Pruitt sighed and leaned back in his seat, hands linked behind his head, elbows winged out to either side. He was alone at a computer console on the lower level of Cold Corners’ main facility, only thirty minutes into his four-hour security/communications shift. In the heat of the chase, Martinez had seemed a bargain at any price. Still did, looking at it purely from the standpoint of what the guy brought to his team’s pitching roster. This was Pedro here. Multiple Cy Young Award winner. A career earned run average of two bucks, two and change. Maybe the best arm since Koufax. Arguably the most dominating modern-day pitcher in the game, though it was Pruitt’s steadfast opinion that Roger Clemens edged him out as king of the hill by virtue of his stare-you-in-the-eye gutsiness, ability to bear down in tight situations, and of course his longevity. With eighteen major league seasons under his belt and a zillion broken strikeout records, the Rocket’s critics could wet their diapers about his high-and-ins all they wanted. He had stuff in humongous abundance. That, and a plush red carpet waiting to be rolled out for him at the door to Cooperstown.

Hal Pruitt guessed he liked Clemens better than anybody who’d ever fastballed a batter at the plate, which was why he’d outbid the McMurdo Skuas by nineteen dollars to pick him up for his own fantasy team, the Cold Corners Herbies, this year . . . five dollars over and above what he’d laid on the auction block for him the year before. Of course it didn’t hurt that Clemens had been wearing a New York Yankee uniform in real-world baseball since the ’99 season, but that was another story. Sort of. Anyway, Pedro was the issue right now. Pedro, whom Pruitt had gone after like obsessed old Ahab stalking the White Whale—towards thee I roll! Pedro, the final jewel in his crowning lineup of starters, guaranteed to put his team in position to outstrip the competition. Pedro Martinez, who also happened to be a star player with the real-life Red Sox, hated arch-rivals of Pruitt’s beloved Bronx Bombers since the earliest hominid species emerged from the steaming veldts of Africa to club stones at each other across diamond-shaped patches of turf.