“I’m it,” he says. “Gotcha.”

“I hope so.”

Other players were coming in by then, and I had about a thousand things to do. Later on I saw the kid in Jersey Joe’s office, signing whatever needed to be signed with Kerwin McCaslin hanging over him like a vulture over roadkill, pointing out all the right places. Poor kid, probably six hours’ worth of sleep in the last sixty, and he was in there signing five years of his life away. Later I saw him with Dusen, going over the Boston lineup. The Doo was doing all the talking, and the kid was doing all the listening. Didn’t even ask a question, so far as I saw, which was good. If the kid had opened his head, Danny probably would have bit it off.

About an hour before the game, I went in to Joe’s office to look at the lineup card. He had the kid batting eighth, which was no shock. Over our heads the murmuring had started and you could hear the rumble of feet on the boards. Opening Day crowds always pile in early. Listening to it started the butterflies in my gut, like always, and I could see Jersey Joe felt the same. His ashtray was already overflowing.

“He’s not big like I hoped he’d be,” he said, tapping Blakely’s name on the lineup card. “God help us if he gets cleaned out.”

“McCaslin hasn’t found anyone else?”

“Maybe. He talked to Hubie Rattner’s wife, but Hubie’s on a fishing trip somewhere in Rectal Temperature, Michigan. Out of touch until next week.”

“Cap-Hubie Rattner’s forty-three if he’s a day.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. And be straight with me-how long do you think that kid’s gonna last in the bigs?”

“Oh, he’s probably just a cup of coffee,” I says, “but he’s got something Faraday didn’t.”

“And what might that be?”

“Dunno. But if you’d seen him standing behind the plate and looking out into center, you might feel better about him. It was like he was thinking ‘This ain’t the big deal I thought it would be.’”