‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’

The orange signs started going up. People were on their feet and holding them over their heads. Not waving them like usual, just holding them up. I have never seen anything like it.

‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’

At first I thought there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell; by then Dropo’s steaming for third with all the stops pulled out. But Keene pounced on the ball and made a perfect throw to Barbarino at short. The rook, meanwhile, is standing on the third base side of home with his glove held out, making a target, and Si hit the goddam pocket.

The crowd’s chanting. Dropo’s sliding, with his spikes up. The kid don’t mind; he goes on his knees and dives over em. Hi Wenders was where he was supposed to be – that time, at least – leaning over the play. A cloud of dust goes up … and out of it comes Wenders’s upraised thumb. ‘Yerrrr … OUT!’

Mr King, the fans went nuts. Walt Dropo did too. He was up and dancing around like a kid having an epileptic fit and trying to do the fucking Hully Gully at the same time. He couldn’t believe it.

The kid was scraped halfway up his left forearm, not bad, just bloodsweat, but enough for old Bony Dadier – he was our trainer – to come out and slap a Band-Aid on it. So the kid got his Band-Aid after all, only this one was legit. The fans stayed on their feet during the whole medical consultation, waving their ROAD CLOSED signs and chanting ‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’ like they wouldn’t never get enough of it.

The kid didn’t seem to notice. He was on another planet. He was that way the whole time he was with the Titans. He just hauled on his mask, went back behind the plate, and squatted down. Business as usual. Bubba Phillips came up, lined out to Lathrop at first, and that was the fifth.

When the kid came up in the bottom of the inning and struck out on three pitches, the crowd still gave him a standing O. That time he noticed, and tipped his cap when he went back to the dugout. Only time he ever did it. Not because he was snotty but because … well, I already said it. That other-planet thing.

Okay, top of the sixth. Over fifty years later and I still get a red ass when I think of it. Kinder’s up first and loops out to third, just like a pitcher should. Then comes Luis Aparicio, Little Louie. The Doo winds and fires. Aparicio fouls it off high and lazy behind home plate, on the third base side of the screen. That was my side, and I saw it all. The kid throws away his mask and sprints after it, head back and glove out. Wenders trailed him, but not close like he should have done. He didn’t think the kid had a chance. It was lousy goddam umping.

The kid’s off the grass and on the track, by the low wall between the field and the box seats. Neck craned. Looking up. Two dozen people in those first-and second-row box seats also looking up, most of them waving their hands in the air. This is one thing I don’t understand about fans and never will. It’s a fucking baseball, for the love of God! An item that sold for seventy-five cents back then. But when fans see one in reach at the ballpark, they turn into fucking greed-monsters. Never mind standing back and letting the man trying to catch it – their man, and in a tight ball game – do his job.

I saw it all, I tell you. Saw it clear. That mile-high pop-up came down on our side of the wall. The kid was going to catch it. Then some long-armed bozo in one of those Titans jerseys they sold on the Esplanade reached over and ticked it so the ball bounced off the edge of the kid’s glove and fell to the ground.

I was so sure Wenders would call Aparacio out – it was clear interference – that at first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when he gestured for the kid to go back behind the plate and for Aparicio to resume the box. When I got it, I ran down the line, waving my arms. The crowd started cheering me and booing Wenders, which is no way to win friends and influence people when you’re arguing a call, but I was too goddam mad to care. I wouldn’t have stopped if Mahatma Gandhi had walked out on the field butt-naked and urging us to make peace.

‘Interference!’ I yelled. ‘Clear as day, clear as the nose on your face!’

‘It was in the stands, and that makes it anyone’s ball,’ Wenders says. ‘Go on back to your little nest and let’s get this show on the road.’

The kid didn’t care; he was talking to his pal The Doo. That was all right. I didn’t care that he didn’t care. All I wanted at that moment was to tear Hi Wenders a fresh new asshole. I’m not ordinarily an argumentative man – all the years I managed the A’s, I only got thrown out of games twice – but that day I would have made Billy Martin look like a peacenik.

‘You didn’t see it, Hi! You were trailing too far back! You didn’t see shit!’

‘I wasn’t trailing and I saw it all. Now get back, Granny. I ain’t kidding.’

‘If you didn’t see that long-armed sonofabitch—’ (here a lady in the second row put her hands over her little boy’s ears and pursed up her mouth at me in an oh-you-nasty-man look) ‘—that long-armed sonofabitch reach out and tick that ball, you were goddam trailing! Jesus Christ!’

The man in the jersey starts shaking his head – who, me? not me! – but he’s also wearing a big embarrasssed suckass grin. Wenders saw it, knew what it meant, then looked away. ‘That’s all you get,’ he says to me. And in the reasonable voice that means you’re one smart crack from drinking a Rhinegold in the locker room. ‘You’ve had your say. You can either shut the hell up or listen to the rest of the game on the radio. Take your pick.’

I went back to the box. Aparicio stood back in with a big shit-eating grin on his face. He knew, sure he did. And made the most of it. The guy never hit many home runs, but when The Doo sent in a changeup that didn’t change, Little Louie cranked it high, wide, and handsome to the deepest part of the park. Nosy Norton was playing center, and he never even turned around.

Aparicio circled the bases, serene as the Queen Mary coming into dock, while the crowd screamed at him, denigrated his relatives, and hurled hate down on Hi Wenders’s head. Wenders heard none of it, which is the chief umpirely skill. He just got a fresh ball out of his coat pocket and inspected it for dings and doinks. Watching him do that, I lost it entirely. I rushed down to home plate and started shaking both fists in his face.

‘That’s your run, you fucking busher!’ I screamed. ‘Too fucking lazy to chase after a foul ball, and now you’ve got an RBI for yourself! Jam it up your ass! Maybe you’ll find your glasses!’

The crowd loved it. Hi Wenders, not so much. He pointed at me, threw his thumb back over his shoulder, and walked away. The crowd started booing and shaking their ROAD CLOSED signs; some threw bottles, cups, and half-eaten franks onto the field. It was a circus.

‘Don’t you walk away from me, you fatass blind lazy sonofabitching bastard!’ I screamed, and chased after him. Someone from our dugout grabbed me before I could grab Wenders, which I meant to do. I had lost it entirely.

The crowd was chanting ‘KILL THE UMP! KILL THE UMP! KILL THE UMP!’ I’ll never forget that, because it was the same way they’d been chanting ‘Bloh-KADE! Bloh-KADE!’

‘If your mother was here, she’d yank down those blue pants and spank your ass, you bat-blind busher!’ I screamed, and then they hauled me into the dugout. Ganzie Burgess, our knuckleballer, managed the last three innings of that horror show. He also pitched the last two. You might find that in the record books too. If there were any records of that lost spring.

The last thing I saw on the field was Danny Dusen and Blockade Billy standing on the grass between the plate and the mound. The kid had his mask tucked under his arm. The Doo was whispering in his ear. The kid was listening – he always listened when The Doo talked – but he was looking at the crowd, forty thousand fans on their feet, men, women, and children, yelling KILL THE UMP, KILL THE UMP, KILL THE UMP.