They were waiting: Mr. Hakimora, the new owner; Thorpe, the GM; Burrows, the manager. Bobby pressed STOP. He shook hands with them, faced the cameras when voices called, “Over here, Bobby,” and said, “I’m looking forward to the season,” when they asked him how he felt, and, “One-hundred percent,” when they asked him about the rib cage, even though there were supposed to be no interviews. Then he went into the clubhouse.
“A little glitch I forgot to mention,” Wald said in Bobby’s ear as he stood before his stall. Mail was already stacked on the shelf. A dozen bats still taped together for shipping-thirty-two-ounce, thirty-four-and-a-half-inch Adirondack 433B’s, unfinished because of Bobby’s belief that lacquer took English off the ball-leaned in one corner. His spring-training uniform waited on a hanger, white pants and a redmesh shirt with black-and-white trim. No names were stitched on the backs of the spring shirts because of all the extra players in camp, but there were numbers. They’d given him number twenty-eight.
“No problem,” Bobby said. He had worn number eleven ever since freshman year in high school, but they were paying him the big money and he didn’t want to make trouble. “I’ll just wear sweats today while they get it switched.”
Pause. “Regrettably,” said Wald, “it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
A sweating man with a sunburned bald head hurried toward them, wiping his hand on his pant leg, then offering it to Bobby.
“Stook,” he said. “Equipment manager.”
Bobby remembered him from the All-Star locker room in Chicago, a few years before. They shook hands.
“Anything I can do for you, just holler,” Stook said.
“As a matter of fact,” Bobby said, eyeing the shirt.
“Oh, that’s for practice. Your name’ll be on the game shirts, home and away, in four-inch letters. Rayburn. We can stretch it out on that back of yours real nice.”
“It’s not the name,” Bobby said. “It’s the number.”
“The number?”
“I wear eleven.”
Stook looked at Wald.
Wald put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “See, Bobby, there’s been a little screwup. Nobody’s fault, really. Just one of those things-permutations, if you like-that can happen in complex, drawn-out negotiations. Maybe it should have been brought to the table at the time, but with the kind of numbers-money numbers, I’m talking about-being discussed, it seemed like such an insig-make that lesser-”
“I wear eleven.” Bobby shook Wald’s hand off his shoulder.
“Thirty-three’s available, Bobby,” Stook said. “That’s three times eleven. And so’s forty-one. That’s got a one in it.”
“Is there some problem with eleven?” Bobby said.
Again Stook looked at Wald. “A bit of one,” Wald said, glancing at a lean man sitting naked on a stool across the room, playing Nintendo. “Primo’s already got it.”
Primo was the shortstop. Four- or five-year veteran, mediocre stick, magician with the glove: Bobby didn’t really know him, but didn’t like him much anyway. Once, after Bobby’d doubled against someone in spring training- couldn’t remember the pitcher, or even the season-Primo had made a remark in Spanish to the second baseman. Bobby didn’t understand Spanish, but he hadn’t liked the sound of it all the same, or the arrogant expression in Primo’s eyes; like some conquistador, although there was more Indian and black than Spaniard in Primo.
“Better talk to him,” Bobby said. “I’ll wear sweats for today.”
“Who’s his agent?” Wald said.
“I can find out,” Stook replied.
“Never mind,” Wald told him. “I’ll take care of it.”
Bobby hung his clothes in the stall, getting a whiff of the girl as he did so, then opened his equipment bag and dressed: sleeves first, then jock, sanitaries, stirrups, the white uniform pants, cleats, and finally, just for today, a USA sweat shirt he still had from a Japan winter tour a few seasons before. His gear always went on in that precise order.
Bobby cut the tape from the bats, hefted a few, chose the one his hands liked the best, then walked onto the field and stood by the batting cage. Burrows himself was behind the screen in front of the mound, throwing BP. Bobby watched some big kid take his cuts. At first he looked good, driving a few sharply to left. Then Bobby noticed that it was all arms; his feet were too quick, taking his body right out of the swing.
“Bobby?” said someone behind him.
Bobby turned, saw a woman with a tape recorder.
“Jewel Stern from JOC-Radio,” she said. “Got time for a few questions?”
“Okay,” Bobby said, forgetting for a moment-was it because he’d noticed flaws in the big kid’s swing, or because the reporter was good-looking, even if a little older than his usual type? — that there weren’t supposed to be interviews.
“Right here’s fine,” the reporter said. “Get that thwack of bat on ball. One of my favorite ambient sounds.”
“Mine too.”
“Yeah?” She gave him a quick glance. He said nothing.
The reporter-he’d forgotten her name-started adjusting her equipment. “What do you think of the phenom?” she asked, checking her levels.
“What phenom?”
She jerked her head at the kid in the batting cage. “Simkins. They thought he was a year or two away, now it’s even money he’ll go north.”
“Yeah?” Bobby said.
The kid skyed one to right and stepped out of the cage. Burrows motioned at Bobby.
“Try your luck, Mr. Rayburn?” he said.
“There,” said the reporter. “All set.”
“Got to go,” Bobby told her.
“One quick question.” She spoke into her mike: “Do you feel under any special pressure because of the big contract this year, Bobby?” She thrust the mike at him.
“No,” he said, walking toward the cage with his bat on his shoulder.
She followed him. “But what about the fans?”
“What about them?”
“Won’t the money raise their expectations?”
“The fans,” said Bobby, “are what it’s all about.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Bobby, stepping into the cage, didn’t reply.
He stood in the batter’s box, touched the middle of the plate with the bat, took his stance, looked out. All at once, as though he were waking from a nap, everything was defined with exaggerated clarity, like objects in a coffee-table book: the silvery whiskers on Burrows’s face, the loping and shagging shadows of the outfielders on the deep-green grass, the glints of sunshine on the chain-link fence, the waxy leaves of the fake-looking palm trees beyond.
“Not going to hurt me now, are you, Bobby?” said Burrows. Had he been a pitcher, long ago? Bobby wasn’t sure. Burrows fed him a fat one. First pitch of the season-so clear-and Bobby was surprised by a sudden physical tingling, not unlike the feeling when you know you’re going to get laid, just a little higher up inside him. Bobby waited on that coffee table pitch, maybe a hair too long, and smashed it off the screen right in front of Burrows’s chest.
“Jesus Christ,” said Burrows.
Bobby smiled.
Burrows dipped into the ball basket, put a little more on the next one. This time Bobby didn’t wait long enough, but got a good piece, one-hopping the fence in left center. Then he found his timing, or it found him; he felt that almost imperceptible tightening along the outside of his left leg and around the left side of his torso that always meant his swing was right. Down the left-field line. Off the top of the fence in left center. Over the fence in
