“Gentlemen, it’s a minor disgrace that after fifteen games we’re tied for fourth behind the Orphans, the Gendarmes, and the Mudcats. It’s a major disgrace we’re tied with that sorry crew from Cottonton. Cottonton! A hole in the road! They’ve got chickens on Main! I once saw a goat-an animal-figure in a call over there!” He banged his pool-cue pointer on the flip chart. It ripped the page listing the CVL’s franchises. “Most of the Weevils are ex-semipros off mill teams. They’re hacks and mercenaries. It’s absurd to be locked in a fourth-place tie with em. Absurd!” The pointer whacked the chart, and all us rookies, except maybe Ankers, flinched.

“Steady down, Mister JayMac,” Darius said.

Mister JayMac steadied. He left off being a high-powered general and became instead a low-key explainer-all Darius’s doing, as maybe only Junior Heggie and I noticed.

“All right. We’ve got ex-major leaguers in this room. I want those men to raise their hands.”

You’d’ve figured that with so many old guys on the team, journeymen players sliding into middle age and past, maybe five or six would’ve had at least a few at bats or some heavy-duty bench time in the bigs. But only two men raised their hands; neither, it did my soul good to see, was Buck Hoey.

“You gentlemen come up here,” Mister JayMac said. He tapped the floor, and two fellas I’d’ve never guessed shuffled to the front of the room. Ex-big leaguers! Even Ankers got excited.

“Huzza!” Hoey called. “Failures! They went up, but they came back down!” Joshing, but not totally. His little barb rang true.

“Failures!” some other guys chanted. “Failures!”

“At least we made it up,” Creighton Nutter said,

“I think you made it all up. You and Dunnagin’s adventures in the bigs’re all in your heads.” Laughter. Musselwhite was captain, but Hoey did his bit as official team comedian.

“In the record books, you mean,” Nutter said.

Nutter and Dunnagin, our former Showmen. Nutter reminded me of the chip-on-his-shoulder second barber in a two-man shop, a fella who argues because he’s sick of playing second fiddle. He had acorn-colored skin, which he’d probably got from a north Georgia farmer with Cherokee blood.

Dunnagin was thirty-eight or -nine, a mick with jet-black hair and eyes as blue as core samples of Canadian sky. His upper body said weight lifter; his legs said whooping crane. At practice that morning he’d worn full catcher’s gear: chest pad, shin guards, birdcage, the works. Even then I’d noticed his shin guards were wider than his thighs. You expected him to tumble over, like a tower of alphabet blocks with a block too many at the top.

“Tell them who you played for, Mr Nutter,” Mister JayMac said, “and what kind of record you compiled.”

“Murder,” Hoey said. “Corrupting female minors.”

Nutter blew off the kibitzing. “In 1927, I pitched in nineteen games for the Boston Braves. Seventy-six innings.”

“Ah, but your record,” Hoey said. “Tell us your record.”

Nutter glanced over at Mister JayMac, who gave him a nod. “I was four and seven with two saves. My ERA was… 5.09.”

Total silence. Hoey may’ve already known Nutter’s record, but most of the other Hellbenders didn’t.

“Four and seven,” said Vito Mariani, himself a pitcher. “Not so hot. That earned run average aint so hot either.”

“Mr Mariani, you have no ERA in the majors at all,” Mister JayMac said. “And there’s not another pitcher in Highbridge today with more big-league victories than Mr Nutter nailed down for the Braves. Give him the respect due him.”

Ankers started clapping, the rest of us joined in. Nutter glued his chin to his chest, but smiled an angry-barber smile, like he disagreed with a customer’s opinion of the New Deal but didn’t want to job his tip by saying so aloud.

“Very well, Mr Dunnagin,” Mister JayMac said, “tell us in what capacity you reached the bigs and how you fared there.”

Dunnagin stood like a Marine at parade rest. “I went up as a puling babe with the St. Louis Browns in 1924. I played reserve catcher and pinch hit for all or parts of the next six seasons.”

“After which the Browns cut you?” Mister JayMac asked.

“Nosir. In 1929, my pa’s business hit an iceberg. I quit the Browns to take care of my folks, God rest them.”

Hoey faked playing a violin. Imagine, though. Dunnagin had played in the majors two years before I was born. He’d held on to a Browns roster spot for six years! And the club hadn’t dumped him for half-assed play. He’d quit to sweep up the debris of a family disaster. Now, a dozen years down the line, he was trying to earn another berth in the bigs.

“Tell the boys your nickname,” Hoey said. His violinist act hadn’t made anybody laugh, so he was trying something else.

“ ‘Double,’ ” Dunnagin said. “My teammates on the Browns called me Double. In my first-ever at bat, against the Yankees, I slapped a two-bagger off Bullet Joe Bush. The ball scooted into the alley between Witt and Ruth. Well, I thought, I’m on my way. Look out, Cobb. Look out, Ruth and Hornsby.”

“Go on, Percy,” Hoey said. “Tell em the rest.”

“Double worked as a nickname later not because I regularly knocked out two-baggers,” Dunnagin said, “but because I had a bad tendency to ground into double plays every time the Browns looked like they might score.” He stared past Clerval into the foyer, where a grandfather clock’d begun to bong.

“Son, you’re modest to a sadistic extreme,” Mister JayMac told Dunnagin. “Tell them about your best year.”

“I hit.330 in 1926,” Dunnagin said, reciting it by rote and looking bored. “In ninety-four at bats, I had two home runs and fourteen doubles. But with more at bats in ’27 and ’28, my average fell off over sixty points both years.”

“Which means he’d’ve still outhit all but three other Hellbender starters here with us this evening,” Mister JayMac said. “A hand for Mr Dunnagin, please.”

This time I led the applause. So what if he’d last put on his catcher’s getup for the Browns the year the stock market crashed? We had a near legend for a teammate, a fella who’d once hit over.300 in the bigs.

“With this leadership,” Mister JayMac said, “we belong in a tie for fourth about as much as Patton and Montgomery belong in a tie for anything with von Arnim and the Eye-talians. (No offense, Mr Mariani.) So look to these men as inspiration and examples. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Nutter and Dunnagin returned to their spots in the parlor. Junior Heggie started to follow, but Mister JayMac halted him with the pointer. “Stay. We’re not quite finished. Darius.” He whacked the chart. Darius folded the franchise sheet over the back of the easel to show us a new page:

CVL STANDINGS

(As of June 3, 1943)

“Remember, gentlemen,” Mister JayMac said, “yall haven’t even played the Gendarmes or Linenmakers yet-one of the best teams and the absolute sorriest. So, mostly, we’ve lost to mediocrities and also-rans. Were I given to worry, I’d be a total ruin. But I’ve long since taken to heart the scriptural counsel that anxious thought adds not a minute to our lives, and I sleep like a babe in swaddling clothes.”

“Jesus,” Hoey said, not exactly reverently.

“Selah,” Mister JayMac said. “I’ve prayed and I’ve rounded up these fresh-faced youths.”

“Glory!” Quip Parris said. “What if they’re bums, sir?”

Mister JayMac smiled. “If yall wanted aiggs, would I foist on you scorpions?”

“Don’t like aiggs,” Burt Fanning said. No one else said a word, not even Buck Hoey.

“And so, gentlemen, I give you Messieurs Ankers, Boles, Heggie, and Dobbs,” Mister JayMac said. “They’ll no doubt irk a few of yall, but I also expect em to be a hypodermic in this team’s draggy ass. Now, give em another Hellbender welcome.”