Vásquez finishes the game while Greg’s rinsing off; he can hear hooting and hollering over the sound of water splashing on tile. When he comes out the locker room’s abuzz: complete game shutout. Dorsey never keeps a starter in for the whole game in spring training, but today he did, just to see. The players are whooping, hooting for Vásquez, who is quiet but smiling in front of his locker. Jimmy throws a towel around Vásquez’s hips, shimmies it around his ass like he’s polishing a bowling ball. Greg gets dressed as fast as he can and speeds back to the hotel, swallowing a pill just as soon as he steps into his room.

The doctor gave him Vicodin, with the standard warning of moderation. As needed. But when Greg was supposed to taper—when the pain was supposed to taper and it didn’t, just kept on pulsing from his fingertips to his neck—he continued with the pills, doubling doses as often as he could without raising suspicions. It’s not Greg’s fault the doc left his script pads around the office like they were Post-its, that his 30s could become 90s pretty damn easy, that the lady pharmacist thought Greg was some sort of famous coming in to the Walgreens with his team scripts.

He blacked out on the pills. Or grayed out, maybe—it was hard to describe the sensation. Lost time, in any case, three hours or four per pill, though the blank spots hardly seemed to matter through that endless recovery. There was always another physical therapy appointment, always more stretches to do in his parents’ basement. The same sitcoms on TV in the living room, the same restless nights.

From the outside, things looked fine. After that first year of conditioning, he was finally able to throw again. Started with easy, slow tosses. So many pitches thrown at a rubber bull’s-eye, counting the strikes. Strength came back, velocity, accuracy. Even Coach Stu thought he’d healed up well. Looking good, kid—that’s what he’d said at the end of the first day of pitchers’ and catchers’ practice. Like he’d finally done something right.