I almost said something, because I wanted to break up that connection. Talking about it to you, I think maybe my subconscious mind had already put a lot of it together. Maybe that’s bullshit, but I don’t think so.

But I left them alone, just got my ciggies and walked away. Hell, if I’d opened my bazoo, Dusen would have told me to put a sock in it, anyway. He didn’t like to be interrupted when he was holding court, and while I might not have given much of a shit about that on any other day, you tend to leave a guy alone when it’s his turn to toe the rubber in front of the forty thousand people who are paying his salary.

I went over to Joe’s office to get the lineup card, but the office door was shut and the blinds were down, an almost unheard-of thing on a game day. The slats weren’t closed, though, so I peeked in. Joe had the phone to his ear and one hand over his eyes. I knocked on the glass. He started so hard he almost fell out of his chair, and looked around. They say there’s no crying in baseball, but he was crying, all right. First and only time I ever saw it. His face was pale and his hair was wild – what little hair he had.

He waved me away, then went back to talking on the phone. I started across the locker room to the coaches’ office, which was really the equipment room. Halfway there I stopped. The big pitcher– catcher conference had broken up, and the kid was pulling on his uniform shirt, the one with the big blue 19. And I saw the Band-Aid was back on the second finger of his right hand.

I walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. He smiled at me. The kid had a real sweet smile when he used it. ‘Hi, Granny,’ he says. But his smile began to fade when he saw I wasn’t smiling back.

‘You all ready to play?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Good. But I want to tell you something before you hit the dirt. The Doo’s a hell of a pitcher, but as a human being he ain’t ever going to get past Double A. He’d walk on his grandmother’s broken back to get a win, and you matter a hell of a lot less to him than his grandmother.’

‘I’m his good luck charm!’ he says indignantly.

‘Maybe so,’ I say back, ‘but that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s such a thing as getting too pumped up for a game. A little is good, but too much and a fellow’s apt to bust wide open.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘If you popped and went flat like a bad tire, The Doo would just find himself a brand-new lucky charm.’

‘You shouldn’t talk like that! Him and me’s friends!’

‘I’m your friend, too. More important, I’m one of the coaches on this team. I’m responsible for your welfare, and I’ll talk any goddam way I want, especially to a rook. And you’ll listen. Are you listening?’

‘I’m listening.’

I’m sure he was, but he wasn’t looking; he’d cast his eyes down and sullen red roses were blooming on those smooth boy-cheeks of his.

‘I don’t know what kind of a rig you’ve got under that Band-Aid, and I don’t want to know. All I know is I saw it in the first game you played for us, and somebody got hurt. I haven’t seen it since, and I don’t want to see it today. Because if you got caught, it’d be you caught, even if The Doo put you up to it.’

‘I just cut myself,’ he says, all sullen.

‘Right. Cut yourself shaving your knuckles. But I don’t want to see that Band-Aid on your finger when you go out there. I’m looking after your own best interests.’

Would I have said that if I hadn’t seen Joe so upset he was crying? I like to think so. I like to think I was also looking after the best interests of the game, which I loved then and now. Virtual Bowling can’t hold a candle, believe me.

I walked away before he could say anything else. And I didn’t look back. Partly because I didn’t want to see what was under the Band-Aid, mostly because Joe was standing in his office door, beckoning to me. I won’t swear there was more gray in his hair, but I won’t swear there wasn’t.

I came into the office and closed the door. An awful idea occurred to me. It made a kind of sense, given the look on his face. ‘Jesus, Joe, is it your wife? Or the kids? Did something happen to one of the kids?’

He started and blinked, like I’d popped a paper bag beside his ear. ‘Jessie and the kids are fine. But George … oh God. I can’t believe it. This is such a mess.’ And he put the heels of his palms against his eyes. A sound came out of him, but it wasn’t a sob. It was a laugh. The most terrible fucking laugh I ever heard.

‘What is it? Who called you?’

‘I have to think,’ he says – but not to me. It was himself he was talking to. ‘I have to decide how I’m going to …’ He took his hands off his eyes, and he seemed a little more like himself. ‘You’re managing today, Granny.’

‘Me? I can’t manage! The Doo’d blow his stack! He’s going for his two hundredth again, and—’

‘None of that matters, don’t you see? Not now.’

‘What—’

‘Just shut up and make out a lineup card. As for that kid …’ He thought, then shook his head. ‘Hell, let him play, why not? Shit, bat him fifth. I was gonna move him up, anyway.’

‘Of course he’s gonna play,’ I said. ‘Who else’d catch Danny?’

‘Oh, fuck Danny Dusen!’ he says.

‘Cap – Joey – tell me what happened.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I got to think it over first. What I’m gonna say to the guys. And the reporters!’ He slapped his brow as if this part of it had just occurred to him. ‘Those overbred, overpaid assholes! Shit!’ Then, talking to himself again: ‘But let the guys have this game. They deserve that much. Maybe the kid, too. Hell, maybe he’ll bat for the cycle!’ He laughed some more, then went upside his own head to make himself stop.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You will. Go on, get out of here. Make any old lineup you want. Pull the names out of a hat, why don’t you? It doesn’t matter. Only make sure you tell the umpire crew chief you’re running the show. I guess that’d be Wenders.’

I walked down the hall to the umpire’s room like a man in a dream and told Wenders that I’d be making out the lineup and managing the game from the third base box. He asked me what was wrong with Joe, and I said he was sick. Which he sure was.

That was the first game I managed until I got the Athletics in ’63, and it was a short one, because as you probably know if you’ve done your research, Hi Wenders ran me in the sixth. I don’t remember much about it, anyway. I had so much on my mind that I felt like a man in a dream. But I did have sense enough to do one thing, and that was to check the kid’s right hand before he ran out on the field. There was no Band-Aid on the second finger, and no cut, either. I didn’t even feel relieved. I just kept seeing Joe DiPunno’s red eyes and haggard mouth.

That was Danny Doo’s last good game, and he never did get his two hundred. He tried to come back in ’58, but no go. He claimed the double vision was gone and maybe it was true, but he couldn’t hardly get the pill over the plate anymore. No spot in Cooperstown for Danny. Joe was right all along: that kid did suck luck. Like some kind of fucking voodoo prince.

But that afternoon Doo was the best I ever saw him, his fastball hopping, his curve snapping like a whip. For the first four innings they couldn’t touch him at all. Just wave the stick and take a seat, fellows, thank you for playing. He struck out six and the rest were infield ground-outs. Only trouble was, Kinder was almost as good. We’d gotten one lousy hit, a two-out double by Harrington in the bottom of the third.

Comes the top of the fifth, okay? The first batter goes down easy. Then Walt Dropo comes up, hits one deep into the left field corner, and takes off like a bat out of hell. The crowd saw Harry Keene still chasing the ball while Dropo’s legging for second, and they understood it could be an inside-the-park job. The chanting started. Only a few voices at first, then more and more. Getting deeper and louder. It put a chill up me from the crack of my ass to the nape of my neck.