A player hobbled out of the training room, his thigh wrapped in an ice pack.
“You Yates?” asked the equipment man distributing towels. “That’s you.” He pointed at the back corner to a locker nearly blocked by a stack of cases of Coke. A white home jersey hung there, his name sewn across the yoke in all capitals; number 66. Edward Everett felt suddenly dizzy and sat down hard on a bench in the middle of the room to keep from passing out.
“A fainter,” the equipment man said, laughing. “You’re not the first.”
Dressed, he rushed down the tunnel to the dugout but hesitated at the entrance. Beyond, the stadium blazed with color—the patriotic bunting draped against the blue outfield walls, the green of the artificial turf, the red and white shirts of the fans rustling in their seats. On the field, the Cardinals worked through their pre-inning warm-ups, outfielders throwing high arcing balls that spun against a nearly cloudless sky, infielders taking ground balls.
“No tourists,” snapped a player on the bench, someone Edward Everett recognized as a relief pitcher, a squat man tightening an ace bandage around his left knee. Edward Everett was going to say he belonged, but the pitcher laughed. “Hey, Skip,” he called. “New blood.”
The manager glanced briefly at him and mumbled something he couldn’t make out but which he took to mean that it wasn’t the time for formal introductions to a rookie.
Not certain of the etiquette, Edward Everett sat at the edge of the bench beside the water cooler and bat rack, trying to form his face into a mask that didn’t reveal his absolute awe at finally being here, his sense that someone was, at any moment, going to tell him it was all an elaborate joke; but once the game began, he might as well have been invisible. Time after time, not paying attention, the other players—my teammates, he thought—tromped on his spikes as they fetched a bat for their turns at the plate. Once, getting something to drink, one of them, distracted by another player whistling and pointing to a blond woman leaning over the railing of the box seats to peer into the dugout, fell over Edward Everett’s feet, landing half in his lap. “Mother fuck,” the player snapped, “watch out,” as if Edward Everett had been the one tripping and falling and not sitting as he was on the bench, squeezed into the corner, trying to take up as little room as possible, his feet trod upon, players not paying attention when they tossed aside their paper drink cups, flinging them at his shoulder, his lap and once his face instead of the trash can.
The game, as some did, became contagiously static, neither team hitting much at all, through three innings, four, five, easy ground balls, shallow flies, players on the bench seeming to sag as the innings passed, eight, nine, ten, fans growing bored, the crowd shrinking, inning by inning, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, fans pushing their way out of the ballpark for their barbecues, family dinners, horseshoes and backyard sparklers. In the top of the seventeenth, however, the Pirates threatened to score, putting two runners on with only one out. The next hitter stroked a line drive to deep left field, where Lou Brock was playing. He dashed across the turf and, just as the drive seemed destined to fall in, leaped for it, his body parallel to the earth, snagging the ball in the webbing of the glove, and then slammed to the hard ground, bouncing slightly but holding on. So quickly that Edward Everett didn’t see him get up, he was on his feet and throwing a strike to the second baseman standing on the bag, doubling off the runner who’d left too soon.
When Brock reached the dugout, his teammates clapped him on the shoulder but he was hurt—his slide on the turf had ripped his uniform pants at the left knee, raising a strawberry that oozed blood, and he limped to the bench, grimacing.
“You, Whosis,” the manager said, pointing to Edward Everett. “You’re hitting for Lou. Get out on deck.”
He didn’t move at first, unsure the manager meant him, but the player beside him elbowed him. “I wanna get home before my boy starts shaving. And he just turned one.”
Edward Everett realized he’d left his bats in Omaha and searched the rack for one to hit with. He found one engraved “Dan Vandiveer,” a catcher Edward Everett had played with at Grand Rapids five years earlier and