Nancy had been giddy about attending the wedding. Not only was she excited to see her old friend Barb and Barb’s son, Matt, for whom she’d babysat when he was a boy, but she’d been planning her attire for the occasion for months. Rarely was there an excuse for her to leave town, let alone wear a dress and talk to strangers.

It was luck that Matt happened to fall for a woman whose family was from Maryland. If this wedding hadn’t been local, Nancy would have never RSVP’d to say she’d attend.

But two days ago, a cold came on. A cold or a stomach virus, Phil suspected. It was an illness she didn’t want to describe, which meant diarrhea might be involved. Phil figured she would have rallied from anything besides that.

“Nothing worse than being sick when it’s still warm out,” Nancy told Phil on the phone, and Phil agreed.

“Do you want me to come down there on Saturday?” Phil asked his mother, thinking, selfishly, that it would be nice to do some free laundry and see the dog.

“I can take care of myself,” responded Nancy. “But, Philly, honey, you’ll have to go to Annapolis for that wedding and sit in my seat. Barb told me the plates cost almost two hundred dollars apiece, and I won’t be wasting her money. I’m going to call Barb and tell her you’ll be representing the family.”

Phil could not believe it.

“Jesus, Mom,” he bellowed. “You gotta be kidding me. I don’t even know these people.”

“Watch your mouth,” Nancy snapped.

And with that Phil knew there was no getting around it. One of his precious weekend days off from the ballpark would be spent celebrating the nuptials of two people he didn’t even know.

Even though the ride had felt unbearably slow, and Phil had assumed he’d be one of those people who walk in midceremony, he was soon riding along the sparkling bay in the direction of the Tower Gardens Country Club, with ten minutes to spare. Phil got out of the car and took a deep breath, smelling his surroundings. It was a perfect almost-autumn day. It was his favorite time of year at Camden Yards: the spring games were too chilly, the summer games too steamy. Phil looked forward all season to two perfect weeks at the end of September.

It was also the most joyous time of year for the staff because it represented the end of a long run. Unless the Orioles made the playoffs, which hadn’t happened since the late nineties, the final night of the season would be right around the last day of the month. Comfortable weather meant a light at the end of the tunnel.

Just past the parking lot, Phil saw what he estimated to be a crowd of two hundred or more people in formal wear, looking for a place in rows of white seats. The women stepped quickly as their heels sank through the damp soil beneath them. Most of the men wore black suits. The women wore short black getups or silky pastel or floral dresses and metallic sandals, which seemed to be a trend this year, based on what he’d seen at the ballpark.