“Calm down, dude.” Goodyear unbuttons his dirt-stained jersey and drops it on the bench, then peels off a damp T-shirt. William glances over to the left fielder, almost expecting to see a big red S on his chest. Superman! Not a lot of East Coast kids follow West Coast teams—half the time the games don’t start until ten—but William has always loved Jason Goodyear, from his first cover shoot with Sports Illustrated for Kids. He’d never admit it here, but he still has a Goodyear poster hanging in his bedroom. The left fielder’s chest is just sporting a strange tattoo of a playing card over his heart, sweat, and a couple of damp hairs in the cleft between his chiseled pecs. “Come on. You remember being a rookie.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t no first rounder. I had to fucking claw my way up from fucking Kansas.” William didn’t even know they had a team in Kansas—he thought it was Oklahoma, maybe Nebraska. Somewhere with corn. “Did you hear about Tampa’s first rounder?”

“That kid who hit for the cycle?” Jimmy Cardozo comes out of the shower, still dripping, a too-small towel wrapped around his thick waist. “Tough break, fuckface,” he says in William’s ear, and his tone sounds almost sincere. Jimmy isn’t exactly a friend, but sometimes he buys William beer and he offered him a lift to the last split-squad game. The catcher drops his towel in front of his locker. He’s got a tattoo of a catcher’s mitt cupping his left butt cheek.

“Yeah, that one,” Monterrey says. “I’ll tell you what he’s doing: running fucking circles around his teammates, like a first rounder should. Do you see any circles here?” The outfielder spins his finger around a tight, invisible ball. “I mean, besides your big fucking goose eggs.”

A few lockers down, Goodyear steps out of his shorts, shaking his head. William, still in his sweat-stained undershirt and boxers, peeks, as discreetly as he can. He’d been hitting the gym every day, eating more calories than Michael Phelps, and he has only eight pounds to show for it. Eight! Now, in a room with fortyish half-naked men, trunk-legged power hitters and pitchers with shoulders like sawhorses, he feels, rightfully, like a pipsqueak. Glancing at Goodyear’s package doesn’t bring any relief. He’d heard Goody’s small dick was why his wife left him, but he looks pretty well hung to William. If that is small—he glances over again, and back—where does it leave William? His penis shrinks just thinking about it.

“And Seattle got that pitcher, man. He already threw a shutout. And us? Do you know how much we paid for this kid’s signing bonus? Sometimes I think the bossmen are fucking loco.” Monterrey throws his towel down in disgust.