So even after two flights, eight time zones, and twenty exceedingly long hours, I couldn’t wait to travel a few miles more. I quickly grabbed a hot, then cold, shower and changed into some clean clothes.
Then it was out the door and back into a cab heading down to 67th Street and Third Avenue.
At twelve thirty on the dot, I walked into Lombardo’s Steakhouse ready to meet one of the best pitchers and most confounding puzzles ever to play the game of baseball.
And if I handled everything just right, I’d have the story that a hundred other writers around New York would kill for. Dwayne Robinson, what really happened that night you were supposed to pitch the seventh game of the World Series? Why didn’t you show up at the ballpark?
How could you break so many hearts, including my own?
Chapter 7
“JUST ONE SECOND, SIR,” I was told after giving the hostess at Lombardo’s my name. “I’ll be right back to help you. One second.”
As she disappeared into the dining room, I leaned forward over her podium to catch a glimpse of the reservation book. When you eat out as much as I do, you get pretty good at reading your name upside down.
Sure enough, there was “Robinson/Daniels” on a line for twelve thirty. After it was a star.
The star treatment, perhaps? Not for me, of course. Maybe for Citizen magazine?
Seconds later, the hostess returned. “We have a nice quiet table reserved for you, Mr. Daniels. Follow me.”
If you insist.
She happened to be a very pretty blonde, and as my father’s father, Charles Daniels, used to say right up until his dying day, “If there’s one thing I have a weakness for, it’s pretty blondes. That’s followed very closely by pretty brunettes and pretty redheads.”
We arrived at a table along the back wall. “What’s your name?” I asked, sitting down.
“Tiffany,” she answered.
“Like the pretty blue box?”