiters from places like Stanford had looked at me and said, "Nope. Too much of a long shot."

I guess I had been a fifth-round draft choice, even way back then.

Anyway, during warm ups before our Sunday game in Potomac, Alex comes over to me and asks me if I'd like to double date that night with him, his girlfriend, Jessica, and a friend of hers.

Alex Harrell maybe didn't have a girl in every town in the Carolina League, but he wasn't exactly what you'd call pussy-deprived, either. The bonus money helped, I guess, but it also didn't hurt that ol' Alex was a good-looking bastard. He didn't have any trouble meeting young women.

That's what you call an understatement.

Naturally, like always, I politely turned down Alex's offer. "I'd like to, 'Bags, but I've got my little brother with me, y'know?"

"Your Siamese twin? Yeah, I know. But Ollie already told me he'd take the kid home for you, when the team bus gets back to Frederick."

"Thanks, but I generally don't do that. I mean, what if Mrs. Washington isn't home, next door? If she wasn't there, Eddie would be alone in the house."

"That kid spends more time alone already than anybody I know. And when he's not alone, he's with you 24/7, Dave! Hell, he'd probably enjoy the novelty, going home with Ollie. And if this Mrs. Washington person wasn't there, Ollie'd take care of your little brother OK, anyway. They're not exactly strangers."

"Why not just ask Ollie to go on the date with you?" I asked him.