“I remember,” I said, and for a moment I was back in a small-town motel room, listening to my crazy roommate talk half the night away.

“So you want to hear it?” he said.

“Hear what?”

“Why I came all the way out here.”

“I figure you’d get to it when you were ready.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about 1971 lately,” he said. I couldn’t see him in the darkness. There was only the sound of his voice. Maybe that’s the way he wanted it. Just his voice and not having me look at him while he told me.

“About the game?”

“Not so much the game,” he said. “Everything else that happened. You know, that was the best time of my life. Being called up to the big leagues, getting to go to Tiger Stadium, wearing the uniform, getting to sit in that dugout. You know, those dugouts in Detroit are tiny.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Go on,” I said. “Tell me what you’re gonna tell me.”

“There was a lot going on that week. Outside of the ballpark, I mean. I’d never been to Detroit before. There was a lot to see.”

“In Detroit?”

“All around Detroit,” he said. “They’ve got a great art museum there, a pretty nice zoo. They’ve got that-what do you call it, the Boblo boat?”

“The Boblo boat,” I said. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“You ever go on that?”

“Sure, when I was a kid.” It was a big old-fashioned riverboat that would take you down the Detroit River to an amusement park on an island.

“And Greenfield Village? And the Henry Ford Museum? I’m going to all these things, and it’s like everything is just great because I’m going there as a major-league baseball player. I mean, it’s not like anybody’s asking me for my autograph. Nobody even recognizes me. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I was somebody important, you know? Everything was just… perfect.”