I walked Davey Johnson, and now the bases are loaded. Still, Martin’s just sitting in that dugout. So Mark Belanger comes up. And I’m thinking, Okay, finally, here’s the one guy in the lineup who doesn’t hit. I’m gonna settle down and get this guy and get myself out of this. First pitch, Belanger hits this high pop-up down the left-field line. Any other stadium in the world, it’s an easy out, but this is Detroit, so it sneaks over the fence. A grand slam. By Mark fucking Belanger. So finally, Billy Martin comes out and he says to me, ‘Okay, that’s enough, kid. We’re gonna run out of baseballs.’ ”

When he stopped, nobody said anything. It was almost thirty years ago. Billy Martin was dead now. But you could still imagine what it must have felt like.

“So I gave up seven runs in one inning,” Randy said. “Actually in one-third of an inning, because I only got one out. My lifetime ERA is 198. You can look it up.”

And then he laughed. It broke the spell, and gave everyone else in the room permission to laugh with him. We had a few more beers. We talked some more-about what he had been doing since leaving baseball. Something about him selling commercial real estate, something about coaching baseball at a local high school. More about his divorce, his kids, especially his young son the catcher. He talked a lot that night, and made everybody around him feel glad to be there. Which was always his genius.

But he still never did tell me why he was there.

I had to wait to hear it. Back in my cabin, Randy sleeping on my couch, me in my bed because he wouldn’t hear of kicking me out of it. And he didn’t want to sleep in one of the other cabins, either. He wanted to sleep on the couch.

“Just like the old days, huh?” he said after the lights were out. “Just you and me.”

“That’s not a very comfortable couch, is it?” I said.

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Just like the beds we used to sleep in when we were on the road. You remember?”