She picks a section by the right field line, close to the rolled-up tarp, and takes in the new stadium. Nice grandstand, pleasant-looking general-admission lawn (not that she’d ever sit in the grass), McDowell Mountains on the horizon. Good sight lines from the seats on either side. The architect used a bunch of exposed steel beams and curved a minimalist canopy around home, details that made it feel modern and maybe even a bit slick. She sits down with her latte and the spring season program. Jason Goodyear and Trey Townsend, the team’s two Gold Glove outfielders, are smiling back at her, with a banner across the front about them being “the golden boys” of the L.A. Lions. Clever. Jason Goodyear, with his hunky good looks and shoulders that suggested he could be the bottom of a cheer pyramid all by himself, would be her kind of guy, except that he was dating movie stars, right up until he married that teacher. Phoenix girl, if she remembers right, some sort of collegiate athlete. And she’s tried with Trey—they were at the same cocktail bar one night several seasons back, him sitting with that partial owner, Stephen Smith—but she wasn’t as interesting as the itch on his ankle.

Flipping through the program, she sees plenty of names she recognizes. Some go back to that improbable postseason run in 2008. She’d watched from the edge of her seat, the time with Hal recent enough she felt invested. Lots of new faces, too. She’ll have them memorized by the end of the day. “A gift,” her daddy’d called her memory for a lineup.

There’s still an hour thirty to first pitch. The field’s morning watering is sparkling the sod in a pretty way. Tami loves this time before the game, being surrounded by the thwack of hard leather on soft, the wooden ping of a practice bat making contact. Baseball sounds, carrying across the field—not for a rapt audience, not because the game is on the line, but just because these motions are essential. Throwing and catching are like sleeping and eating for these men: natural, necessary. Now, of course she likes a nail-biter as much as anyone, but this warm-up is something else. Elemental.

She glances over to the boxes on the other side of home, but it’s too far to see anything distinct, much less if Ronnie’s there.

Down on the grass, Greg Carver is throwing easy balls with the catcher Jimmy Cardozo. She first saw Carver throw last week, during a bullpen session. A right-handed fastballer, twenty-seven and lanky. Just coming back from Tommy John. Tami wasn’t the only one standing by the fence; some snowbird in a plaid polo was watching, too, his fingers looped through the chain link. He smiled at her—dentures—when she approached. Some of these retirees just about live for the spring.