In early 1994 – the year of the baseball strike – about two months after he passed the bar, he quit. He wanted, after all, to play baseball. So he went to Vero Beach, Florida, to try out as a replacement player for the Dodgers. And he made the team.

At the Shamrock he’d made it clear to Hardy that he’d never have played as a scab. All along, all he’d wanted out of the deal was for the Dodgers to take another look at him. The fuzziness had disappeared from his vision; he was still in great shape. He thought he could shine in spring training, get cut as a replacement when they all did, but at least have a shot at the minors again.

And that’s what happened. He started the ‘94 season with the Albuquerque Dukes, Triple A, farther along the path to the major leagues than he’d been seven years earlier.

But he couldn’t find the damn curveball and the new shot at his baseball career, upon which he’d risked everything, lasted only six weeks. His average was.192 when he got cut outright. He hadn’t had a hit in his last seven games. Hell, he told Hardy, he would have cut himself.

Graham had a lumberjack’s shoulders and the long legs of a high hurdler. Under a wave of golden hair his square-jawed face was clean shaven. Today he wore a gray-blue sport coat over a royal-blue dress shirt, stonewashed jeans, cowboy boots.

He was leaning forward on the front of the upholstered chair in front of Hardy’s desk, elbows on his knees. Hardy noticed the hands clasped in front of him – the kind of hands that, when he got older, people would call gnarled – workingman’s hands, huge and somehow expressive.

Graham essayed a smile. ‘I don’t even know why I’m here, tell you the truth.’

Hardy’s face creased. ‘I often feel the same way myself.’ He was sitting on the corner of his desk. ‘Your dad?’

Graham nodded.

Salvatore Russo – Herb Caen ’s column had dubbed him Salmon Sal and the name had stuck – was recent news. Despondent over poor health, his aging body, and financial ruin, Sal had apparently killed himself last Friday by having a few cocktails, then injecting himself with morphine. He’d left a Do Not Resuscitate form for the paramedics, but he was already dead when they’d arrived.