It was Harry Hooper, the Sox team captain and right fielder, and second baseman Dave Shean talking to the Cubs’ left fielder Leslie Mann and catcher Bill Killefer. McInnis said the four of them had been thick as thieves the whole trip.

“’Bout what?” Ruth said, not really sure he cared.

“Don’t know,” Stuffy said. “Muffing flies for a price, you think? Tanking?”

Hooper crossed the field to them.

“We’re going to strike, boys.”

Stuffy McInnis said, “You’re drunk.”

Hooper shook his head. “They’re fucking us, boys.”

“Who?”

“The Commission. Who do you think? Heydler, Hermann, Johnson. Them.”

Stuffy McInnis sprinkled tobacco into a slip of rolling paper and gave the paper a delicate lick as he twisted the ends. “How so?”

Stuffy lit his cigarette and Ruth took a sip from his flask and looked across the field at a small fringe of trees under the blue sky.

“They changed the gate distribution of the Series. The percentage of receipts. They did it last winter, but they didn’t tell us till now.”

“Wait,” McInnis said. “We get sixty percent of the first four gates.”

Harry Hooper shook his head and Ruth could feel his attention begin to wander. He noticed telegraph lines stretched at the edge of the field and he wondered if you could hear them hum if you got close enough. Gate receipts, distribution. Ruth wanted another plate of eggs, some more bacon.

Harry said, “We used to get sixty percent. Now we get fifty-five. Attendance is down. The war, you know. And it’s our patriotic duty to take five percent less.”

McInnis shrugged. “Then it’s our—”

“Then we forfeit forty percent of that to Cleveland, Washington, and Chicago.”

“For what?” Stuffy said. “Kicking their asses to second, third, and fourth?”

“Then, then another ten percent to war charities. You seeing this now?”

Stuffy scowled. He looked ready to kick someone, someone small he could really get his leg into.

Babe threw his hat in the air and caught it behind his back. He picked up a rock and threw it at the sky. He threw his hat again.

“It’ll all work out,” he said.

Hooper looked at him. “What?”

“Whatever it is,” Babe said. “We’ll make it back.”

Stuffy said, “How, Gidge? You tell me that? How?”

“Somehow.” Babe’s head was beginning to hurt again. Talk of money made his head hurt. The world made his head hurt—Bolsheviks overthrowing the czar, the Kaiser running roughshod over Europe, anarchists tossing bombs in the streets of this very country, blowing up parades and mailboxes. People were angry, people were shouting, people were dying in trenches and marching outside factories. And it all had something to do with money. The Babe understood that much. But he hated thinking about it. He liked money, he liked it just fine, and he knew he was making plenty and he stood to make plenty more. He liked his new motor scooter, and he liked buying good cigars and staying in swell hotel rooms with heavy curtains and buying rounds for the bar. But he hated thinking about money or talking about money. He just wanted to get to Boston. He wanted to hit a ball, paint the town. Governor’s Square teemed with brothels and good saloons. Winter was coming; he wanted to enjoy it while he could, before the snow came, the cold. Before he was stuck back in Sudbury with Helen and the smell of horses.