The ballpark was right on the Anacostia River. Almost no one was around as they made their way inside the media entrance and took the elevator downstairs.

“Should be perfect timing,” Kelleher said. “It’s five minutes before the Nats’ press conference at two.”

“You going to listen to that?” Stevie asked.

“Nah,” Kelleher said. “If someone says something interesting, it will be on the transcript afterward. I don’t need to hear how much respect Manny Acta has for the Red Sox.”

He and Kelleher rode the elevator to field level and walked down the hall to the Nationals clubhouse, which was on the first-base side of the building. A knot of about ten reporters was standing outside the door, waiting for the media to be allowed inside. One of those waiting was Tom Stinson.

“Hey, Bobby, did your protégé tell you how heroic he was last night?” Stinson said, shaking hands with both Stevie and Kelleher as they walked up.

“I heard about the scuffle,” said Kelleher, who hadn’t been in the clubhouse when the Nieves near-fight had broken out. “But heroics? Stevie, you holding out on me?”

Stevie hadn’t been holding out, but he hadn’t mentioned his blocking the cameraman as he reached toward Stinson. “It was no big deal,” he said.

“No big deal?” Stinson said. “The cameraman was ready to crack me in the head with his camera.”

“Come on,” Kelleher said. “I doubt if he’d risk a ten-thousand-dollar camera on your skull.”

“Good point,” Stinson said with a smile. “But still, Steve was great.”

“Clubhouse is open,” Stevie heard a voice say. “You guys have forty-five minutes.”

The security guard here was just a little bit different than Big-Time Bill in Boston. As Stevie walked by, he said, “Nice stuff this morning.” Stevie smiled and thanked him.

Stevie had been inside the Nationals clubhouse during the playoffs, but seeing it again after two nights in Fenway reminded him how huge it was-at least four times bigger than the Red Sox clubhouse. He and Kelleher scanned the room. There were perhaps a dozen players inside, some at their lockers, others sitting on couches in the middle of the room watching TV.

Kelleher pointed at Doyle’s locker. “He’s not here,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“No clothes,” Kelleher said. “If he was still here, his street clothes would be hanging in his locker.”

The lockers-which were gigantic, like everything else in the room-were the open kind, so it was easy to see clothes and uniforms that were hung in each one. Kelleher was right. Doyle’s locker was untouched. Two uniforms hung neatly, and there were several gloves piled up along with some of those socks with numbers they had talked about the day before. But no street clothes.

Aaron Boone, the veteran utility player, was sitting on one of the couches reading a newspaper. Boone was another remarkable story. He’d had open-heart surgery in the spring and had then come back in August to play for the Houston Astros. Just prior to the trading deadline on August 31, he’d been traded back to Washington -where he’d played the year before. He’d provided both maturity and leadership on a young team in the heat of its first pennant race.

Stevie had noticed during the playoffs that Boone was one of those rare players who actually knew the names of media people. Boone looked up, overhearing the conversation.

“He wasn’t here today at all, Bobby,” he said to Kelleher.

“Gave him the day off, huh?” Kelleher said.

“I think he’s holed up with his agent,” Boone said. “Let the bidding begin, eh?”

“That stuff can’t wait until after the series?” Kelleher said.

“You gotta strike while the iron is hot, man,” Boone said. “Unless he wins game six or seven for us, he’ll never be hotter. I mean, my God, if The Rookie was a movie, what’s this?”

Stevie remembered watching The Rookie with his dad. It was based on a true story about a pitcher who hurt his arm in his twenties, became a high school baseball coach in Texas, and then, in his midthirties, signed after an open tryout by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He made it to the major leagues briefly as a relief pitcher. Stevie had liked the movie; his dad had loved it.

“Good point,” Kelleher said.

“Started the season in the minors, never won a big-league game, and he pitches a one-hitter in the World Series!” Boone said. “Not to mention being a good guy and a single dad. Heck, I’d love to be his agent right now.”

Stevie and Kelleher looked at one another, both thinking the same thing: what was there about Norbert Doyle that all the people who wanted to tell his story didn’t know?

Stevie noticed Wil Nieves walking through the room to his locker. “I’m going to talk to Nieves,” he said, hoping there wouldn’t be a mad dash to talk to him. Most of the writers were talking to Ryan Zimmerman at that moment.

“Go for it,” Kelleher said.

Stevie walked over to Nieves and was relieved to see no one else walking in the same direction.

“Wil, hi, my name is Steve Thomas, I work for the Washington Herald,” Stevie said, putting his hand out when Nieves, having tossed his catcher’s glove into his locker, turned to face him.

Nieves took his hand and gave him a friendly smile. “I know you,” he said. “You were there last night when those two guys almost got into a fight.”

“Right,” Stevie said.

Nieves knew more. “You and that girl, Susan, right? You’re the two kid reporters who are so famous.”

“I don’t know about famous…,” Stevie said.

“Don’t be modest,” Nieves said. “I read about you in our playoff program.”

The Nationals had done a story on the fact that Stevie and Susan Carol were covering them for the Herald and the Post in their postseason program, which was sold at the ballpark for the startling price of $10. Stevie’s dad had bought one but said, “When I was a kid going to the old ballpark in Philadelphia, you paid twenty-five cents to buy a scorecard and a program-and they gave you a pencil to keep score with.”

“What was it like watching Babe Ruth?” Stevie had said in response to his father’s moaning.

“Well, thanks,” Stevie said to Nieves. “Since I’m so famous, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Fire away,” Nieves said. He sat down on the chair in front of his locker and pulled a chair over from the one next to his and offered it to Stevie.

Stevie didn’t try to pick up where they had left off in Boston the night before. He asked Nieves first about his own background, which was actually interesting. He was from Puerto Rico and had signed with the San Diego Padres as an eighteen-year-old. He had spent most of the thirteen years since then in the minors, making it briefly to the majors with the Padres in 2002 and then with the Yankees for parts of 2005, 2006, and 2007.

After the Yankees had released him, he had signed with the Nationals as a minor-league free agent and had stuck with the team for most of two seasons because he had finally been able to hit a little. He had hit his first-ever major-league home run early in 2008.

As Nieves talked, Stevie worried that someone might interrupt them. A couple of times he saw writers approaching, but they veered away. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that if someone was seated, talking to a player, you didn’t interrupt.

“So, would you say last night was the biggest thrill you’ve had in baseball?” Stevie said, steering the conversation back to the present.

Nieves thought for a minute. “That and the home run,” he said. “The home run was a walk-off in the ninth inning, so that was pretty cool too.”

Stevie asked Nieves again about Doyle’s performance and then, slowly, returned to what he had said the night before. “Before we were interrupted last night, you were starting to talk about knowing Norbert in the minors…”

“Or not really knowing him,” Nieves said, smiling.