right field and lay on the ground waiting for the gurney to wheel him into the clubhouse, the hail had stung his face and torso. On the gurney, bouncing across the field, the bumps sent shooting pains up and down his leg. By the time he was under cover, in the tunnel from the dugout to the clubhouse, the umpires and players rushing in filled the tunnel with the dense scent of wet polyester and perspiration. They waited for two hours, he learned from the newspaper, before the umpires finally called the game, one out shy of being official.
He tried not to think about it, lying in his hospital bed, tried to concentrate on the good that would come later, his chances for next season, but the optimism faded. He was like Moses, the story he remembered from religion class, about sinning so that God did not allow him to enter the Promised Land, only led him up a hill so that he could gaze down upon it before he died. Was that going to be his experience in the major leagues, the only thing he had ever wanted? To spend years bouncing around blacktop roads in an old bus, playing in bandbox parks sometimes in front of a few hundred people, most of whom had probably come for the bonus entertainment: the toddlers’ race around the bases between innings, the old man who called himself a “baseball clown” and who imitated the umpires, his rubber limbs flapping, the giveaways of Frisbees or a dozen do-nuts?
He wondered again if any of his team would come to see him. He knew none of them well. Hell, most called him by what he had on the back of his shirt—his name if he was wearing a game jersey, his number if he was wearing the practice one. “Hey, sixty-six,” someone would call if it was his turn to hit in the cage. He had a roommate, a left-handed pitcher who had been with the team for two weeks longer than Edward Everett, someone who had come from the Philadelphia minor leagues in a trade in the middle of June. But the pitcher and he shared little more than the same room on the road; he was from Boston, from what Edward Everett’s mother would call “Real Money,” and he and Edward Everett didn’t socialize. No, the pitcher wouldn’t come to see him, would probably not even notice when Edward Everett wasn’t in the room, would look over at the other empty double bed and mutter, “Huh. Something’s different.”
Except, Edward Everett realized, the bed wouldn’t be empty, might not even be empty as soon as tonight, when the team went to Chicago for a series with the Cubs. The Cardinals would have already called up someone else from Springfield, probably Cook, a big kid from Arizona who didn’t run well but who was moving up through the system because he could hit for power.
He thought of Cook in the bed in the Chicago Palmer House that should have been his, saw the clubhouse attendant putting a swatch of masking tape inscribed “Cook” in bold marker over the locker that should have been his, saw the powder blue road jersey with “Cook” spelled out across the yoke hanging where his jersey should have been, saw Cook coming in to pinch-hit in Wrigley Field, which, because of the winds, they called “the friendly confines”; they wouldn’t ask him to lay down a bunt but let him swing away, and he’d jack one out of the park onto Waveland Avenue, where joyous boys would chase the ball as it bounded away from them: a home run that rain wouldn’t wash away.
Cook would be a success, Edward Everett thought, and when February came, it would be Cook the team would keep on the big league roster, not Edward Everett. He would go back to Springfield, and that would be where he would stay. He felt suddenly foolish for the optimism he had let wash over him: the feeling of grace was nothing but another side effect of the painkillers.
There was a radio on the bedside table, and he switched it on, turning the knob to scan the frequencies, to see if he could find the ball game although, at the same time, he didn’t want to hear it. They were playing a doubleheader, to make up for the game that had been washed out the day before, and it should be the middle of the second game