“You some kind of salesman?” Babe took a pickled egg from the jar and popped it in his mouth.

Jack’s eyes brightened. “You could say that.”

Gene said, “You honestly have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”

“Sure I do, Pops.” Babe wiped his hands off each other. “He’s Jack. You’re Jill.”

“Gene,” the mousy one said. “Gene O’Neill, in point of fact. And this is Jack Reed you’re talking to.”

Babe kept his eyes on the mouse. “I’m sticking with ‘Jill.’”

Jack laughed and clapped them both on their backs. “As I was saying, Babe, I’ve been all over. I’ve seen athletic contests in Greece, in Finland, in Italy and France. I once saw a polo match in Russia where no small number of the participants were trampled by their own horses. There’s nothing purer or more inspirational, truly, than to see men involved in contest. But like most things that are pure, it gets sullied by big money and big business and put to the service of more nefarious purpose.”

Babe smiled. He liked the way Reed talked, even if he couldn’t understand what he meant.

Another man, a thin man with a profile that was hungry and sharp, joined them and said, “This is the slugger?”

“Indeed,” Jack said. “Babe Ruth himself.”

“Jim Larkin,” the man said, shaking Babe’s hand. “I apologize, but I don’t follow your game.”

“No apologies necessary, Jim.” Babe gave him a firm shake.

“What my compatriot here is saying,” Jim said, “is that the future opiate of the masses is not religion, Mr. Ruth, it’s entertainment.”

“That so?” Ruth wondered if Stuffy McInnis was home right now, if he’d answer the phone, maybe meet Babe in the city somewhere so they could get a steak and talk baseball and women.

“Do you know why baseball leagues are sprouting up all over the country? At every mill and every shipyard? Why just about every company has a workers’ team?”

Ruth said, “Sure. It’s fun.”

“Well, it is,” Jack said. “I’ll grant you. But to put a finer point on it, companies like fielding baseball teams because it promotes company unity.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Babe said, and Gene snorted again.

Larkin leaned in close again and Babe wanted to lean back from his gin-breath. “And it promotes ‘Americanization,’ for lack of a better word, among the immigrant workers.”

“But most of all,” Jack said, “if you’re working seventy-five hours a week and playing baseball another fifteen or twenty, guess what you’re probably too tired to do?”

Babe shrugged.

“Strike, Mr. Ruth,” Larkin said. “You’re too tired to strike or even think about your rights as a worker.”

Babe rubbed his chin so they’d believe he was thinking about the idea. Truth was, though, he was just hoping they’d go away.

“To the worker!” Jack shouted, raising his glass.

The other men—and Ruth noticed there were nine or ten of them now—raised their glasses and shouted back, “To the worker!”

Everyone took a strong slug of liquor, including Ruth.