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gave us a fix-it-or-lose-it proposition. Richmond and the counties buried the hatchet and built a new stadium together, but they didn’t bury it forever, or even deep.
    This time, the shakedown came in the midst of what feels like more than just a recession if you’re not a trust-fund baby. When tax money started drying up, regional cooperation was the first thing to go. Several plans failed, some cooked up by greed heads who saw a way to make a buck with blue-sky schemes that promised a hell of a lot more than they could deliver. The city had no money, the counties pleaded poverty, and the R-Braves packed up and left.
    It took about two minutes for the Giants to agree to move their Double-A team here from some beaten-down northeastern city with bigger problems than ours, and now we are the proud host city of the Richmond Flying Squirrels.
    The kids love the mascot, Nutsy, and I guess that’s the whole idea. I just hope they still love him when they’re old enough to actually know the rules of baseball.
    And, of course, the Giants brain trust already is harrumphing about the fact that we’re not stepping lively to build them a new stadium.
    If it weren’t for the game itself, I’d have stopped following baseball a long time ago.
    The Diamond does need a major makeover. It was built on the cheap and was (and still is) in need of either major renovations or dynamite. A chunk of concrete had been known to fall on the upper deck, although not, so far, on anyone’s head. The visitors’ locker room should be shut down by the health department.
    “I think Nutsy’s neat,” Awesome offers. Jimmy just stares at him, speechless for once.
    Jimmy and Les start talking about the old Vees. Jimmy does most of the talking. I’m afraid he’s wearing Les out, but the old guy seems as animated as I’ve seen him since he was shot.
    “Remember the time ol’ Roy Haas told Rabbit Larue to just go up there without a bat and try to get a walk?” Jimmy says. “Rabbit was about oh-for-June, and he was in the on-deck circle.”
    “Yeah,” Les says, so low you can barely hear him. “Rabbit was pissed.”
    “Guy before him strikes out, and there’s still runners on first and third, two out. Haas is hitting behind Rabbit.”
    “How do you remember this stuff?” I ask Jimmy.
    “Oh,” Jimmy says, tapping his skull, “Jumpin’ Jimmy don’t forget nothin’. I got a pornographic memory.”
    “So then,” he continues, “Haas says, 'Hey, Rabbit. Just leave the bat back here. Work him for a walk.’ ”
    He and Les crack up, although the effort makes Les wince.
    Jimmy’s wheezing, he’s laughing so hard.
    “So Rabbit turns around and charges Haas. He’s got a bat, and so does Roy, who’s got to outweigh him by fifty pounds. They look like The Two Mousketeers out there, like two kids sword fighting. I don’t think either one of them made contact, which was about par for the course for Rabbit.
    “The umpire didn’t know whether to shit or go blind—excuse me, Ma’am. Finally, old Trent Julian—hell of a manager, old Trent was—he walks out of the dugout, spits a big wad on the field and says, 'Hey, ump. Throw ’em both out. I’m sick of ’em.’ ”
    “Funniest thing was,” Les says, in about the longest sentence I’ve heard him speak in the last four days, “Rabbit went four for four the next day.”
    “Three for four,” Jimmy says, and Les yields to his superior knowledge of the 1964 Richmond Vees.
    But Les knows something that Jumpin’ Jimmy doesn’t, pornographic memory and all.
    “It’s too bad about old Roy,” he says.
    “What?” Jimmy asks him.
    “Heart attack. He died back in 2008, I think it was. Him and me exchanged Christmas cards every year. The only one I still kept up with. Him and Rittenbacker. And he’s gone, too.”
    Jimmy fills us in on Jackson Rittenbacker.
    “The Ripper,” Jimmy says. “Him and Haas and Whitestone were about the only guys we had that year that could get it past the