e had three scheduled at home with the White Sox, but the first one was a washout. The Doo's old pal Hi Wenders was the umpire crew chief, and he gave me the news himself. I'd got to The Swamp early because the trunks with our road uniforms in them got sent to Idlewild by mistake and I wanted to make sure they'd been trucked over. We wouldn't need them for a week, but I was never easy in my mind until such things were taken care of.

Wenders was sitting on a little stool outside the umpire's room, reading a paperback with a blond in step-ins on the cover.

"That your wife, Hi?" I asks.

"My girlfriend," he says. "Go on home, Grannie. Weather forecast says that by three it's gonna be coming down in buckets. I'm just waiting for DiPunno and Lopez to get here so I can call the game."

"Okay," I says. "Thanks." I started away and he called after me.

"Grannie, is that wonder-kid of yours all right in the head? Because he talks to himself behind the plate. Whispers. Never fucking shuts up."

"He's no Quiz Kid, but he's not crazy, if that's what you mean," I said. I was wrong about that, but who knew? "What kind of stuff does he say?"

"I couldn't hear much the one time I was behind him the second game against Boston"but I know he talks about himself. In that what do you call it, third person. He says stuff like I can do it, Billy.' And one time, when he dropped a foul tip that woulda been strike three, he goes, I'm sorry, Billy.'"

"Well, so what? Til I was five, I had an invisible friend named Sheriff Pete. Me and Sheriff Pete shot up a lot of mining towns together."

"Yeah, but Blakely ain't five anymore. Unless he's five up here." Wenders taps the side of his thick skull.

"He's apt to have a five as the first number in his batting average before long," I says. "That's all I care about. Plus he's a hell of a stopper. You have to admit that."

"I do," Wenders says. "That little cock-knocker has no fear. Another sign that he's not all there in the head."

I wasn't going to listen to an umpire run down one of my players any more than that, so I changed the subject and asked him"joking but not joking"if he was going to call the game tomorrow fair and square, even though his favorite Doo-Bug was throwing.

"I always call it fair and square," he says. "Dusen's a conceited glory-hog who's got his spot all picked out in Cooperstown, he'll do a hundred things wrong and never take the blame once, and he's an argumentative sonofabitch who knows better than to start in with me, because I won't stand for it. That said, I'll call it straight-up, just like I always do. I can't believe you'd ask."

And I can't believe you'd sit there scratching your ass and calling our catcher next door to a congenital idiot, I thought, but you did.

I took my wife out to dinner that night, and we had a very nice time. Danced to Lester Lannon's band, as I recall. Got a little romantic in the taxi afterward. Slept well. I didn't sleep well for quite some time afterward; lots of bad dreams.

Danny Dusen took the ball in what was supposed to be the afternoon half of a twinighter, but the world as it applied to the Titans had already gone to hell; we just didn't know it. No one did except for Joe DiPunno. By the time night fell, we knew we were fucked for the season, because our first twenty-two games were almost surely going to be erased from the record books, along with any official acknowledgement of Blockade Billy Blakely.

I got in late because of traffic, but figured it didn't matter because the uniform snafu was sorted out. Most of the guys were already there, dressing or playing poker or just sitting around shooting the shit. Dusen and the kid were over in the corner by the cigarette machine, sitting in a couple of folding chairs, the kid with his uniform pants on, Dusen still wearing nothing but his jock"not a pretty sight. I went over to get a pack of Winstons and listened in. Danny was doing most of the talking.

"That fucking Wenders hates my ass," he says.

"He hates your ass," the kid says, then adds: "That fucker."

"You bet he is. You think he wants to be the one behind the plate when I get my two hundredth?"

"No?" the kid says.

"You bet he don't! But I'm going to win today just to spite him. And you're gonna help me, Bill. Right?"

"Right. Sure. Bill's gonna help."

"He'll squeeze like a motherfucker."

"Will he? Will he squeeze like a motherf""

"I just said he will. So you pull everything back."

"I'll pull everything back."

"You're my good luck charm, Billy-boy."

And the kid, grinning: "I'm your good luck charm."

"Yeah. Now listen¡­"