“Called me this afternoon-he’s got the flu. Sounded like hell.”

“Bad.” Without Roy we didn’t have a prayer of fielding a team. And with a forfeit, we’d be two games back of the Tomcats right off the bat. In a ten-game season, that’s death.

Wes knew all this better than I did. He hates losing, and won’t take it lying down. So now he called to this fellow sitting in the bleachers watching us loosen up: “Hey, man! You play this game?”

“Me?” The guy looked startled. “A little, maybe.” He had an accent that wasn’t Spanish. Not a good sign, if we were after a ballplayer.

Well, he had to be foreign, or else the melting pot had gone and melted down. I’d noticed him watching us the week before, too. I couldn’t help it. He was a medium-dark, medium-heavy black guy, maybe thirty, but his hair-he corn-rowed it, very neatly-was Irishman red, I mean flaming, and hung past his shoulders. He wore a mustache and goatee that were even brighter. I went to high school with a Japanese kid who spoke pure, hush-ma-mouf Arkansas-turned out his folks had been resettled there during the war, and stayed a while afterward. He jolted me every time he said something. Looking at this guy now was like that-his hair and his hide spectacularly didn’t match.

Wes would have taken him if he was a giant panda covered with chocolate feathers. “Come on down!” he said, waving. “We’ve got open roster slots. You can join us for the season if you want, or sign up and then duck out after tonight-we’ll have more people here next week. Whatever you want.”

Wes is a good talker. He has to be. He sells glassware for a living. You could see the guy thinking it over. Finally he shrugged and ambled on over to us. He didn’t have a uniform, of course, but his clothes were grubby enough to play in: faded Levi’s, a Coors T-shirt, and beat-up running shoes. About what we wear to practice.

He said his name was Michael, with a bit of a guttural on the “ch.” He shook hands with everybody (left-handed with me), then Wes dug our ancient spare glove out of the bottom of his duffel bag.

Michael hadn’t been stretching when he said he played “a little.” He lunged awkwardly for balls when he was playing catch, blocked grounders with his shins or his feet as often as he fielded them cleanly. He threw from the elbow, girl-style, not too straight. I could see Wes regretting things already, but Michael was a warm body, anyhow, and catching he wouldn’t be all that much worse than I was.

When it was Michael’s turn to hit in our warm-ups, Wes, who was pitching BP, waved him to the plate. He looked worse up there than he had in the field. He stood straight up and down, with his left foot so far in the bucket it wasn’t ever pointing at third base: more like at our dugout off third. He held his bat at a funny angle, with his hands a couple of inches apart. Yeah, I know Ty Cobb did the same thing, but Ty Cobb’s grandmother had to be a more stylish hitter than this Michael.

Wes gave him a nice, fat pitch to hit. He took a clumsy swing, missed. He muttered something under his breath and tossed the ball back. Next pitch, he hit a little ground ball that dribbled between Stuart at short and Pete Sadowski, our third baseman: a hit, sure enough. Not impressive, but it’ll look like a line drive in the box score, as the saying goes. “Attaboy!” Wes yelled.

Next pitch was another clean miss. Michael took the one after that, then hit a bloop just past first that Joe couldn’t quite reach. In a game, that would have been a double. Then a grounder straight at Pete on third, except it hit a pebble and kicked away from him. Another miss. Then a pop fly over Smart but too short for the outfielders. Then a big bouncer right at Smart, but on the last hop it flattened out and went between his legs. Then another bloop that sent Joe puffing down the line. He couldn’t catch that one, either.

This must have gone on for another five minutes. Every so often Michael would miss, and those incandescent cornrows would fly as he shook his head in annoyance. But when he hit, it would be one little bleeder or bloop or bad hop after another. Nothing like art, but nothing like outs, either. Finally our left fielder, Ted Canter, who was far and away the best athlete on the team, slid six feet on his belly to snag one of those pops maybe two inches off the ground.

“Good catch!” Michael shouted. He tossed the bat to somebody else.

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. We weren’t quite sure what we’d seen, or what to make of it. Wes stood on the rubber, scratching his head. At last he said, “Remind me not to play poker with you, man. You’d probably draw four to a ten and end up with a royal flush.”

“Yeah, Flush!” Pete yelled, so Michael got his nickname. He smiled, and looked a lot younger. He was pretty sober most of the time.

We let the other team have the field for their warm-ups. They were an outfit called Snafu. They played like their name a lot of the time, too. Still, they were pretty cocky, seeing us short a guy. We gathered around Wes while he made out the lineup sheet. He was still scratching, trying to figure out where to bat Michael. On form he deserved to hit last, but if all those hits were legit, he was a clear third hitter. Wes finally compromised and put him sixth.

It turned out to be a busy sort of game. Snafu got two runs in the first and another four in the second. Michael got knocked ass over teakettle in a play at the plate. The throw was high, and as he went up for it, the runner, a big Samoan built like a linebacker, cut the legs out from under him. He was safe; Michael never did get the ball. He found it and threw it back to Wes.

“Way to hang in there, Flush,” Wes said, nodding. Michael just dusted himself off and went back into his crouch.

We were hitting, too, scoring as fast as Snafu. I was in a 1-0 slow-pitch game once, but most of them aren’t like that. We finally won this one 13-11 when Snafu made back-to-back errors, the first one with the bases loaded, in the last inning.

Michael? Damned if he didn’t go four for four: a soft liner over second, another one of those dinkers back of first-though he got thrown out trying to stretch that one-and a couple of ground balls with eyes. The second one started our big rally; he scored a couple of runs, in fact.

At Shakey’s afterward, Pete got a pitcher of Bud and set it in front of Michael. “You got a choice, Flush,” he said, as threatening as you can be with a big grin on your face.”Tell me you’ll be back next week, and you can drink it. Otherwise I’ll pour it over your stupid head.’

“When do we play?” Michael said. We all cheered. It got pretty drunk out. That’s an advantage early games have-they give you more time to party afterward. I remember asking Michael what he did.

He thought about it. It took a few seconds; he had nothing against beer. Finally he said, “Some of this, some of that. I spend a lot of time looking.”

I backed off in a hurry.” Say no more.” I’d been unemployed not too long before that. A bad feeling.

By the next game, I had that miserable sling off, thank God-ever try to bathe in one? I’m glad I wear a beard. Shaving left-handed is something I’d sooner not think about. I was still combing my hair that way, though. The arm wasn’t ready for anything serious. It twinged whenever I lifted it higher than my shoulder.

We had enough people there this time, and Wes made Michael a DH. He was awful shaky in the field. He knew it, too, and didn’t say boo. But in warm-ups he put on another hitting show. He looked terrible up there, but he wasn’t making any outs.

Wes threw his hands in the air. “All right, I’m convinced!” He batted Flush third. It worked, too. He was up three times, got three more cheap but effective hits, and we won again. Not only that, for once Snafu kept their act together for a whole game and knocked off the Tomcats, so we were tied with them again. Even the postgame pizza wasn’t as greasy as usual. A fine week.