hat must have happened is this," Joe said in a heavy voice. "Kerwin McCaslin called around for a backup catcher when our guys got hurt down in Florida, and the manager of the Cornhuskers said he had a boy who might fill the bill for three or four weeks, assuming we didn't need him to hit for average. Because, he said, this kid wouldn't do that."

"But he did," I says.

"Because he wasn't Blakely," Lombardazzi says. "By then Blakely and his parents must already have been dead a couple of days, at least. The Katsanis kid was keeping house all by himself. And not all his screws were loose. He was smart enough to answer the phone when it rang. He took the call from the manager and said sure, Billy'd be glad to go to New Jersey. And before he left"as Billy"he called around to the neighbors and the feed store downtown. Told em the Blakelys had been called away on a family emergency and he was taking care of things. Pretty smart for a loony, wouldn't you say?"

"He's not a loony," I told him.

"Well, he cut the throats of the people who took him in and gave him a job, and he killed all the cows so the neighbors wouldn't hear them bawling to be milked at night, but have it your way. I know the DA's going to agree with you, because he wants to see Katsanis get the rope. That's how they do it in Iowa, you know."

I turned to Joe. "How could a thing like this happen?"

"Because he was good," Joe said. "And because he wanted to play ball."

The kid had Billy Blakely's ID, and this was back in the days when picture IDs were unheard of. The two kids matched up pretty well: blue eyes, dark hair, six feet tall. But mostly, yeah"it happened because the kid was good. And wanted to play ball.

"Good enough to get almost a month in the pros," Lombardazzi said, and over our heads a cheer went up. Billy Blockade had just gotten his last big-league hit: a homer. "Then, day before yesterday, the LP gas man went out to the Blakely farm. Others folks had been there before, but they read the note Katsanis left on the door and went away. Not the gas man. He filled the tanks behind the barn, and the barn was where the bodies were"cows and Blakelys both. The weather had finally turned warm, and he smelled em. Which is pretty much the way our story ends. Now, your manager here wants him arrested with as little fuss as possible, and with as little danger to the other players on your team as possible. That's fine with me. So your job""

"Your job is to hold the rest of the guys in the dugout," Jersey Joe says. "Send Blakely¡­Katsanis¡­down here on his own. He'll be gone when the rest of the guys get to the locker room. Then we'll try to sort this clusterfuck out."

"What the hell do I tell them?"

"Team meeting. Free ice cream. I don't care. You just hold them for five minutes."

I says to Lombardazzi, "No one tipped? No one? You mean no one heard the radio broadcasts and tried calling Pop Blakely to say how great it was that his kid was tearing up the bigs?"

"I imagine one or two might have tried," Lombardazzi said. "Folks from Iowa do come to the big city from time to time, I'm told, and I imagine a few people visiting New York listen to the Titans or read about em in the paper""

"I prefer the Yankees," one of the bluesuits chimes in.

"If I want your opinion, I'll rattle the bars in your cage," Lombardazzi said. "Until then, shut up and die right."

I looked at Joe, feeling sick. Getting a bad call and getting run off the field during my first managerial stint now seemed like the very least of my problems.

"Get him in here alone," Joe said. "I don't care how. The guys shouldn't have to see this." He thought it over and added: "And the kid shouldn't have to see them seeing it. No matter what he did."

If it matters"and I know it don't"we lost that game two to one. All three runs were solo shots. Minnie Minoso hit the game-winner off of Ganzie in the top of the ninth. The kid made the final out. He whiffed in his first at-bat as a Titan; he whiffed in his last one. Baseball is also a game of balance.

But none of our guys cared about the game. When I got up there, they were gathered around The Doo, who was sitting on the bench and telling them he was fine, goddammit, just a little dizzy. But he didn't look fine, and our old excuse for a doc looked pretty grave. He wanted Danny down at Newark General for X-rays.

"Fuck that," Doo says, "I just need a couple of minutes. I'm all right, I tell you. Jesus, Bones, cut me a break."

"Blakely," I said. "Go on down to the locker room. Mr. DiPunno wants to see you."

"Coach DiPunno wants to see me? In the locker room? Why?"

"Something about the Rookie of the Month award," I said. It just popped into my head from nowhere. There was no such thing back then, but the kid didn't know that.

The kid looks at Danny Doo, and the Doo flaps his hand at him. "Go on, get out of here, kid. You played a good game. Not your fault. You're still lucky, and fuck anyone who says different." Then he says: "All of you get out of here. Gimme some breathing-room."

"Hold off on that," I says. "Joe wants to see him alone. Give him a little one-to-one congratulations, I guess. Kid, don't wait around. Just"" Just scat was how I meant to finish, but I didn't have to. Blakely or Katsanis, he was already gone. And you know what happened after that.

If the kid had gone straight down the hall to the umpire's room, he would have gotten collared, because the locker room was on the way. Instead, he cut through our box-room, where luggage was stored and where we also had a couple of massage tables and a whirlpool bath. We'll never know for sure why he did that, but I think the kid knew something was wrong. Crazy or not, he must have known the roof was going to fall in on him eventually. In any case, he came out on the far side of the locker room, walked down to the ump's room, and knocked on the door. By then the rig he probably learned how to make in The Ottershaw Christian Home was back on his second finger. One of the older boys probably showed him how, that's what I think. Kid, if you want to stop getting beaten up all the time, make yourself one of these.

He never put it back in his locker after all, you see; just tucked it into his pocket. And he didn't bother with the Band-Aid after the game, which tells me he knew he didn't have anything to hide anymore.

He raps on the umpire's door and says, "Urgent telegram for Mr. Hi Wenders." Crazy but not stupid, you see? I don't know what would have happened if one of the other umps on the crew had opened up, but it was Wenders himself, and I'm betting his life was over even before he realized it wasn't a Western Union delivery-boy standing there.

It was a razor blade, see? Or a piece of one, anyway. When it wasn't needed, it stayed inside a little tin band like a kid's pretend finger-ring. Only when he balled his right fist and pushed on the band with the ball of his thumb, that little sliver of a blade popped up on a spring. Wenders opened the door and Katsanis swept it across his neck and cut his throat with it. When I saw the puddle of blood after he was taken away in handcuffs"oh my God, such a pool of it there was"all I could think of was those forty thousand people screaming KILL THE UMP the same way they'd been screaming Bloh-KADE. No one really means it, but the kid didn't know that, either. Especially not after the Doo poured a lot of poison in his ears about how Wenders was out to get both of them.

When the cops ran out of the locker room, Billy Blockade was just standing there with blood all down the front of his white home uniform and Wenders laying at his feet. Nor did he try to fight or slash when the bluesuits grabbed him. No, he just stood there whispering to himself. "I got him, Doo. I got him, Billy. He won't make no more bad calls now. I got him for all of us."

That's where the story ends, Mr. King"the part of it I know, at least. As far as the Titans go, you could look it up, as ol' Casey used to say: all those games canceled out, and all the doubleheaders we played to make them up. How we ended up with old Hubie Rattner behind the plate after all, and how he batted .185"well below what they now call the Mendoza Line. How Danny Dusen was diagnosed with something called "an intercranial bleed" and had to sit out the rest of the season. How he tried to come back in 1958"that was sad. Five outings. In three of them he couldn't get the ball over the plate. In the other two¡­do you remember the last Red Sox-Yankees playoff game in 2004? How Kevin Brown started for the Yankees, and the Sox scored six goddam runs off him in the first two innings? That's how Danny Doo pitched in '58 when he actually managed to get the ball over the dish. He had nothing. And still, after all that, we managed to finish ahead of the Senators and the Athletics. Only Jersey Joe DiPunno had a heart attack during the World Series that year. Might have been the same day the Russians put the Sputnik up. They took him out of County Stadium on a stretcher. He lived another five years, but he was a shadow of his former self and of course he never managed again.

He said the kid sucked luck, and he was more right than he knew. Mr. King, that kid was a black hole for luck.

For himself, as well. I'm sure you know how his story ended"how he was taken to Essex County Jail and held there for extradition. How he swallowed a bar of soap and choked to death on it. I can't think of a worse way to go. That was a nightmare season, no doubt, and still, telling you about it brought back some good memories. Mostly, I think, of how Old Swampy would flush orange when all those fans raised their signs: ROAD CLOSED BY ORDER OF BLOCKADE BILLY. Yep, I bet the fellow who thought those up made a goddam mint. But you know, the people who bought them got fair value. When they stood up with them held over their heads, they were part of something bigger than themselves. That can be a bad thing"just think of all the people who turned out to see Hitler at his rallies"but this was a good thing. Baseball is a good thing. Always was, always will be.

Bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE.

Still gives me a chill to think of it. Still echoes in my head. That kid was the real thing, crazy or not, luck-sucker or not.

Mr. King, I think I'm all talked out. Do you have enough? Good. I'm glad. You come back anytime you want, but not on Wednesday afternoon; that's when they have their goddam Virtual Bowling, and you can't hear yourself think. Come on Saturday, why don't you? There's a bunch of us always watches the Game of the Week. We're allowed a couple of beers, and we root like mad bastards. It ain't like the old days, but it ain't bad.

He said the kid sucked luck, and he was more right than he knew. Mr. King, that kid was a black hole for luck.

For himself, as well. I'm sure you know how his story ended"how he was taken to Essex County Jail and held there for extradition. How he swallowed a bar of soap and choked to death on it. I can't think of a worse way to go. That was a nightmare season, no doubt, and still, telling you about it brought back some good memories. Mostly, I think, of how Old Swampy would flush orange when all those fans raised their signs: ROAD CLOSED BY ORDER OF BLOCKADE BILLY. Yep, I bet the fellow who thought those up made a goddam mint. But you know, the people who bought them got fair value. When they stood up with them held over their heads, they were part of something bigger than themselves. That can be a bad thing"just think of all the people who turned out to see Hitler at his rallies"but this was a good thing. Baseball is a good thing. Always was, always will be.

Bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE.

Still gives me a chill to think of it. Still echoes in my head. That kid was the real thing, crazy or not, luck-sucker or not.

Mr. King, I think I'm all talked out. Do you have enough? Good. I'm glad. You come back anytime you want, but not on Wednesday afternoon; that's when they have their goddam Virtual Bowling, and you can't hear yourself think. Come on Saturday, why don't you? There's a bunch of us always watches the Game of the Week. We're allowed a couple of beers, and we root like mad bastards. It ain't like the old days, but it ain't bad.