This spring? It was improbable that Salt River Fields would open on time; they were still installing toilets the day before opening, much to Joe Templeton’s chagrin. Improbable that the Lions center fielder would get traded away because he bruised a very important ego, but that happened, too. Improbable they’d let William Goslin play so many games, Dorsey already knowing the kid needed two years and twenty pounds before he’d be ready for the big time, and then only maybe. And it’s improbable that Liana and Jason will ever get back together—though she does come to the hospital when he calls—but wait, now. I’m getting ahead of myself.

TRIPLE PLAY

Jason’s mother didn’t know a lick about sports, but saw in her young son an interest in baseball, an outsize eagerness to play with the bigger boys as they drove by the sandlot games and high school practices of their small Iowa town. So she signed him up for Little League, and, according to his coach, that enthusiasm quickly became a natural gift, which grew into real and profound promise. He could go pro—more than one coach told her that. The best they’d ever seen, they were saying even before his voice changed and his lanky frame filled out. She didn’t know what those sorts of compliments meant, just that she wanted a route out of Iowa for her boy. By the time Jason was fifteen, she understood she had a prodigy lurking in the basement and did what she could to facilitate his rise—which more often meant staying out of his way, working extra shifts to afford the travel-team dues, paying for that elaborate cable package (broadcasting East Coast starts all the way through the West Coast ninth innings), and buying him a gently used Jeep so he could get himself to early-morning sessions at the cages, to afternoon practice and home.

There was no baseball on TV all winter, save for the occasional highlight reel, but on those same channels that had been showing the Lions all summer, ESPN2 or 3 or 13, Jason found another world series taking place: poker. It was better than drinking in the cornfields with the other kids—he cared about his body too much for that—and he wouldn’t waste his time with girls. Jason was interested in tits and ass like any sixteen-year-old, but set on avoiding a wet-blanket girlfriend who couldn’t understand his priorities. His teammates called him a monk way before anyone started in with Goody Two-shoes.