In high school he played against teammates on the back of the bus, unburdened them of their vending machine money. Same thing happened in college—across a few road trips he made a killing, everyone’s beer money and then some—until they decided it wasn’t much fun to lose to him all the time, and they opted to sleep on the long rides back from Evanston and South Bend. So he started going to casinos, right around when he went pro—that and turning twenty-one all syncing up in a convenient way. Long weekends during the off-season, maybe a few hands on the road—off-days only—if he knew of a casino or private game nearby. Nothing serious, even if the bets expanded with his salary to numbers his mother would have thought impossible. A day’s work as a physician’s assistant spent on one bet. A week’s effort in the doctor’s office won in a hand; a month’s lost in two.

What did he like about it? The adrenaline, of course. Winning a hand gave him the same kind of thrill as connecting with a line drive. Folding felt like watching four balls wobble by before trotting to first; bluffing like digging a double out of a slider. End of a night at the tables, like at the end of the game, he could look back on his performance—two for four, once to second, one run—though recounting a poker session felt better than that, because it wasn’t just how he’d helped in the scope of the team’s effort. At the table, he and he alone could control the win-loss column. The Lions weren’t bad, particularly, but in their current configuration they were hardly their best. Sometimes Jason’s efforts felt like pulling a training sled across the outfield, the rest of the team lounging on its armature. When he was playing solo, he could win everything. He would. And if he didn’t, well, that was on him, too.