Page 19 - Way Out to the Old Ballgame

El Brujo del Beisbol

get gloves with enough padding to protect their hands from the
impact of my pitches.”
“Yeah, I was a big hero in eighty-two. We went to the playoffs and
I won three games against the Beltway Flytraps. Unfortunately, we
lost the other four and didn’t go to the World Series. But I had made
the Juggernauts famous. A lot of us really hated to lose that World
Series bonus. Maybe some of us had already spent it. So the G.M.—
you remember that jerk Earl Bushmaster?—he set up a tour for us
after the season ended. That was a thrill for the players, traveling
around the world first-class, seeing the sights and playing a few
exhibition games against the local talent.”
“One fine day we landed in San Trueno. As usual, I was having a
good time with a bottle and wasn’t paying attention to our itinerary.
But there I was again, in that godforsaken place. It wasn’t anywhere
as classy as the towns we’d been seeing, but the luxury hotel there—
which I’d never been inside of before—was nice and air-conditioned.
And that was a good thing, because it was hot as hell down there,
hotter and drier than I remembered it. We checked in, had a party in
the hotel bar until they closed it, and went to our rooms to sleep off
the alcohol and jet lag.”
“The next morning I was awakened by a knock at the door. We
had to get to the park by ten o’clock for a day game against the San
Trueno All-Stars, and I thought it might be room service with a big
pot of coffee. Instead it was Roger, the guy I’d hung out with the
year before. He looked different, older, wearing some kind of
expensive safari suit. I thought he might want some free passes to the
game, but that wasn’t it. It was the little doll he wanted. He reminded
me of that night we had gone out into the boondocks and gotten
thrown out of that roadhouse. Then he said he had made a big
mistake and was in a lot of trouble over that incident. It didn’t make
sense to me; he looked like he had enough money to buy his way out
of any legal difficulties, especially in a country like that.”
“But he kept telling me his people were suffering, that they were in
a drought lasting almost a year. Crops and animals were dying, and
the government was desperate. I said I was sorry for them, and that
maybe the Juggernauts could bring a few hours of happiness into

18