It lies ten feet below me across the foul line.

What an idiot. Steph, I’m sure, is pretending he doesn’t know me. I figure the security guy will come out and confiscate it; at best, he’ll give me a lecture.

Gabe Kapler’s witnessed my embarrassment, and saunters over, shaking his head. I think he’s going to take the ball from under the net and toss it to someone more deserving to teach me a lesson, but he throws it right to me. Then he takes the net and jogs back out to left with it.

“He could have used it last night,” someone says.

For a while Gabe keeps his glove on and holds the net with one hand, but then he says the hell with it and tosses the glove. Manny and Nomar are up, spraying the ball around. When a Manny liner bounces to the side of him, he stabs at it and misses cleanly. See, it’s not as easy as it looks. After about five minutes of just standing there with the net, he brings it back over. I get a picture of him—proof for Trudy.

Another guy comes by and asks if that was me he saw up on the Monster a few weeks ago, and I find that I like this minor celebrity. Steph says a Sox photographer just took a picture of me.

We’re also visited by Chip Ainsworth, the reporter who interviewed me the first time I brought the net. He says we should see a game together from the press box. I worry a little about that blurry line between journalist and fan, but then I think: man, the press box!

Steve arrives in his YANKEES HATER cap, and I go over to hang out with him and Steph. On the endpages of the John Sandford novel he’s reading, he’s scored the last two games. It’s been a while, and we fall to talking, interrupted from time to time by folks who want to take a picture of him.

We’re sitting there discussing Manny’s hot streak and Wake’s last few starts when one of the Sox comes out and signs along the wall two sections down. From the inch-high brush cut, it can only be Tek. It’s his day off, with Mirabelli catching Wake. I excuse myself and climb over the section dividers and then wait in the crush. “Go ahead and take the sweet spot,” I tell him. “It’s all yours.”

Tek’s signature is neat and readable. Thanks to eBay, I’ve seen it dozens of times, both authentic versions and fakes. He never finishes the final kick of the k, so it reads J Varitel, #33. On the pearl it looks superclean, and I thank him and carry it by the seams like some weird breaking ball, making sure not to smudge the ink.

“I got a shot of you,” Steph says.