bags so that he could inspect them, counting, in a deliberate way, cigarette packs and confiscating pill bottles from one of Edward Everett’s teammates, who argued, honestly but in vain, that they were natural dietary supplements.
They didn’t check into their hotel until after four in the morning and, as a result, were out of sync by game time. They dropped pop flies in the infield, botched coverage on stolen base attempts, only winning because Montreal was even more inept than they.
On Saturday then, a twelve-fifteen game, the Skipper decided to give half the regular starting lineup the day off and started Edward Everett in right field, leading off.
It was a miserable day, windy, raining throughout the morning. The teams couldn’t take fielding practice because the grounds crew kept the field covered, and Edward Everett feared they would cancel the game, that his chance would come and go, and his entire career would add up to nothing: a single sacrifice bunt that didn’t count as an at-bat, a batting average that wouldn’t rate expression in numbers, because even to have an average of .000, he had to have at least one unsuccessful official time at-bat. But no, there was a benign God, because at a few minutes to one according to the scoreboard clock in right field, he stepped to the plate to begin the game.
The atmosphere in the park was entirely different from that in St. Louis for his first plate appearance. The Expos were a bad ball club and, with the poor weather and the Olympics in the same city, the crowd was sparse, perhaps fewer than a thousand people scattered throughout the stands, many huddled under blankets and plastic rain gear against the unseasonably cool weather.
“You going to hit or watch the people?” the umpire snapped. Edward Everett realized he’d been lost in the moment and stepped to the plate. On the mound, the pitcher bent from his waist and looked in for his sign from the catcher. He was in his forties, a left-hander with a round belly and a plump face. As Edward Everett set himself, he remembered that he’d had the pitcher’s baseball card when he himself was a grade school boy. The pitcher had been with the Braves then, something of a stud with a fastball that sometimes hit 100 miles an hour. He’d once had what Edward Everett’s mother would call “matinee idol looks,” but now, a bloated, almost fuzzy version of his younger self, he was in the game only because a poor team needed bodies to fill out the roster.
Edward Everett took the first pitch, a good one on the inside that he could have driven hard, but the third base coach had given him the “take” sign—one pitch to get used to the idea of being there; one pitch to remind himself that he shouldn’t be thinking about who was on the mound and who he once was; one pitch to remind himself to breathe, see the ball, hit the ball.
The second pitch came in even better than the first. Behind him, Edward Everett could hear the catcher groan, his gear clicking as if he were adjusting for a pitch not going where he expected it, a breaking ball that hung on the outside, fat and inviting, and he swung and hit it not quite perfectly but well enough, a line drive that hooked down the right field line and skipped on the wet grass to the fence.
Edward Everett flung his bat aside and made the dash to first, where the coach was windmilling his arms, yelling, “Go go go go,” and he made the turn to second base, just a bit too wide, he thought. As he approached the base, he glanced toward the third base coach, who was signaling, “Come to me, come to me,” and Edward Everett did, coming in standing up, a triple. In the stands a handful of fans applauded, Cardinals fans, and the coach gave him a smack on the butt. Then the coach was yelling to the pitcher, “First hit, first hit,” and the pitcher obligingly tossed the ball toward the dugout, where it rolled in: his first trophy.
The next hitter grounded out to second, but he’d done his job, hit to the right side of the infield, solid team play, scoring Edward Everett, and when he came into the dugout, some of his teammates clapped him on the back until someone said, “It’s just one, for Christ’s sake,” and he sat down,