There was a bucket of balls next to the mound, a queue that went back past second. At home plate, the stand-in batter never took his bat off his shoulder. The pitching coach—Stu Walsh, a lefty Tami remembers playing back when she was a little girl—stood just behind the mound, his face stony under his ball cap, whispering notes to a guy with a clipboard. Every pitcher had eight balls to make an impression.

The retiree said Carver had been a high draft in 2005. Was climbing like normal till his elbow went kapow. The Lions still hoped to make a starter out of him, but during his long convalescence, Victor Vásquez, a prospect from the DR, had come up quicker than anyone expected. Now, the old man explained, the team had a fight on its hands. The last spot in the rotation. He seemed to relish the conflict, the possibility of someone’s dreams being quashed. She noticed he was wearing a wedding ring, and also caught him staring at her tits.

At the bullpen session Carver threw seven strikes in a row, a few of them looking ninety-five. Walsh seemed unimpressed, right up until the last throw went wild, sailing so fast and high that it sent the batter scrambling onto all fours. At that, Walsh cursed under his breath—but not so quiet that Tami could not hear—and pointed Carver to the back of the line.

Now, watching Carver ready another throw, Tami wonders how he’s doing. Walsh’s scrutiny, the swarm of aspiring arms, coaches cutting a dozen athletes every Thursday. Does that sort of pressure help or hurt? And how is his arm feeling, finally pitching again? A cloud passes over his face and he rockets another to Cardozo, a fast and perfect strike. The catcher hoots and breaks into a gap-toothed grin.

“Tami. How are you?” She just about jumps out of her skin at his voice, the baritone popping up behind her like a surprise foul ball.

She turns. “Hi, Ronnie.”

The first time Tami saw Ronald Duncan, over at Scottsdale Municipal, she thought he was a scout. He was sitting next to a couple of front-office guys. Tan, with an open-neck team polo and a head of handsome gray, leaning into the game with a notebook on his lap. She’d already had a round with a twenty-eight-year-old from Seattle who’d left camp early with a hamstring injury; why not spread her wings and try something new?

She’d had Troy pass him a note in the seventh inning, and when Ronnie came up to her that night at the wine bar, he didn’t correct her assumption about being with the organization. By the time Tami figured out he wasn’t—Ronnie was a developer, that notebook was full of property values, nothing at all on pitch velocity—they were most of the way through dinner and getting along well enough.