You Should Be So Lucky

by Cat Sebastian

Genres: American Romance; Historical Romance; LGBT & Pride; Sports Romance

Synopsis

An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.

 

Release date: May 7, 2024

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

1960

After a year of doing basically nothing—although Lilian is forever clapping him on the shoulder and earnestly telling him that survival is something, it’s wonderful, darling, a testament to his strength—Mark Bailey finds that it’s a bit of a shock to the system to discover he’s in the middle of a meeting with his boss.

Sure, they’re in a grimy Irish bar instead of the Chronicle’s wood-paneled conference room, and they’re drinking watered-down gin instead of coffee, and nobody’s there to take notes or waste time by talking about golf, but it’s still a meeting no matter how Mark looks at it, God help him.

“So here’s the problem,” Andy says. Andy is—well, when he isn’t busy being Andrew Fleming III, the Chronicle’s publisher, he and Mark are friends, or whatever you call it when you’re both queer and work at the same place and keep one another’s secrets.

“We need to convert weekday commute readers to Sunday subscription readers,” Andy goes on. “The Sunday paper is where we make money.”

Mark’s been hearing versions of this for months. After three drinks, Andy’s capable of delivering an entire lecture, complete with pie charts drawn on the backs of cocktail napkins, about return on investment, dwindling ad sales, and how television will be the ruination of the free press. It’s all unspeakably boring, and the only reason Mark hasn’t put a stop to it is that it would take an awful lot of energy that he simply does not have.

“A new Sunday magazine is going to replace the old pullout supplement starting in July,” Andy goes on. “It’ll be glossy and in full color, and we want it to attract a different set of readers. I was looking at those articles you wrote a couple years back for Esquire and The New Yorker, and even some of the longer pieces you used to write for our arts and culture section. That’s exactly what I want.”

Andy’s being tactful by not saying something like “back when you used to do actual work instead of writing book reviews every few months for fifty-dollar checks that you forget to cash.” Technically, Mark resigned in February 1959 but never quite got out of the habit of coming in to work. This may be pushing the envelope on eccentricity, but he’s pretty sure that ship has sailed; he’s firmly in Miss Havisham territory now, haunting the dusty and half-empty fifth floor of the Chronicle building, an eldritch entity that junior reporters warn one another about.

“According to market research,” Andy goes on, “sports coverage is one of the top reasons people buy the paper, so I’m thinking the magazine needs stories with a sports angle.”

All this strikes Mark as exceptionally pie-in-the-sky; he’s not optimistic by nature and even less so where newspapers are concerned. If Andy didn’t look like a man about to ask a favor, he’d assume this had nothing to do with him. His magazine features were mostly profiles of architects and fashion designers. He hasn’t written a word about sports since he was on his high school newspaper, nursing an ill-fated crush on the quarterback.

Mark drains his gin and waves the bartender over for some more. “You need a highbrow sports feature for the magazine, and you want me to write it.”

“Yes,” says Andy, drawing out the syllable and looking at his drink instead of at Mark. “You know when a paper publishes a weekly diary by an athlete over the course of a season?”

Mark scoffs. “I don’t think any of those have ever actually been written

by the ballplayer. It’s always some poor bastard in the sports department . . .” He trails off as Andy’s meaning makes its way through the haze of gin. “No. Absolutely not. I’m not ghostwriting a ballplayer diary. I can’t think of anyone on your entire staff less qualified.”

“Nonsense. You follow the game. You and Nick complain about the Yankees every time we see you, and I know you were pleased to hear about the Robins coming to New York, because you said so, in my own kitchen.”

Mark glares at Andy. Surely, using his own words against him counts as emotional blackmail. He and Nick have been paying attention to the trials and travails of the city’s new baseball team—Nick because he loves baseball, and Mark because he loves drama. But Mark doesn’t follow the game; a passing familiarity with baseball is something he caught, like the measles, not something he did on purpose.

“Why can’t you have one of the junior sportswriters do it? Or someone else who can be motivated by an extra ten dollars a week?”

Andy goes back to swirling the ice around in his glass. “Well, the player I was thinking of might need special treatment.”

“What player do you have in mind?”

“That new shortstop. O’Leary.”

“You think people want to read a diary by a guy who threw a tantrum in public after he was traded here? And who’s barely managed to hit the ball since then?” Mark cannot think of anything more likely to get someone to throw their paper directly into the nearest trash can.

“There has to be more to him than that,” Andy suggests.

“He called the manager a drunken psychopath, the team a bunch of talentless layabouts, and the owners a couple of debutantes.” Mark has seen these phrases printed in every paper he reads and has heard them repeated everywhere from the subway to the Chronicle break room.

Andy shrugs. “Is any of that wrong, though?”

Mark snorts. “Probably not,” he concedes. “There’s no way the Robins will let him within ten yards of a reporter.”

“They’re operating under the idea that any press is good press if it gets people to the stadium.”

“Still, it ought to be a sportswriter who does it.”

“Well, that’s the problem. Half the sports desk staff have publicly insulted O’Leary. The other half, well. Nobody’s going to believe O’Leary wrote this diary if it’s filled with aw-shucks earnestness. It would have to have an edge.”

“Andy,” Mark says, laughing despite himself. “Are you calling me mean?”

“No,” Andy protests. He’s a terrible liar. “Just—cynical, maybe. When you want to be. Anyway, writing the weekly diary would get you access to the team, which you can use to write the magazine feature. I’d like to run it the first Sunday in October. If

you’re up to it, that is.” He’s offering Mark a graceful out, and Mark’s tempted to take it. “But with the magazine about to take over the fifth floor, it would be nice to have an excuse for you to keep that office.”

At the idea that he might lose his office, Mark feels a faint stirring of panic. Where would he go all day? Where, other than that office on the semi-deserted fifth floor of the Chronicle building, could he be allowed to hide away, spending what Lilian persists in calling the Best Years of His Life organizing paper clips by size and hoarding all the best pens?

The Chronicle—the familiarity of it all, from his typewriter with its sticky F to the people he sees in the elevator—has kept him afloat this past year. He has to get out of bed because he has to brush his teeth; he has to brush his teeth because he has to go to work. There’s a rhythm to his day that he doesn’t exactly enjoy, but at least it exists, and it carries him along until it’s the next morning and he does it all again.

That afternoon, when he unlocks his door, Lula lets out a single sharp bark, as if determined to let him know there’s another reason for Mark to get out of bed every morning, and that’s to be a wire-haired terrier’s indentured servant.

Mark leans down to scratch the dog’s head, and she gives him a sad look. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed, she communicates with every bark, every look, every nap spent slumped against the door, waiting for someone who’s never going to come home. But honestly, it’s an unspeakable relief that the dog hasn’t moved on, either.

Everyone—well, the handful of people who actually know—has been telling him that eventually he’ll go back to normal, but after a year of this, Mark’s increasingly certain that everyone is full of shit. Or, more likely, they simply don’t understand, and good for them. Mark’s genuinely happy for them.

He slips Lula’s leash on and lets her drag him back outside. It’s warm and breezy, the sort of weather that makes people in the city flirt with the idea of sidewalk cafés and picnics, before remembering that exhaust fumes don’t go with most meals.

The dog leads him along the same route she’s taken for the entire eight years Mark’s known her: around the perimeter of Gramercy Park, then south on Irving Place with a pointed digging in of the heels in front of a bakery. “No, Lula,” he says, just like he always does. “We’re not going in today.”

Back at home, Lula takes up sentry by the kitchen cupboard that houses the dog food. It’s the stuff that comes in cans, which is both unreasonably expensive and unfathomably smelly, but that’s what William always bought, and it isn’t like Mark is about to ruin this poor animal’s life even further by purchasing substandard dog food. William raised Lula to have taste, and far be it from Mark to second-guess either of them.

The fact that he can

calmly formulate that thought surely has to count for something. But it turns out that what’s on the other side of last year’s brittle fragility isn’t normal but something grayscale and hollowed out. Mark is . . . fine: he paid his taxes on time and he went to the dentist when his tooth hurt. He isn’t in any danger of throwing himself out of windows or acquiring interesting new habits of self-destruction.

It’s just that when he tries to figure out what the point is in getting out of bed every morning, he doesn’t have the answer. Even work—which had always been an answer, at least—feels flat and dull, like there’s nothing left in the world worth writing about. He’s made sure not to tell Lilian about this or she might get that terribly sad face again, and then he’ll have to endure her and Maureen having him over for dinner and relentless sympathy while the whole time they look at him like he’s the ghost of Christmas yet to come.

The dog barks, and Mark realizes he’s paused with his hand on the can opener. He opens the can and dumps its appalling contents into the little bowl with the dog bone painted inside that they picked up on vacation in Marseilles years ago.

He ought to do something about his own dinner, but instead he turns on the television with the half-formed intention of smugly watching a quiz show—he takes his thrills where he finds them, these days. The television is tuned in to a baseball game, though. The commentators are going on about how O’Leary’s been batting literally zero since getting traded. That’s almost impressively terrible. Hadn’t there been talk last season about him being rookie of the year?

Mark kneels in front of the television until O’Leary’s at bat. He knows from occasional glances at the sports page that Eddie O’Leary has been talked about as having the prettiest swing in baseball. What Mark sees today doesn’t have anything pretty about it. It is, frankly, a mess. It looks like it physically hurts, like O’Leary’s body is doing something it has no business even trying.

O’Leary strikes out and then—Mark winces—snaps the bat over his knee. What an absolute infant, having tantrums in public. Mark isn’t sure how much you can tell about someone’s demeanor from grainy black-and-white television footage, but O’Leary looks defeated as he returns to the dugout.

*  *  *

Mark spreads the Chronicle’s clippings on O’Leary across the dining room table in chronological order. They make a depressing tableau. You can almost hear the hushed, reverent awe with which reporters last spring talked about O’Leary’s future. By the fall, columnists who ought to know better were openly comparing him to Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, throwing

around rookie-year stats and acting like starry-eyed children. When O’Leary went and started this season by batting .500 in the month of April, an embarrassing array of superlatives began appearing alongside his name.

He was good, Mark will give him that, no question. But what’s probably just as relevant is that he’s good-looking. He looks like he fell out of a Renaissance painting, all golden curls and blue eyes and excessive muscles. He really is very handsome, but in a way that feels obvious, like if you asked an artist with no imagination to draw you an attractive man.

And he’s white—that still matters, even a decade after most baseball teams integrated. There are plenty of people who of course aren’t prejudiced, how dare you suggest it, but who are demonstrably reassured by the existence of talented white athletes. Eddie O’Leary must have seemed like an answer to their bigoted little prayers.

Mark turns his attention to the final section of clippings, by far the most abundant, those dating since O’Leary’s early season trade from the Kansas City Athletics to the Robins. Mark knows what happened—everyone who pays even casual attention to New York sports knows what happened. News of the trade broke toward the end of a game; O’Leary, when informed by an opportunistic reporter in the locker room, proceeded to insult everyone on his new team. It’s bad luck that television cameras were in the locker room, but that’s all the more reason for O’Leary to have made an effort to control himself. He had to know that once the cameras picked up on his tirade, the newspapers would have no choice but to write about it, however loath sportswriters usually are to tarnish the heroes their readers demand.

Mark has little patience for people who can’t muster up a minimum degree of self-control. They’re spoiled children. Most people would be arrested, beaten, fired, or disowned if they didn’t keep a tight leash on their emotions and reactions, but the Eddie O’Learys of the world think they can do whatever they please.

But a stray phrase catches his eye, something from a Kansas City paper—whoever’s in charge of news clippings at the Chronicle has made a thorough job of it. It’s the beginning of O’Leary’s rant—or, rather, what preceded it. “That can’t be,” O’Leary told the reporter who had broken the news to him. “That can’t be right.”

Mark reads the rest of the article. O’Leary shared a house with three teammates, and every few weeks his widowed mother drove out from Omaha to see her only child play.

That can’t be now seems to carry a decisively mournful note. O’Leary was having his life uprooted, his life as he knew it taken away, and it was happening on television.

Mark is being, he realizes with a shudder, soft-hearted—an alarming new tendency. The other day he found himself looking charitably upon the hellion upstairs whose violin practice used to make him long for the quiet of the grave. Whatever cracks in his psyche the past year left in its wake, there’s plenty of room

now for this sort of thing to creep in.

Still, though. This is an angle for the magazine feature Andy wants. A broken-hearted Eddie O’Leary whose game fell apart at the same time his life fell apart is a far fresher story than a badly behaved child who isn’t playing his best for the straightforward reason that he resents his luckless new team; there are six of those articles sitting right now on his dining room table. And Mark remembers the palpable sense of doom that O’Leary had radiated, even through a television screen. The idea that this kid is grieving isn’t entirely in Mark’s head, even if O’Leary is a spoiled brat. On any other team, he’d be on his way to the minors to endure this slump in relative private, but the Robins are bad enough that one more lousy hitter won’t make a difference. Whatever happens to O’Leary is going to happen in front of the nation’s largest television market.

It occurs to Mark that what he’s witnessing is a disaster. This is a shipwreck, a funeral pyre, a crumbling ruin. What’s happening to Eddie O’Leary is an end. That’s something Mark knows about; that’s something Mark can write about.

 

Part II
May

 

Chapter Two

At first Eddie thinks he must have misunderstood. When he’s called into Miss Newbold’s office, he’s expecting, best-case scenario, to hear that he’s been traded again, not that he really thinks any decent team could be persuaded to trade for a player who hasn’t gotten a single base hit in the past fifteen games. More likely he’s going to be sent down to Triple-A. Either way, he’s expecting to be yelled at, because people don’t get called into the owner’s office for compliments and a good time.

What he isn’t expecting is—

“Interviews?” Eddie repeats. He’s sweaty, and he did something to his hamstring diving for that line drive in the fourth inning. All he really wants is to hit the showers, take some aspirin, and fall onto his lumpy hotel room mattress.

“A series of interviews,” the owner says, very slowly, as if the problem here is that Eddie’s too stupid to understand what she’s saying, and not that the idea of Eddie sitting for a bunch of interviews is objectively nuts. “You’ll talk to him from time to time throughout the season,” she adds helpfully, in case Eddie doesn’t understand what an interview is. “You can do that, can’t you?”

Eddie’d like to know how divorced from reality this lady has to be to think that Eddie can’t talk to reporters. Eddie’s entire problem—well, part of his problem, honestly Eddie has a lot of problems—is that he talks too much to reporters. Ask anyone in the locker room. Ask anyone who reads the sports page in any of the city’s newspapers. Sportswriters are the reason everybody hates Eddie. Okay, Eddie’s big mouth is the reason everybody hates Eddie, but he might have been able to keep it a secret if it hadn’t been for the reporters.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “What do you want me to say?” Because that’s the point, isn’t it? They must have some reason to ask Eddie, of all people, when the roster is stuffed with guys who’d love the chance for some good press while also getting their bar tab picked up. The team must want him to deliver some canned lines.

The owner frowns, like Eddie’s being slow. Constance Newbold and her sister inherited majority ownership of the New York Robins when their father dropped dead about five minutes after the expansion draft—a perfectly reasonable reaction to finding out what kind of players he’d been saddled with. The younger sister ran off to Paris or someplace where they’ve never even heard of baseball and is therefore living the dream of everyone associated with the Robins. As far as Eddie can tell, Connie Newbold hasn’t smiled once since inheriting the team, and he can’t blame her. She’s about forty, has a Katharine Hepburn accent that he did not know people had in real life, and every time Eddie sees her, he wants to straighten a tie he isn’t wearing.

Eddie turns to the other person in the room, the head of public relations, looking for help. He really wishes the manager were here, because even though Tony Ardolino hasn’t been sober for five consecutive minutes during the two weeks that Eddie’s been in New York, he’d at least be somebody else in a uniform.

The PR man clears his throat. “You’re happy to be here, you love being a part of this team, New York is a great city, you see a real future for the Robins,” he says, not looking up from his notebook.

“Okay.” Eddie still has about a dozen questions and twice as many comments, but he bites them all back. He’s been biting a lot of things back, which is pretty much a brand-new experience for him, and not one he cares for. “Which paper?” He hopes it isn’t the Post. One of the Post’s columnists has been tearing Eddie to shreds ever since the trade was announced. To be fair, every sports columnist and beat writer in the 

tristate area has spent the past two weeks tearing Eddie to shreds. Eddie has spent the past two weeks tearing Eddie to shreds. That ghoul at the Post seems to really be enjoying himself, though.

“The Chronicle.”

Eddie frowns. “George Allen?” George has to be eighty. He’s been writing about baseball since 1909. He wears a bowler hat and a pair of suspenders that pull his pants up to his armpits. He’s interviewed everybody from Babe Ruth to Jackie Robinson, and Eddie can’t imagine why he’d willingly sit down for an interview with the likes of Eddie O’Leary, can’t imagine why he’d want to.

“No,” the owner says, all slow and patient, like Eddie’s dumb for asking. “His name is Mark Bailey.” The PR guy’s pen has gone suspiciously still, probably because he’s never heard of Bailey, and neither has Eddie.

Eddie knows better than to ask what the hell is going on, so he just grits his teeth, says “Yes, ma’am,” and returns to a locker room that falls ominously silent as soon as he walks in.

*  *  *

When the reporter doesn’t show up after the next game, Eddie lets himself hope that the plans fell through. In his mind, the phrase series of interviews has taken on the same gloomy cadence as rain delay and batting slump and strained hamstring.

The next afternoon, Eddie doesn’t get on base, but he pulls off a pretty slick double play with the second baseman. Buddy Rosenthal might hate Eddie’s guts and certainly doesn’t have a civil word to spare for him, but he’s a goddamn professional and throws the ball where it needs to go. A couple more double plays like that, and maybe he’ll start speaking to Eddie in something other than grunts, but Eddie’s not getting his hopes up.

The win that they manage to eke out owes more to pitching and fielding than it does to hitting, and some of that fielding was Eddie’s, so he’s in something that might pass for a good mood when the reporters corner him in the locker room. The reporters are in a good mood, too, a Robins win a rare enough occurrence that it must give some variety to their days.

But when Eddie beckons Rosenthal over—which is what he’d have done for his second baseman in Kansas City, and what anyone would do when they’re congratulated on some fielding that was half somebody else’s work—Rosenthal walks away.

The silent treatment is Eddie’s punishment for what he said to the press after getting traded, and he knows he deserves it—he’s seen guys get worse punishments for doing less, and the silent treatment is almost quaintly old-fashioned. He should be able to handle it, but instead he’s desperately—homesick can’t be the word, because what he wants is his old team,

any team he’s ever played on. He feels like his face is pressed up against the glass, watching something he’s never going to get to have again.

So Eddie smiles at the press. He makes the usual noises about teamwork, and he thanks the fans. He’s been repeating these phrases in front of the mirror on the theory that if he memorizes his lines, he’s less likely to mention that nobody on this team can throw left-handed, or that the manager’s office is blockaded by empty whiskey bottles.

All the things he isn’t saying sit heavy in his mouth. He isn’t used to holding his tongue like this. In Kansas City, he used to babble almost nonstop, but now the memory of being surrounded by people who wanted to hear him run his stupid mouth, or at least didn’t hate him for it, feels like something he probably dreamed up. But he’s trying to behave—he knows how badly he fucked up when he mouthed off to the press, and he knows his teammates all hate him, so he’s really, really trying to make it up to them and nothing is working.

He bends to unlace his cleats, trying not to watch as one of the outfielders cheerfully whacks the starting pitcher with a rolled-up towel. The third-base coach comes over to take the towel and shove both players in the direction of the shower, then sneaks up behind the manager and smacks him with the towel. It’s like every locker room Eddie’s ever been in, except Eddie knows that if he tries to join in, everyone will either ignore him, or—worse—silently disperse, leaving him alone in the room, the smell of stale sweat and tobacco the only sign they were ever there.

When the cluster of reporters clears away from his stall, Eddie peels off his sweaty undershirt and is ready to retreat into the showers when he catches sight of an unfamiliar face. Well, it isn’t so much the man’s face that’s unfamiliar as it is his suit. Eddie doesn’t pay much attention to clothes beyond what it takes to make sure he looks reasonably normal, but there’s something about this man’s suit that stands out from the other reporters’. It’s . . . softer, maybe? It’s definitely better tailored. Also, he doesn’t look like he’s spent the past three hours sweating in a press box. He’s leaning against the piece of plywood that makes up the end of a row of stalls. His feet are crossed at the ankles, and he’s reading a book, not paying any attention whatsoever to the chaos that’s unfolding around him.

Eddie’s gaze travels up from the soft-looking gray wool to the man’s face. He’s a bit older than Eddie, maybe somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. His hair is a dark enough brown that it looks black under the shitty fluorescent light and is long enough that he’s got to be two weeks overdue for a haircut. The glare off his glasses makes it so Eddie can’t quite see his eyes.

But—he’s pretty. Pretty enough that you can’t help but notice. Well, Eddie can’t help but notice, and Eddie’s gotten really good at not noticing

 men, especially in locker rooms. Eddie is leading the National League in not noticing men in locker rooms.

Eddie’s only been here for two weeks, so it isn’t like he knows every single reporter on the Robins beat by sight, but he’s never seen this guy, and he’d bet nobody else here has, either. There’s nobody standing near him, which is strange, because sportswriters and athletes are both garbage at keeping their hands to themselves even under the best conditions, and anything like manners goes straight to hell in the locker room. It’s almost like the other reporters are bouncing off some kind of invisible force field around this guy, like he’s a magnet charged the wrong way. And he’s not making any effort to fix things—he isn’t introducing himself to the other reporters, he isn’t asking ballplayers any questions.

There’s a notebook and pen in the guy’s shirt pocket, peeking out from his unbuttoned suit jacket. But he isn’t writing anything down or even pretending to; he’s just reading that book. He’s definitely a reporter, though—Eddie’s never seen anyone other than a newspaperman carry that type of notebook.

The man’s gaze darts away from his book and toward Eddie’s stall, so fast that Eddie wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking. When he drops his book to his side and strolls over, it hits Eddie that he’d been waiting for the other reporters to leave.

Eddie perks up at the prospect of having a conversation with another human being, even if he really ought to know better than to be happy to see a reporter, even a handsome one. Especially a handsome one.

“Sorry to bother you,” the man says, as if it isn’t part of Eddie’s job to make nice with reporters in the locker room. “But I’m Mark Bailey from the Chronicle. I thought I’d introduce myself.” He holds out his hand, and Eddie is suddenly very conscious of the fact that he isn’t wearing a shirt and his pants are unbuttoned, even though he doesn’t usually think much about talking to reporters while he’s half naked.

The man’s hand is warm and dry. “Eddie O’Leary,” Eddie says, like a complete fool, because obviously this guy knows who he is. Jesus Christ.

“A pleasure.” Bailey does not sound particularly pleased.

With his free hand, Eddie brings his towel up to his chest in a deranged attempt at modesty. He forces himself to drop the towel. “What’s that you’re reading?” he asks, partly because that’s another

ten seconds he isn’t fielding questions about the three times he struck out today and also because he kind of wants to know how good a book has to be to keep someone’s attention in a loud locker room. Locker rooms are always a bit loud after a win, but when you lose as often as the Robins, a win means that all hell breaks loose.

Bailey blinks. “I . . . beg your pardon?”

“Never seen someone that into a book.”

“Not a surprise, with the company you keep,” Bailey says, snotty as anything, as he flicks a glance toward where Ardolino is pouring beer into the relief pitcher’s mouth and two outfielders are having what looks like a slap fight regarding the radio station. They are, in fact, a bunch of idiots, but that doesn’t mean it’s any of Bailey’s business to say so. Bailey seems to realize what he’s said the minute it’s left his mouth, and boy does Eddie know that feeling. “I only mean—”

“I know what you meant.” Most reporters think ballplayers are stupid, but it’s not every day they come right out and say so. He almost admires the balls on this guy.

“Wondered if you’d like to get some dinner?” Bailey asks.

At the word dinner, at least four of Eddie’s teammates drop their conversations and don’t even pretend not to be eavesdropping. Eddie isn’t going to have dinner with a reporter. Hardly anybody has dinner with reporters, and Bailey should know that. A drink at the hotel bar during road trips, sure. Not dinner. And especially not Eddie, who’s already gotten into enough trouble for blabbing to reporters. His teammates hate him plenty without thinking he’s the kind of guy who actually wants attention from the press.

Eddie has to be careful, otherwise he’s going to open his mouth and give this man five paragraphs of lunacy, starting with “You’re pretty” and ending with “Are you always this bad at your job?” with maybe some “Can I touch your suit?” thrown in there to maximize the horror.

“No,” Eddie says, which is enough. A single syllable, a complete sentence. He can’t get himself into trouble with one word. Then he imagines his mother whacking him with a rolled-up newspaper in open despair at his manners, and he decides he’ll have to manage a few more syllables. “No thank you, Mr. Bailey.”

Bailey’s eyebrows flicker, and for a minute Eddie thinks it’s relief he sees on Bailey’s face. Like maybe Bailey doesn’t want to be involved in this any more than Eddie does. Bailey straightens his glasses, and his expression settles into something like neutral professionalism. “First, please call me Mark. Second, is there some other time that would be convenient for you? I was given to understand . . .”

Now even a couple reporters are watching this. Oh Jesus, the last thing Eddie needs is for anybody to write this down. The columnists will make a meal of it. Eddie O’Leary, who hasn’t managed a single solitary base hit since getting traded to New York, thinks he’s too good to talk to reporters. Alternatively: Eddie O’Leary, who told Kansas City reporters all about how much he didn’t want to go to New York and referred to the Robins as a bunch of lazy drunks, is getting cozy with reporters again. There’s no way he can win.

“Right,” Eddie says. “Right. Okay.” He’ll say whatever it takes to get this over with. “Tomorrow. Morning.”

Bailey hands him a business card, and Eddie—who doesn’t have a pocket, who’s barely even wearing pants, whose blush is currently extending down to his navel for the entire locker room to see—has no choice but to hold on to it.

*  *  *

“They’re just trying to get some good press,” Eddie’s mom says, her voice crackling over a thousand miles of telephone wire. Usually if he shuts his eyes and pretends he isn’t holding the phone receiver, he can imagine he’s in his mom’s kitchen, but tonight Omaha sounds just as far away as it actually is. “You’re one of the biggest names on the team. All you have to do is cooperate, sweetie.”

Eddie wants to argue with her, but he really is one of the better-known players on the team, primarily because even on a team as shitty as the Robins, he’s a shining beacon of awfulness. If you’re talking about the Robins, you can’t help but talk about how Eddie O’Leary doesn’t know how to hit a baseball anymore. ...