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language. But he was starting to give up runs. The Sox had plenty of hitters, and they lived with the tradition of outslugging their opponents. In comfortable little Fenway Park, the Red Sox expected their pitchers to give up runs, so at first they didn’t seem to care that Eddie’s five-to-nothing games had become five-to-three or four. Kasko was making trips to the mound to bail Eddie out of ninth-inning trouble quite regularly, and a few times the relief pitchers failed and the runners Eddie had left on the bases scored, and then he was a loser.
    I was with Eddie one night after he had blown a three-run lead in the eighth inning and was lifted from a game that the Sox eventually lost in the eleventh. Jan had gone to bed, and Sam and Josie were away, so it was just Eddie and I at the kitchen table sipping beer.
    “You got a sore arm or something?” I asked him.
    “Hey, you ever lose a court case?”
    “Sure. Somebody’s got to lose. Sometimes I don’t have a case that can be won.”
    “In baseball somebody’s got to lose, too.”
    “Don’t give me that crap. Baseball’s different from the law. You’re not pitching the way you can.”
    “This ain’t an easy game, lawmaster. Everybody gets beat sometimes. It ain’t like Fitchburg. No salad teams. These guys are all major leaguers. There’s no margin for error.”
    I sipped my beer and said softly, “You seem to be erring a lot lately.”
    “Christ, man, I ain’t a machine. So I’m making a few bad pitches. I’m still a winner.”
    “You don’t look like a winner out there.”
    He slammed his beer can onto the table. “Okay, man. Get offa my back, will you? You’re my lawyer, not my fuckin’ manager. You just take care of my iron and leave the baseball to us ballplayers. Okay?”
    I shrugged. “Okay, Eddie.”
    He cocked his head at me, his eyes blazing. I smiled and gave him the finger. Then he grinned. “Up yours, too,” he said. “Ah, shit. I’m sorry, man. I’m taking all kinds of horseshit these days, and it just don’t seem fair, know what I mean? What’s the matter with Eddie Donagan? I hear it everywhere. I see kids on the street, they yell, ‘Hey, Eddie, what the fuck’s the matter with ya?’ The papers they’re sayin’, ‘What happened to Donagan? How come he’s givin’ up runs and hits and even losin’ a game now and then?’ Now the coaches are startin’ to screw around with me, like I was some kind of little machine. They say, ‘Here, shorten your stride, you’re overstriding, Eddie.’ So I shorten my stride and it feels fucked up, and I tell them, and they say, ‘Look, kid, we’re big coaches, we’ve been around for a long time, and you’re just a young wise-ass, so you just do what we tell ya to do and we’ll make a pitcher but of you. Yessiree.’ Shit. I was a pitcher without them. They tryin’ to tell me I’m too—you know, eccentric. They tell me I gotta stop talkin’ to the players and fixin’ up the pitcher’s mound. They want me to try the, whatchacallit, you know, Bob Turley, the… ah, shit…”
    “The no-windup delivery? They want you to do that?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. Hey, that ain’t Eddie Donagan. One of ’em’s even sayin’ I oughta get another pitch. Wants to teach me the fuckin’ forkball. Hey, I don’t need no forkball, or a knuckleball or a palm ball or a goddam spitter. I just wish to hell they’d leave me alone, is what I wish.”
    I lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. You’re doing fine. Pitch a shutout for us sometime, though, will you?”
    “Man, I feel one comin’ on,” he said. “Watch out, you Indians.”
    But he didn’t pitch a shutout against Cleveland. He walked two batters leading off the seventh inning and Kasko yanked him. Eddie threw his glove into the dugout as he walked away from his manager. Later, Kasko told a reporter he was thinking of taking Eddie out of the starting rotation and putting him in the bullpen so he could, as he put it,