“Hey, rookie! What are you doing in here?” someone yelled from the doorway. The place was so bright that anyone could look straight through the glass windows and see everyone inside, just as Emilio had done to spot Ivan.

Ivan looked up again and recognized “Butch” Clayborne, a third baseman in his fifth year with the Padres. Butch had just signed a new multimillion-dollar contract earlier that year. He was a big, strong black man with two women: one white and one black. They were both proud to be his giddy companions for the night. And once the waitresses spotted Clayborne yelling through the doorway, several of them lost their cool.

“Oh, my God! Butch, are you coming in? Are you coming in?” they asked him with the double-talk of excitement.

He waved them off. “Nah, we don’t have time for that. Maybe another time.”

His two dates were already on their way in before he grabbed them back out.

“Hey, come on, let’s go,” he told them. Then he yelled back at Emilio, “Let’s go, rookie!”

The two women stumbled back out to join him awkwardly.

“Damn, my heel,” the black companion complained at the door.

The white companion laughed at her. In a flash, they were out of the doorway and headed up the street for Fifth Avenue.

Emilio looked back at Ivan and shook his head with a grin. “You see what I mean? I’m just a rookie this year. I got a long way to go to get to where he’s at. I’m just lucky he’s taking me under his wing.”

When Emilio left with his date, the Hooters establishment returned to its normal chatter. The surprise visit from the Padres’ baseball players had added a spark of insanity to the place. But as quickly as they had entered, they were gone.

“So, how do you know Emilio?” Claudia asked Ivan at the table. She had yet to receive an order from him. And she could see that the Padres rookie had a lot of respect for him. He had made it his personal mission to walk inside and say hi. He even invited Ivan and his date to a Padres party.

Ivan was still confused by all of it. “Ahh…”

Was it any of her business how he knew Emilio? How was he to respond to that?

Catherine was still shaking her head across the table with her beer. Things were getting a bit out of hand, from what she could see. Everyone was losing their focus.

She asked the waitress, “Are my french fries on the way out?”

Claudia caught her cold drift and got back to business.

“Oh, yeah, let me go get those for you.”

When the waitress left them alone again, Catherine said, “Now, that was just crazy. Did you see how they started to act in here? They act as if they never saw a baseball player before.”