I didn’t hang around with the guys for a while or play any ball. The whole tournament idea got me down. Hey, play ball for the wino and let these scouts dig your game and maybe you can get over. I’d daydream about it. Daydream about me playing my best game and everybody cheering and all the scouts digging my action. But even when I daydreamed, it ended up in the same way: Somebody else got over, and I just had another day to pile up with the rest.

Then one day this cat Cal comes by. I don’t know who told him where I was staying unless it was Paul. He come knocking on the door, and I opened, and there he was.

“What you want?” I asked. He didn’t say nothing but just came on in and sat down like he owned the place.

“How come you ain’t playing with the squad?” he asked.

“What’s it to you?” I said.

“I just hate to see a guy with a game as good as yours throw it away,” he said.

“I don’t need you to tell me how good my game is, you or no other wino.”

“You need somebody to tell you how good your game can be,” he said. “Because you don’t know that.”

“Why don’t you split, man? When I want to get my team back together, I’ll do it.”

“How’s it your team when you up and cut out on them for nothing?” Cal said. “If that’s where you’re coming from, they’re better off without you.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I was on him in a minute. I tried to grab him and spin him out the door, but before I knew it, the sucker twisted my arm behind my back and pushed me against the wall. He eased my arm down and asked me, real quietlike, if I wanted to try it again.

“Do me a favor, and just get out of here,” I said, trying to get the blood circulating in my arm again. “And don’t come back, because the next time I see your face in my doorway, I’m going to blow it away!”

“A friend of mine from the pros is going to be at the practice tomorrow,” he said. “Show up if you’re man enough.”

Then he split. I was really mad. I wanted to punch something so bad I could taste it. Then I remembered the Johnnie Walker Black under the bed. I didn’t really dig booze too tough, but it was better than nothing. I took my sneakers off, threw them in the closet, got a glass and washed it out, and went down the hall to the ice machine. I was going to get so drunk I couldn’t remember my own name.

I pulled the box out from under the bed. Empty! Harrison had copped the rest of my Scotch. I picked up an ashtray and threw it with all my strength across the room. It hit the drapes and banged into the blinds, but it didn’t break. It went under the bed, and I got down on my hands and knees and found it. This time I was about four feet from the wall when I threw it. It shattered into hundreds of pieces that flew all over the room. I cried myself to sleep for the first time since my father split.