who’d spent ten days with the Cardinals the previous season, someone who was out of baseball already, thirty-four and doing God only knew what. When he stepped onto the field, the heat assaulted him. In the shade of the dugout, he hadn’t realized how warm the day was, but in the open, under the late afternoon sun on a cloudless day, the temperature attacked him with a force that made him gasp. That evening, watching the news in his hotel room, he saw that it had been 99 degrees during the day; by the time he went to the plate, it was still near 90, but the radiant effect of the Astroturf and the concrete beneath it must have added another twenty degrees.
The stadium came into his consciousness slowly: bending to pick up the weighted donut for his bat, he became aware of the washed-out green of the turf; on television, it appeared a seamless piece but, bending there, he noticed the warp and woof of the thick fabric. He saw, too, the scaling white paint that described the on-deck circle and noticed his red cleats, which, although they had been freshly polished when the equipment man had given them to him, were scuffed and gouged from being stepped on.
He had no time to warm up. As soon as he dropped the donut onto his bat, Ron Fairly, leading off, laced a drive just inside the first base line, a ball that skipped to the right field wall, Fairly on with a leadoff double, the potential winning run in scoring position.
Edward Everett walked to the plate, suddenly aware of an incredible amount of activity around him. In the stands, the fans began a rhythmic clapping, some stomping on the concrete decking, a thunderous sound that it seemed could bring down the stadium around them. In the third row behind first base, a small girl wearing a too-large red T-shirt snatched a handful of cotton candy off a stick her mother held. A row behind her, a fat man in a gray suit and blue-and-silver striped tie yelled through a popcorn megaphone, “Let’s go, Birds!”
The stadium announcer said, “Now batting for Lou Brock, Ed-dee Yates,” although no one had called him Eddie since the second grade. He could feel the crowd’s enthusiasm sag as their clapping and stomping quieted. It was not the reception he expected but if he were among them, expecting an All-Star and getting instead a player he’d never heard of, he would have been disappointed as well. A sudden vision came to him: his redemption in their eyes. Not a home run—that was something for the movies—but his slicing a base hit into an outfield gap to score Fairly, the fans jubilant, his new teammates leaping up the steps from the dugout onto the field, surrounding him at first base after Fairly was in with the win.
Edward Everett stepped into the batter’s box, trying to shut it all out, his imagined heroics, the movement of the crowd like a field of red and white grain stirred by the wind, the noise that was starting to build again, the organ playing a cadence, bum bum bum bum bum bum, Fairly at second base, taking a cautious lead, one, two, three steps.
Down the third base line, the coach was going through the signals, swiping his shirt, tugging the brim of his cap, tapping his thigh. Edward Everett realized no one had taught him what the signals meant.
“Time,” he said, stepping out of the batter’s box when the umpire gave him the time-out and trotting down the line to meet the coach halfway.
“What you need?” the coach said, standing close to him. His breath smelled of cigarettes and something else that was sour.
“Signals,” Edward Everett said. “I don’t know what you want. No one—”
The coach laughed. “You’re the only guy in the fucking area code who don’t know. Pop quiz. Runner on second, none out, bottom of the seventeenth, no score. What would you do?”
“Bunt,” Edward Everett said, deflated. “Bunt.”
He went back to the plate, trying not to show his disappointment. True enough, even the Pirates knew what he was going to do. The entire infield edged closer, the first baseman and third baseman playing well in front of the bases, the second baseman edging toward first, the shortstop playing behind Fairly to hold him close. For a moment, Edward Everett thought about changing them all up, swinging away, lining a hit to right field, the crowd erupting in joy.