Spring is a sensitive time for the ballplayers, who are working out the kinks of their winters, proving themselves into pitching rotations or fighting to keep themselves in starting lineups, competing against younger knees, quicker bats, unmarried men. They need their support network, the rooting of their numero uno cheerleader. The baseball wives know to stay out from underfoot, to not complain when pitchers and catchers report to camp on Valentine’s Day (again), to not ask about where their husbands go until four in the morning on the nights before cut days, to not complain when they aren’t taken out to brunch even once in the month of March. It’s a sacrifice, what the wives do, uprooting their lives from the Southern California desert to the central Arizona one, leaving the kids with their mothers-in-law or the well-vetted help for a few days, a few weeks, a month or two. And in this sacrifice they need one another, and so they make their own support network of domestic partners to these improbable, impressive men. Now, their lives are improbable and impressive, too. Imagine, getting plucked out of a crowded bar or chosen through a professional sports matchmaking service, being picked up on the beach in Puerto Rico or selected from the Los Angeles Lakers’ Laker Girls lineup. Imagine, some handsome—or at least talented—man saying, Now, here, this is your new life. It is strange, indeed, and theirs is a necessary sorority.

Those who don’t come to Arizona at all—not even for ten days, a few long weekends, maybe a three-day stint in February and another in March—those who can’t possibly manage to get over from L.A., who miss the whole damn party: highly suspect. Jane Rogers, for instance, the Lions’ ace’s wife, was absent last year, and her appearance this year is looking doubtful. The baseball wives can’t imagine it, how a woman could manage the six-month season without the preseason legwork. It’s like going to the beach without tanning beforehand. A bed, spray-on, that bronzing cream. Something. Make some sort of effort. If you don’t, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb—and you’ll get burned, red as a lobster. The wives are already striking Jane from their Memorial Day and July Fourth barbecue lists, uninviting her fifteen-year-old daughter from the yet-to-be-planned pool parties. Melissa Moyers, who has been doing this the longest—her husband, Hal, has pitched in the majors for nineteen years, twelve of those with the Lions, and is, if not the best on the squad, then at least, and most definitely, the oldest—once put it well: Play nice or we’ll throw you out of the park.