breathing hard, not from the exertion, but from the excitement, thinking so many things he couldn’t sort them out: there he was in Hoppel’s office at Springfield, listening to the all-but-naked manager tell him he was going up; there he was back at home the next winter telling stories about the season that lay ahead of him now, bright with promise; there he was a dignified old man at the podium at Cooperstown, tearing up as he reminisced about his first hit on a cold and wet July day in Montreal … then someone was tossing a glove at him, saying, “Nap time’s over,” and he realized he’d missed the rest of the inning, when they sent eight men to the plate and scored five runs, the last on a two-run home run by the second baseman.
From then on, the entire team seemed to have come out of its somnolence of the night before. In the second inning, after the pitcher struck out, Edward Everett started things with a single, and he batted again in the fourth, when he doubled. When he came to the plate in the top of the fifth, St. Louis was already up eight–nothing, and there were men on second and third, with two outs. It was raining then as he dug his spikes into the ground, a slow rain at first, large drops plopping like random pebbles kicking up tufts of dirt around the plate, and then, abruptly, more steadily. The crowd had thinned and most of those who remained—were there even five hundred left?—began unfolding umbrellas or dashing up the aisles for cover.
It was yet a different pitcher this time, the third he had faced in his four times at the plate, another refugee from athletic old age hanging on for the money and the camaraderie that ordinary men didn’t have going to the office and mowing their lawns in the suburbs. This one was Laurel to the first pitcher’s Hardy, tall and skinny. Unlike the first pitcher, who had come up relying on velocity, this one had survived through guile, picking at the edges of the plate, changing speeds. As Edward Everett waited in the box for the first pitch, he was beginning to feel as if he were playing some kind of game underwater. Rain dripped from the brim of his helmet; his jersey was soaked through, the fabric prickling his wet skin; his bat was slick in his hands. Before the pitcher could throw, Edward Everett held his hand up to the umpire—time—and the umpire gave it. He stepped out, clamped the handle under his arm, between his sleeve and the body of his jersey, and drew it out again: still damp, but at least not too wet to grip.
“It’s no skin off my ass,” the catcher said, “but the day you’re having? I’d want to make sure the game got through five.”
Edward Everett glanced at the scoreboard: it was the top of the fifth inning, not yet an official game. For it to be official, they would have to finish five full innings, four more outs. He stepped back in, thinking for an instant about making an out intentionally, to move the game just one more step toward counting, but he flicked the idea away as if it were a gnat and set himself, aware that mud was clumped on the bottom of his spikes, that they felt like they weighed another twenty pounds, thinking he ought to knock some of it out so he wasn’t slowed down if he hit the ball, but put that thought aside as well.
The third pitch came in on the outside of the plate, and he hit it, not quite squarely, a high fly ball down the right field line, and he flipped his bat away in disgust, lighting out for first base, thinking maybe the fielder would misplay it in the wind and the rain, thinking if he did, he might be able to get two out of it, but the mud on his cleats made him feel earthbound, a tired man slogging through sludge. He watched the ball arcing through the rain, although he knew he was breaking a rule, let the coach worry about where the ball went, just run, and then improbably, just as the fielder seemed to settle under the ball a few steps in front of the 340-foot sign that hung on the chain-link fence bordering the field, a gust of wind seemed to push the ball, and