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playing a full game. He was admittedly tired, and he was having trouble with his timing. He knew, of course, that every pitcher in the league would have special plans for him this summer, that he would be the victim of shifts and stratagems and bases on balls, and, most of all, that even another great year at the plate could not bring him the same emotions and rewards. Yet as I watched him set himself again and again in the cage—settling his helmet and tugging at his belt and touching the bat to the ground and leveling his shoulders in exactly the same series of gestures, and then unleashing the flat, late, perfect swing—it came to me that all this was not just preparation for what was to come but that here, strangely, was a place where he could find privacy. Inside the cage, inside the game, he was alone, approachable only by his fellows and subject only to the demands of his hard profession.
    Surrounded by more elders (the freshwater, or blue-gilled, geezer is almost indistinguishable from the Gulf variety), I watched the Red Sox split two games in Winter Haven, losing to Detroit by 13–3 and then beating the Phillies the next afternoon, 6–1. In the eighth inning of the game against the Tigers, while the visitors were batting around against a succession of unhappy Boston pitchers, I left the ballpark and walked back to the clubhouse, which lies beyond the stands in deep right field. Here, on a patch of grass in front of the locker rooms, in the midst of a smaller crowd, José Santiago was enjoying a moment of absolute triumph as a pitcher. Dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, his hair combed after his shower, he was tossing underhand to his four-year-old son, Alex, from a range of about ten feet. Alex was wearing a miniature Red Sox uniform, with his father’s number, 30, on the back, and he was swinging a plastic bat. As I counted, Alex took fourteen successive swings at the ball without even managing one foul tip. Watching this game were perhaps a dozen other players—some in uniform, some not, some in stocking feet or with towels draped around their necks—and a good many wives and children and babies. Several of the wives were pregnant, and all of them were very young. They had driven over to the park to pick up the husbands at the end of the day’s work. Now, at last, Alex Santiago hit the ball, and everybody cheered. His father let the ball roll through his legs and across the lawn, and Alex ran excitedly around an imaginary set of base paths, fell down once, and then made it safely home.

PART II
AMAZIN’

THE “GO!” SHOUTERS
    — June 1962
    T HROUGH APRIL AND MAY, I resisted frequent invitations, delivered via radio and television, to come up to the Polo Grounds and see “those amazin’ Mets.” I even resisted a particularly soft blandishment, extended by one of the Mets’ announcers on a Saturday afternoon, to “bring the wife and come on up tomorrow after church and brunch.” My nonattendance was not caused by any unwillingness to attach my loyalty to New York’s new National League team. The only amazement generated by the Mets had been their terrifying departure from the runway in a full nosedive—the team lost the first nine games of its regular season—and I had decided it would be wiser, and perhaps kinder, to postpone my initial visit until the novice crew had grasped the first principles of powered flight. By the middle of May, however, the Mets had developed a pleasing habit of coming from behind in late innings, and when they won both ends of a doubleheader in Milwaukee on May 20, I knew it was time to climb aboard. In the five days from Memorial Day through June 3, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants were scheduled to play seven games at the Polo Grounds, and, impelled by sentiment for the returning exiles, who would be revisiting the city for the first time since 1957, and by guilt over my delayed enthusiasm for the Mets, I impulsively bought seats for all