The Fan Read Online Free Page B

Bobby?”
    “I’m eating breakfast,” Bobby said.
    The father, still smiling, laid four or five more balls in front of him. This was a money-making operation. Bobby started to repeat what he’d just said, but Wald, glancing around the room, said,
“Globe
’s watching,” so Bobby signed the balls.
    “All
right,
” said the father, as though about to high-five somebody. Not “thanks.” He dropped the balls in a plastic bag.
    Wald picked up the check. They got in the Targa, drove south past fast-food places, an alligator farm, a fireworks stand. Wald switched on the radio.
    “… shoulda been running on the play, situation like that. What I can’t understand is—”
    Bobby switched it off.
    “When’s Valerie coming?” Wald asked.
    Bobby’s wife didn’t like to be called Val anymore. Bobby kept forgetting, but Wald never did. “School vacation,” Bobby said.
    “When’s that?”
    “Don’t know. She’s supposed to call.” Bobby saw a man in rags doing a stiff-legged dance by the side of the road. “What’s the surprise?” he asked.
    “Surprise?”
    “You were talking about on the phone.”
    “I gave it to you already. The check, Bobby. The bonus.”
    “Oh.”
    Wald pulled into the training complex, parked in front of a palm tree with Bobby’s name posted on it. Bobby slipped on his headphones, pressed PLAY . They got out. Wald popped the trunk, took out the equipment bag. Bobby looked around. He didn’t like Florida, didn’t like the heavy air. He liked the air in Arizona, where he’d trained for the last ten years. They walked toward the clubhouse.
    “I’ll take that,” Bobby said. He carried his equipment bag inside.
    They were waiting: Mr. Hakimora, the new owner; Thorpe, the GM; Burrows, the manager. Bobby pressed STOP . He shook hands with them, faced the cameras when voices called, “Over here, Bobby,” and said, “I’m looking forward to the season,” when they asked him how he felt, and, “One-hundred percent,” when they asked him about the rib cage, even though there were supposed to be no interviews. Then he went into the clubhouse.
    “A little glitch I forgot to mention,” Wald said in Bobby’s ear as he stood before his stall. Mail was already stacked on the shelf. A dozen bats still taped together for shipping—thirty-two-ounce, thirty-four-and-a-half-inch Adirondack 433B’s, unfinished because of Bobby’s belief that lacquer took English off the ball—leaned in one corner. His spring-training uniform waited on a hanger, white pants and a redmesh shirt with black-and-white trim. No names were stitched on the backs of the spring shirts because of all the extra players in camp, but there were numbers. They’d given him number twenty-eight.
    “No problem,” Bobby said. He had worn number eleven ever since freshman year in high school, but they were payinghim the big money and he didn’t want to make trouble. “I’ll just wear sweats today while they get it switched.”
    Pause. “Regrettably,” said Wald, “it’s not that simple.”
    “Why not?”
    A sweating man with a sunburned bald head hurried toward them, wiping his hand on his pant leg, then offering it to Bobby.
    “Stook,” he said. “Equipment manager.”
    Bobby remembered him from the All-Star locker room in Chicago, a few years before. They shook hands.
    “Anything I can do for you, just holler,” Stook said.
    “As a matter of fact,” Bobby said, eyeing the shirt.
    “Oh, that’s for practice. Your name’ll be on the game shirts, home and away, in four-inch letters. Rayburn. We can stretch it out on that back of yours real nice.”
    “It’s not the name,” Bobby said. “It’s the number.”
    “The number?”
    “I wear eleven.”
    Stook looked at Wald.
    Wald put his hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “See, Bobby, there’s been a little screwup. Nobody’s fault, really. Just one of those things—permutations, if you like—that can happen in complex, drawn-out negotiations. Maybe it