His solution? Put the Saarinen house up for sale, which was fine by Liana. Jason and Herb were always fawning over historical architecture, but the goddamn house was crooked, and its plate-glass windows made the AC run like a vacuum cleaner. He called her in Arizona to tell her the news. But where would they live during the season? She meant to ask that in a reasonable voice, but of course it came out as a yell. We’ll cross that bridge, he said in a way that sounded like they never would. She gave Jason the option—the ultimatum—of gambling or her. When she’d arrived in Arizona she’d quit casinos cold turkey, chewing through a pack of gum a day and drinking more tequila and grapefruits than she should. He’d hung up at that.

She’d quit Jason cold turkey, too—by January she had her job back and was ignoring voice mails and texts from anyone but her lawyer. She knew that sometime soon Jason would be driving across the desert in his beat-up, beloved Jeep. (He’d gotten two Cadillacs as part of his compensation for the ad campaign, but sent one to his mother and lost the other, he confessed, in a game of Texas Hold’em.) Whatever else was going on in his life he had to get ready for spring and the long season ahead. Where would he stay? She didn’t give a rat’s ass.

At the time of their wedding the prenup had seemed conservative—an amount that would keep her comfortable but felt small in the context of Jason’s $150 million contract—but by early 2011 that number was most of what he had left, and he knew he had to give it to her. Liana was a kind soul but an imperfect one. She’s got a little wild in her eye is how Herb had put it. And Herb didn’t know about the craps, just remembered how once she convinced Marlene to go skinny-dipping in Herb’s hot tub; another time she took Melissa Moyers to a pole-dancing class. And without an NDA she might talk, as she had a gift for gab that made everyone, from first graders to baseball wives to recalcitrant Jason, feel at ease. And so their lawyers took care of the paperwork, shuttling back and forth their drafts and revisions, one of which included Jason’s request to have access to the new batting cage in the backyard of their Arizona house. He’d built it custom to his specs; construction had just finished in December. She struck that line and wrote in the margin, No fucking way.