“Listen, mister,” Roy said, “I know my way out of this jungle if you can’t use me. I don’t want any second pickings.”

“Do as he told you,” Red said.

Roy rose, got his valise and bassoon case together, and headed into the tunnel. His heart was thumping like a noisy barrel.

“I shoulda bought a farm,” Pop muttered.

The pitcher in the shower had left the door wide open so the locker room was clouded with steam when Roy came in. Unable to find anybody he yelled into the shower room where was the prop man, and the one in the shower yelled back in the equipment room and close the door it was drafty. When the steam had thinned out and Roy could see his way around he located the manager’s office, so labeled in black letters on the door, but not the equipment room. In the diagonally opposite corner were the trainer’s quarters, and here the door was ajar and gave forth an oil of wintergreen smell that crawled up his nose. He could see the trainer, in a gray sweatshirt with KNIGHTS stenciled across his chest, working on a man mountain on the rubbing table. Catching sight of Roy, the trainer called out in an Irish brogue who was he looking for?

“Prop man,” Roy said.

“That’s Dizzy — down the hail.” The trainer made with his eyes to the left so Roy opened the door there and went down the hall. He located a sign, “Equipment,” and through the window under it saw the prop man in a baseball jersey sitting on a uniform trunk with his back to the wall. He was reading the sports page of the Mirror.

Roy rapped on the ledge and Dizzy, a former utility pitcher, hastily put the paper down. “Caught me at an interesting moment,” he grinned. “I was reading about this catcher that got beaned in Boston yesterday. Broke the side of his skull.”

“The name’s Roy Hobbs, new hand here. Fisher told me to get outfitted.”

“New man — fielder, eh?”

Roy nodded.

“Yeah, we been one man short on the roster for two weeks. One of our guys went and got himself hit on the head with a fly ball and both of his legs are now paralyzed.”

Roy winked.

“Honest to God. And just before that our regular third baseman stepped on a bat and rolled down the dugout steps. Snapped his spine in two places.” Dizzy grimaced. “We sure been enjoying an unlucky season.”

He came forth with a tape measure and took Roy’s measurements, then he went back and collected a pile of stuff from the shelves.

“Try this for size.” He handed him a blue cap with a white K stitched on the front of it.

Roy tried it. “Too small.”

“You sure got some size noggin there.”

“Seven and a half.” Roy looked at him.

“Just a social remark. No offense meant or intended.” He gave Roy a size that fitted.

“How’s it look?” Roy asked.

“A dream but why the tears?”

“I have a cold.” He turned away.

Dizzy asked him to sign for the stuff — Judge Banner insisted. He helped Roy carry it to his locker.

“Keep anything you like inside of here but for goodness’ sakes no booze. Pop throws fits if any of the players drink.”

Roy stood the bassoon case in upright. “Got a lock for the door?”

“Nobody locks their doors here. Before the game you deposit your valuables in that trunk there and I will lock them up.”

“Okay, skip it.”

Dizzy excused himself to get back to his paper and Roy began to undress.

The locker room was tomblike quiet. The pitcher who had been in the showers — his footsteps were still wet on the floor — had dressed rapidly and vanished. As he put his things away, Roy found himself looking around every so often to make sure he was here. He was, all right, yet in all his imagining of how it would be when he finally hit the majors, he had not expected to feel so down in the dumps. It was different than he had thought it would be. So different he almost felt like walking out, jumping back on a train, and going wherever people went when they were running out on something. Maybe for a long rest in one of those towns he had lived in as a kid. Like the place where he had that shaggy mutt that used to scamper through the woods, drawing him after it to the deepest, stillest part, till the silence was so pure you could crack it if you threw a rock. Roy remained lost in the silence till the dog’s yapping woke him, though as he came out of it, it was not barking he heard but the sound of voices through the trainer’s half-open door.

He listened closely because he had the weird impression that he knew all the voices in there, and as he sorted them he recognized first the trainer’s brogue and then a big voice that he did not so much recall, as remember having heard throughout his life — a strong, rawboned voice, familiar from his boyhood and some of the jobs he had worked at later, and the different places he had bummed around in, slop joints, third-rate hotels, prize fight gyms and such; the big voice of a heavy, bull-necked, strong-muscled guy, the kind of gorilla he had more than once fought half to death for no reason he could think of. Oh, the Whammer, he thought, and quickly ducked but straightened up when he remembered the Whammer was almost fifty and long since retired out of the game. But what made him most uneasy was a third voice, higher than the other two, a greedy, penetrating, ass-kissing voice he had definitely heard before. He strained his ears to hear it again but the big voice was talking about this gag he had pulled on Pop Fisher, in particular, spraying white pepper in Pop’s handkerchief, which made him sneeze and constantly blow his beak. That commenced an epidemic of base stealing, to Pop’s fury, because the signal to steal that day was for him to raise his handkerchief to his schnozzle.

At the end of the story there was a guffaw and a yelp of laughter, then the trainer remarked something and this other voice, one that stood on stilts, commented that Bump certainly got a kick out of his jokes, and Bump, he must have been, said Pop wouldn’t agree to his release, so if he was going to be stuck in this swamp he would at least have a little fun.

He laughed loudly and said, “Here’s one for your colyum, kid. We were in Cincy in April and had a free day on our hands because this exhibition game was called off, so in the Plaza lobby that morning we get to bulling about players and records, and you know Pop and this line of his about how lousy the modern player is compared to those mustached freaks he played with in the time of King Tut. He was saying that the average fielder nowadays could maybe hit the kangaroo ball we got — he was looking at me — but you couldn’t count on him to catch a high fly. ‘How high?’ I ask him, innocent, and he points up and says, ‘Any decent height. They either lose them in the sun or misjudge them in the wind.’ So I say, ‘Could you catch the real high ones, Pop?’ And he pipes up, ‘As high as they went up I could catch them.’ He thinks a minute and says, ‘I bet I could catch a ball that is dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.’ ‘No,’ I says, like I was surprised, and ‘Yes,’ he says. So I say, ‘We have nothing on for today, and although there isn’t any Empire State Building in Cincinnati, yet I do have this friend of mine at the airport who owns a Piper Cub. I will give him a National League baseball and he will drop it at the height of the building if you will catch it.’ ‘Done,’ he says, as perky as a turkey, so I call up this guy I know and arrange it and off we go across the bridge to the Kentucky side of the river, where there is plenty of room to move around in. Well, sir, soon this yellow plane comes over and circles a couple of times till he has the right height, and then he lets go with something that I didn’t tell Pop, but which the boys are onto, is a grapefruit so that if it hits him it will not crack his skull open and kill him. Down the thing comes like a cannonball and Pop, in his black two-piece bathing suit, in case he has to go a little in the water, and wearing a mitt the size of a basket, circles under it like a dizzy duck, holding the sun out of his eyes as he gets a line on where it is coming down. Faster it falls, getting bigger by the second, then Pop, who is now set for the catch, suddenly lets out a howl, ‘My Christ, the moon is falling on me,’ and the next second, bong — the grapefruit busts him on the conk and we have all we can do to keep him from drowning in the juice.”