Black and White Photos

                                                    BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS
         
         His friends and family thought he was crazy,  Jim thought.  They didn't understand his obsession with Jack Carlyle.  One of the few benefits of getting into  your mid-fifties was that you were allowed a few  eccentricities and, as eccentricities went, an obsession with a major league pitcher from the 1950s was fairly mild stuff.
         Jim loved baseball.  But his interest was primarily  in the stars who made the Hall of Fame.  If you said you were a fan of Ted Williams, Joe  DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle,  or Willie Mays people at least knew the names.  When you told them you were a Jack Carlyle fan even devoted baseball fans gave  you a blank look.
         He thought his wife Jean would be tolerant of his new obsession, but Jean  left him six months ago.  He wasn't sure he could lay the blame entirely on Jack Carlyle.  He and Jean had existed together for the last few years, but they led mostly separate lives.  Jean was interested in retiring and getting a RV and taking road trips.  Jack was all right with road trips.  But Jean wasn't excited at all about visiting minor league cities and minor league ballparks and baseball card shows.
         He always wanted to play baseball.  He discovered fairly early that he didn't have any talent, so he lived vicariously through players he admired.  He wasn't quite sure when he got interested in baseball's past.  Maybe it was when he got a book one Christmas about baseball history.
         The book had those quaint photos of old teams like the Cincinnati Red Stockings.  The guys posed in their old time uniforms and their mustaches reminded Jim of riverboat gamblers.  He loved all the old black and white photos of players like Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner.  When he saw photos of  the old ballparks it felt like he  could just step into the picture and become a part of the crowd.
         What was it about Jack Carlyle, he wondered.  Jack had the “cup of coffee” in the big leagues.  He lasted a season and a half.  He put up good numbers, though. Some people even compared him to the great Bob Feller.  Jack made it to the majors just two seasons after Feller retired.  But at the start of the 1960 season Jack Carlyle was murdered outside a restaurant in Baltimore.          
         Jack's baseball card  showed a young sandy-haired man with penetrating blue eyes.  Jack wasn't smiling in the baseball card photo.  He held his glove in front of his chest and looked poised to go into his motion.          
         When he began researching Jack Carlyle Jim found a website devoted to the Carlyle family history.  There were some photos of Jack growing up and playing  in the minor leagues.  Jack's father ran a small general store and played in amateur baseball leagues himself.  He said he knew Jack had major talent even at five years old when he could throw harder than many teenagers.
         Jim had to admit that the trivia about Jack's childhood and time in school didn't interest him much.  He was intrigued by Jack's professional career.  He searched the Internet and Ebay and baseball memorabilia shows for anything related to Jack's career.  When he saw the Oriole  jacket he knew it was the prize item for his collection.
         The jacket was an actual game jacket that Jack Carlyle wore in the 1960 season.  For a vintage jacket, it was priced reasonably at $600.00, although that was a lot of money for Jim.  The other problem was that the jacket would be too small for him.  He would  either have to lose weight, or just keep the jacket on a hanger.
         He tried not to obsess about  when the jacket would arrive, but obsession was what he felt.  He checked the tracking information on the Internet several times a day.  It was like a hypochondriac checking his blood pressure.  By the time the package arrived, he had already had visions of every possible bad scenario that could happen. 
         The jacket would get lost, the jacket would be damaged, the jacket would get stolen.  Or they would send the wrong jacket entirely, and the jacket he wanted had gone to someone else.
         When the jacket arrived he found he needed to lose three or four inches for it to fit.  He cut back his calories and pretended he was getting in shape for spring training.  He started walking around the neighborhood and carried a baseball glove and baseball everywhere he went.  He really didn't mind the curious looks the neighbors gave him.  They didn't even know his name.
         When he slept he dreamed  about Jack Carlyle and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.  He imagined himself on the mound in the warm afternoon sun and hearing the murmur of the crowd.  He could detect the smell of oil on his glove and the scent of crab cakes from the concession stands.  He was  the master of the universe.  The whole game revolved around him going into his motion and slinging the ball toward home plate.          
         Now he worked for an insurance company, and he was bored out of his mind.  Jean never understood his need for a job he could love.  To her, stability and income and climbing the corporate ladder were more important than baseball.  She thought that vicarious excitement, such as following his teams in the newspaper or on the radio, should be enough.  In fact, she  thought he went to excess on that.
         He missed Jean sometimes, but he was more content than he had been in a long time.  He hurried home from work and got into his baseball shirt and cap.  He immersed himself in statistics and books about managing.  He took a baseball with him to bed.  He wanted a baseball to feel as natural in his hand as his own fingers.
         He wasn't aware of anything unusual until people at work started asking what he was doing to make himself look different. He said all he was doing was walking more and watching his diet.  One woman said he looked younger and asked if he was dying his hair.  His gray hair looked more blond these days, she said.
         He thought it was probably just wishful thinking, but his face didn't look as lined now.  When he moved he wasn't feeling aches and pains that had become part of his life.  He felt younger and he looked younger.
         Now he was losing inches around his middle.  He thought he would be able to wear the Jack Carlyle jacket in a few  weeks. 
         As warm weather came around he  wanted to pitch.  He didn't care if he pitched against actual hitters or in a real game.  He just wanted to go on a mound and throw to a catcher.  He found a kid named Jerome Parker who played on the high school team.  Jerome wasn't normally a catcher, but he offered to catch Jim for $5.00 a session.
         His first outing wasn't pretty.  He had little velocity and several pitches sailed over Jerome's head into the backstop.  Other pitches dug divots around home plate. 
         “I don't know who this is worse for,” Jerome said at one point.  He lifted up his catcher's mask and tossed the ball back to Jim.  “Worse for me or for you.  You've never pitched, have you?”
         “Nope,” Jim said and pounded the ball into his glove.  “I always wanted to.”
         “You're trying too hard,” Jerome said.  “Just take it slow and easy.  Get the ball over the plate.  You don't have to be  Nolan Ryan yet.”
         Jerome pushed the catcher's mask back down over his face and squatted behind the plate.  Jim went slowly through his motion, trying to emulate the advice he had read about pitching.  He brought the ball down by his ear and pushed off the pitching rubber.  The ball exploded from his hand like a guided missile and blazed into Jerome's mitt.  He heard a satisfying pop! Resin flew out from Jerome's mitt.
         “Wow!” Jerome said.  “Where did that come from?  I wish we had a radar gun.  I bet you were in the mid-nineties.”
         “It was so easy all of a sudden,” Jim said almost to himself.
         “See if you can do it again,” Jerome said.  He gestured for Jim to throw again.
         Jim went easily into his pitching motion, not even thinking about the mechanics now, and a white blur left his hand.
         “That was something, man,” Jerome said when they finished.  “You're  how old now?”
         “Never mind,” Jim grinned.
         “No, no,” Jerome said.  “I mean it's a shame you can't pitch in competitive baseball with stuff like that.”
         “Yeah,” Jim said.  “If we could only turn back time.”
         It was that night that the girl, Michelle,  began appearing in his dreams.  She was a honey blond, with soft lustrous skin, and an eye-popping figure.  In his dreams he felt Michelle  against him, her curves finding every curvature of his own body, her long hair brushing softly against his face and chest.  He could smell her and feel her warmth and when he woke he could swear she was real.
         Now when he woke at night his first instinct was to look for the dream girl Michelle.  His second instinct was to circle his pitching arm above his head.  He just wanted to reassure himself that it still worked.
         His memories and those of Jack Carlyle were becoming the same.  He had read so much about Jack, and had thought so much about Jack, that Jack's life was becoming his life.  He could actually remember games he'd pitched in, although Jim had never played competitive baseball.  When he saw a rare video of Jack pitching he could remember being there.  He didn't tell anyone about his deja vu experiences.  They already thought he was crazy.
         He looked forward to his workouts with Jerome.  He was learning more about pitching.  He was working on a curve now and he impressed Jerome with some  knee-buckling curves off the corners.  He was also learning to change speeds on his fastball and different grips made the ball dart in and out from the hitter. He was even thinking about showing up at a spring training camp for a tryout.  He looked a lot younger than his age.
         Every day when he got home he tried on the Jack Carlyle jacket.  It still didn't quite fit, but he was close.  If he lost another inch or so around his middle, the jacket would fit.  He didn't know why that was so important to him, but having the jacket fit would make him feel more like Jack Carlyle on those spring and summer evenings in 1959 and 1960.
         He was seeing the figures of shadowy men in his dreams.  The men wore topcoats and fedoras.  He could smell the hamburger and onions from the diner where he'd eaten dinner, and then he  heard the ominous, whispery voice of a deep voice telling him his time was up.  He saw the yellow flash of gunfire and felt the shotgun pellets biting deep into his chest.  He felt his blood pumping from his body.  He was feeling what Jack Carlyle felt on the night Jack was murdered.
         When he woke he decided it was just a bad dream.  He was a fan of gangster movies, and the imagery from the movies was recurring in his dreams.  Jack Carlyle's murder had  never been explained, and it probably would always remain a mystery, he thought.
         He thought  about Jerome's statement that he should pitch competitive baseball.  He began researching teams that allowed men over 50 to play.  He was excited when he heard from a team called the Fresno Mules.  The Mules played in a league devoted to men in their thirties, forties, and fifties.  The salary was minimal, but the owner said that players could garner commercial endorsements and sometimes positions with minor or major league teams. He offered Jim a tryout.
         The owner was named Fred Watkins.  He told Jim that the Mules were having a workout/tryout at a park.  When Jim got to the park he saw the man he assumed was Watkins standing behind the backstop.  Watkins wore a rumpled gray suit coat and a fedora pushed back on his head.  He looked like an old-time sportswriter, Jim thought.
         Watkins even had a steno pad in his hand that he was tapping with a cheap ballpoint pen.  He glanced up from the pad and looked at Jim with pale gray eyes.
         “You're Jim?” Watkins said and stuck out his hand.  “Fred Watkins.  Fresno Mules, Inc.”
         “Nice day for a workout,” Jim said.  It was a nice day, he thought. 
The sky was filled with high white cumulus clouds that looked like clipper ships with their sails full of wind.
         A man who looked about Jim's age was standing with a fungo bat at home plate and hitting sharp grounders to the infielders.  The men looked in good shape and snapped up the grounders and fired accurate throws to first.
         “How's the arm?” Watkins asked.
         “Good,” Jim said.  “I just need to warm up a little.”
         “Hey, Flamingo,” Watkins called to one of the men. 
         A tall man wearing a red baseball cap came toward them.  He had a well-developed upper torso, but his legs looked spindly.
         “Don't let the legs fool you,” Watkins said.  “The guy throws smoke.”
         “Flamingo,” the man said and shook Jim's hand.  “Let's see what you've got.”
         Flamingo put on a catcher's mask and started playing catch with Jim.  After a few throws he went into a catcher's squat and told Jim, “Throw me some hard stuff.”
         Jim pretended it was Jerome behind the plate and went easily into his motion.  His fastball popped into Flamingo's mitt.  The man didn't comment, but just tossed the ball back to Jim.  After a few more fastballs he asked Jim to throw a curve.  Jim's curve dropped low and bit off a corner of the plate.  Jim noticed that Fred Watkins was watching now.
         “You're sure you've never played in a league somewhere?” Watkins asked.
         “Nope,” Jim said.  “I never thought I was any good.”
         Watkins walked over to Flamingo and they turned away from Jim, apparently in conference.
         “We'd like to sign you to a short-term contract,” Watkins said.  “If we like what we see, we'll talk longer term.”
         The contract wasn't like what Major Leaguers got, Jim thought.  It was $1,600 a month during the season, twenty dollars a day in meal money on the road, and lodging on the road.  But it wasn't a hard decision.  It was the fulfillment of a dream.
         In his dreams that night he was Jack Carlyle and Michelle was with him.  He had just signed his first professional contract with the Baltimore Orioles. They had hamburgers, French fries, and milkshakes to celebrate.
         “I'll have to prove myself in the minors,” he told her.  The scent of her perfume mingled with the scent of onion rings and grilled chicken.
         “You won't be there long,” she told him, smiling.  The diner light haloed around her golden hair and her blue eyes peered into his face.
         “I need to work on my control,” he told her.  “You can throw the ball through the wall, but it doesn't matter if you can't throw strikes.  They just take every pitch.  Then when you try to let up they sit on the pitch and hammer it.”
         He could see then that Michelle's thoughts were somewhere else.  There was only so much baseball talk that she found interesting.
         But, then, maybe it wasn't baseball talk.  Michelle often seemed preoccupied to him.  There were things he wouldn't share with her, he thought, and there would be secrets she would keep too.  You never knew everything about another person, and maybe it was best that way.
          Flamingo's real name was Kevin Waters.  Kevin had hung around the fringes of baseball his entire adult life.  He had a moderately successful minor league career and then went into coaching.  He  watched some of his students go into college and minor league baseball, but none had made it to the Show yet.  “It would be ironic,” he told Jim, “if I made it to the majors before they did.”
         “Why not?” Jim said.  “Satchel Paige got a late start.”
         Flamingo, Jim learned, got his nickname from his red, almost pink, hair, as much as from his thin legs.  When Flamingo went into his windup and perched on one leg  he looked very much like a flamingo, Jim thought, but he threw very hard for an inning or two.  His problem was that he couldn't sustain his velocity for very long.  “I learned to hate the sound of someone making good contact,” Flamingo said.  “I could tell immediately that a hitter had taken me over the wall.  As the old saying goes, he who cannot do, teaches.”
         “This seems really surreal,” Jim said.  “I'm a middle-aged guy playing a kid's game that I couldn't play well when I was a kid.  I think I just gave up.  What if I had kept at it?”
         Flamingo shrugged.  “You're a late bloomer.  It just wasn't the right time back then.”
         “Time” was the operative word, Jim thought.  When he wasn't working out with the Mules he was home reading about baseball in the 1950's.  It was a great time.  It was when the Brooklyn Dodgers won their one  World Series in Brooklyn.  It was when Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history.  It was when the Dodgers and Giants moved to the West Coast, making major league baseball a game that spanned the entire country.  It was a time for great players like Mantle, Mays, and Aaron to shine.
         He was beginning to feel that the 1950's was his own time.  When he saw the cars and fashions from the 1950's they felt comfortable and familiar.  The cars appealed to him more than anything from his own time.  He loved the music and the movies.
         But, he thought, someday there might be a guy who would look at the first decade after the year 2000 as an idyllic time.  But it was hard to imagine that a time of  Bush and Cheney and Iraq and global warming was idyllic.
         Flamingo was helping him smooth out his motion.  He was eliminating unnecessary movement and compacting his move to the plate.  His velocity was good and his control was improving.  But he wasn't good at holding runners or fielding bunts yet.
         He had heard about sports camaraderie, but he never quite understood it before.  It was probably another unique chapter in male bonding, he thought, but he enjoyed the time sitting on the bench talking to the other pitchers almost as much as pitching. 
         It sounded immodest, but he knew he had more talent than anyone else on the team.  His closest competitor was Phil Joffrie, a lefthander, who threw mostly off-speed stuff.  Joffrie had a better curve than he did, but Joffrie's fastball topped out in the mid-eighties.  Joffrie was younger, though, at just thirty-eight.  He had a marginal chance of going to the big leagues if he performed well.  Jim knew he had no chance because he was too old.
         The Mules were going to play their first game against the Stockton Condors.  They would ride the bus up Freeway 99 to Stockton and stay for a three-game series.  When he was younger the thought of being on the road sounded romantic to Jim.  But his competitive juices were more on his mind than any thought of romance.  He wanted to blow away enemy hitters and become the stuff of legend.  The stuff of legend, he thought then.  How pretentious can you get?
         They were going to play just afternoon games in Stockton because the Condors couldn't line up a ballpark with lights.  Their “ballpark” was a diamond in a park that has been temporarily converted for paid customers.  There were portable restrooms and concession stands set up.  The outfield fence was a taped off area patrolled by a surly-looking security guard. 
         “Welcome to the big time,” Flamingo told Jim.
         Jim was getting the start.  In this league a pitcher could get a win if he went three full innings.  In practice games Jim had pitched seven inning games, but real competition was far more intense.
         The team dressed at their motel because there were no locker rooms at the ballpark.  Jim thought briefly about getting a lucky charm.  Lots of ballplayers used lucky charms, but he couldn't think of anything lucky except a Jack Carlyle baseball card.  The card was valuable and he didn't want to damage it, so he got a copy made that he could tuck into his pants pocket.  It's you and me, Jack, he thought. It's us  against the world.
         There was the kind of crowd you'd expect at a company picnic.  Overweight guys wearing tee shirts and shorts and baseball caps were the major presence in the stands.  There were a few kids, some matronly women, and not many attractive women, Jack thought.  Maybe it was just as well since he should be concentrating on pitching.
         “Look at this,” Flamingo handed him a copy of the Stockton paper.  The sports section had a story headlined “Geezer Ball.” 
         “Maybe that's what we should have named the team,” Jim said.  “The Geezers.”
         “For the life of me, I don't see how this league is financially viable,” Flamingo said.  “Not that I'm a great businessman or anything.  But sports are for young guys.  We're supposed to be in the stands cheering them on.”
         “Now 50 is like 30,” Jim grinned.  “But it seems that I felt a lot different at 30.”
         The Stockton afternoon was mild and the sky was dotted with white clouds.  It would be a good afternoon for fielding popups and fly balls, Jim thought.  When the sky was clear the players called it a “high sky.”  It wasn't a good background to follow the flight of the ball.
         Jim went to the visitor's bullpen and began to warm up.  Flamingo stood behind him to evaluate his motion.  Some fans in the stands  began chanting “Whoop!” when Jim threw to the catcher and “Whooo” when the catcher threw the ball back.  But after a few pitches he was making the mitt pop and the fans couldn't believe a 50+ guy could throw so hard.
         Jim felt himself sliding into what athletes called “the zone.” His concentration was strictly on the game and he shut out the rest of the world.  He only knew that the Mules went scoreless in the first inning.  He moved almost automatically to the mound and began his warmups.
         The first hitter for Stockton was a second baseman named Bobby Devine.  He was a left-handed hitter.  He was still in his thirties, and had played briefly at the big league level.  Jim looked in at Bobby Devine, but then it wasn't Bobby Devine anymore.
         Jim walked behind the mound and he saw the famous confines of Yankee Stadium.  It wasn't Bobby Devine striding to the plate.  It was Mickey Mantle.
         The catcher emerged from his squat and trotted out to the mound.  Jim noticed that the catcher was wearing an Orioles uniform.  He looked at his own uniform.  He was wearing an Orioles uniform too.
         “You okay, Jack?” the catcher said.
         “Sure,” Jim said uncertainly.
         “Just remember,” the catcher pounded his mitt.  “Mantle puts his pants on one leg at a time too.”
         As he stood on the mound and looked in at Mickey Mantle in his stance Jim felt more alive than any time in his life.  He wasn't sure at this moment if he was Jim Weston or Jack Carlyle.  He just knew he was facing the great Mickey Mantle in his prime and he was confident he could get Mickey Mantle out.
         He took a deep breath and rocked into his motion.  He was going to feed Mantle straight fastballs.  The first pitch was on Mantle's hands and Mantle fouled it straight back.  The next pitch was just off the outside corner for a ball.  He came in with a high and tight fastball that moved Mantle off the plate for ball two.  Then he went back to the outside corner.  Mantle rifled the pitch to the opposite field.  The Oriole left fielder caught it near the foul line.
         He stepped back off the pitching rubber and  then he was back in Stockton.  Bobby Devine had lined out to the left fielder.  He struck out the  next hitter and the third hitter grounded out to second. 
         When he walked back to the dugout Flamingo said, “You okay, bud?  You looked a little zoned out.”
         “Never better,” Jim said.  “In my mind I got Mickey Mantle out.”
         “With the kind of stuff you've got right now you'd get Mantle or Mays out,” Flamingo said.
         Then Jim sat in the corner of the dugout away from everyone and watched the Stockton pitcher work.  He was a former Triple A star, according to the program.  He didn't throw as hard as Jim, but he moved the ball around well.  The Mules did pick up a run in the second inning on a base hit, an error, and another base hit.
         Jim breezed through the next few innings and the Mules got the win.
         When he was a kid he wondered what it would be like talking to the media after a game.  The “media” consisted of one reporter from the Stockton paper, who looked bored.
         “You're how old?” the reporter asked.
         “Fifty-four, give or take a few days,” Jim grinned.
         “You looked like a twenty-five-year-old out there,” said the reporter.  “What's your secret?”
         “As the Sundance Kid said, prayer,” Jim replied.  “That and my lucky baseball card.”  He pulled the copy of the Jack Carlyle card from his pants pocket.
         The reporter took the copy of the card from Jim and looked up at Jim.  Then he looked back at the card.  “I'd swear you and Jack Carlyle were twins,” the reporter said.  “Are you related?”
         “I've just been a fan for a while,” Jim said. 
         When he looked in the mirror Jim was startled at how different he looked.  He knew some of it was from working out and from being in the sun.  Part of him was excited and a part of him was apprehensive.  He was becoming Jack Carlyle.
         The Mules swept their three games in Stockton and some of the sports writers who covered the games were more impressed with “geezer ball” than they thought they would be.  Jim was impressed too.  He had the thought, fleetingly, that maybe some of the other players in the league were reincarnations of other ballplayers too.  Maybe Jack Carlyle and some other players were playing in this league too.  It was silly, he thought, but was it?
         When he got home he tried on the Jack Carlyle jacket.  It fit this time.  And then it was as though a door swung open and he stepped back into 1960.  He was on a street corner in Baltimore and the  smell of hamburgers and onions perfumed the evening air.  He saw the woman he knew as Michelle.  He saw her just a moment and then he was back in his own time.
         Was this just his overactive imagination, he thought, or was the jacket some kind of time portal?  Jack Carlyle had been murdered.  Did he want to go back to 1960 as Jack Carlyle and take a blast from a sawed off shotgun?  He had the advantage of knowing the date and time Jack was murdered, but was it possible for him to alter what had happened back then?
         If anyone knew the answer to why Jack was murdered, he thought, it was Michelle.  She wouldn't tell him the way she was in 1960, but she might tell him in his own time. He needed to find her.
         It wasn't simple, though.  There were stories about Michelle in the papers in the aftermath of Jack's shooting.  But the police didn't locate the killers and Michelle dropped from sight.  He found one story that she might have gotten married again in 1963 to a man named Joseph Brooks.  Joseph Brooks was in the sports supply business and lived in Chicago. 
         The Mules  had a day off before they  played  three home games against the Modesto Madmen.  But they had a scheduled workout.  Jim didn't mind because he liked hanging out with Flamingo and the other guys.
         “I didn't know much about Jack Carlyle,” Flamingo told him.  “But he sounded like he had the stuff.  How did you get hooked on Carlyle?”
         “I saw his picture in an old book,” Jim said.  “He looked like Jack London to me.  I got to thinking about reincarnation or something.”
         “Jack London played baseball?” Flamingo asked.
         “No,”  Jim said.  “I just always liked Jack London.”
         It was a light workout.  Jim ran a little in the outfield and threw thirty pitches to Flamingo.  He was working on his curve and it seemed to be getting better.  He would be starting against the Madmen.
         The wind picked up near sundown the next day and Jim couldn't get loose in the bullpen.  The crowd was decent, at least for this league, and he wanted to do something spectacular for the home crowd.  But the first hitter smacked a hanging curve ball out of the park and it didn't get much better.  Jim gave up five runs in three innings. 
         He made his way to the tiny locker room the Mules were using.  He wanted to do something dramatic like kick a locker or knock over a water cooler.  But when he went into the quiet locker room he felt peaceful.  Statistically, he thought, I'm going to have some bad outings.  Jack Carlyle had bad outings.  Even Sandy Koufax had bad outings. 
         Then he was back in 1960 and sitting at a table with Michelle.  It was an Italian restaurant.  He had a plate of spaghetti,  but he wasn't very hungry.
         “You just had a bad night, sweetie,” Michelle said.  “Everybody in every job has off days.  You'll be great next time.”
         He was winding spaghetti around his fork when a man with too much hair tonic, too much cologne, and a cheap suit stopped by the table.  He smiled brightly, too much like a used car salesman, Jim thought.
         “Michelle,” he said, “can you introduce me to your friend?”
         “Sure,” Michelle said a little bit artificially.  “Jack Carlyle, this is Joseph Brooks. He runs the sporting goods store near Memorial Stadium.”
         Then, suddenly, someone was at the door of the locker room. He was back in the present.  Flamingo came into the room and sat next to him.
         “This game can drive you crazy, you know,” Flamingo said.
         “It mostly a good crazy,” Jim said.  “Did you ever wish you had lived in another time?”
         “I don't know,” Flamingo slumped back against a locker. “This is the time I know.  How would I know it would be better?”
         “No one ever knows unless they try,” Jim said. 
         “It's not the same as moving somewhere, bud,” Flamingo said.  “You can't just pick a time and say you're moving.  It doesn't work that way.”
         Jim started researching Joseph  Brooks.  Brooks had run the Winning Birds Sporting Goods Store in Baltimore, but he didn't manage it well and it went out of business in 1963.  He found a photo of Brooks when the wedding announcement with Michelle Carlyle was published.  He felt a chill.  The man in the photo was the same man he'd met in his “trip” back to 1960.
         He wondered why someone as bright and attractive as Michelle Carlyle would marry someone like Joseph  Brooks.  But relationships often didn't make sense, he thought.  He wondered now why he had been attracted to Jean.  It was like a Broadway play gone bad.  It started out with lots of promise and lots of glitter and descended quickly into boos and catcalls and bad reviews.
         Now that the Jack Carlyle jacket fit he started wearing it whenever it was cool enough.  He got lots of admiring looks from women.  He was conflicted over it.  In some ways he felt committed to Michelle Carlyle, but that was Michelle Carlyle from over forty years ago.  She  was a woman married to a another man.  He wasn't sure if the jacket enabled him to travel back to 1960, but he thought the jacket was a part of it.
         The Mules had a series against the Bakersfield Derricks.  They took the bus down Freeway 99 to Bakersfield and checked into the cheap motel that would be home for three days.  Jim had an attachment of sorts to Bakersfield.  He had grown up listening to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard music. 
         “So how's the arm?” Flamingo asked him.
         “It's good,” Jim said.  “I want to beat the Derricks and go to the Crystal Palace tomorrow.”
         He was a totally different pitcher than his last outing.  His velocity was good and he was hitting his spots in the strike zone.  It helped that the Derricks were not as talented as Modesto, but he still felt good about his effort. 
         He slept well that night even though his roommate kept the lamp on, watched old “Gilligan's Island” reruns, and played solitaire until early in the morning.
         It was early enough in the season to play a Saturday afternoon game.  As summer came on in the San Joaquin Valley, baseball wasn't practical during the day time.  The Mules lost the next day.  Jim got the job of charting pitches  for the Mule starter.  He kept a pitch count, what pitches were thrown, and how the hitter reacted.  It helped keep his mind in the game.
         He changed clothes back at the motel and  shared a cab with Flamingo to the Crystal Palace.  The building reminded him of a saloon in a western movie or TV show.  A deck ran around the top level.  Classic cars, polished as bright as mirrors, were parked in front.  When he got inside he went around and checked out the memorabilia in the glass display cases.  There were Buck Owens records, Buck Owens jackets, guitars, and photos.  Seeing photos of Buck Owens, Don Rich, and the Buckaroos brought back lots of memories.
         There were statues of country music superstars like Merle Haggard and Garth Brooks and George Jones in the lobby, and  a statue of Buck Owens himself.  Jim  posed for a picture in front of the Merle Haggard statue.  As Flamingo started to snap a picture a nice-looking woman, who looked very much like Michelle Carlyle, came up and put her arm around him.
         “Don't just stand there,” she teased him.  “Put your arm around me.”
         Then the woman disappeared into the building and Jim and Flamingo found their table.  They had something called “Bakersfield caviar” that was similar to salsa.  It had ingredients like black eyed peas and onions.  Jim ordered a sandwich named after the late lead guitarist Don Rich and Flamingo got a steak.
         The veteran members of the Buckaroos came on stage and the house lights went down.  The “on the air” sign in front of the stage lit up and the show was on.
         Then as the band played the introduction to “Buckaroo” Jim was suddenly not there anymore.  He found himself back in 1960 in a jazz club.  Smoke curled around the rafters as the trumpet player played a long solo.  Michelle was at his side.  She was sipping a beer from a glass.  Jim had a shot glass of Scotch.  He thought for a moment that the atmosphere was like an old detective movie.
         Then, even amid the cigarette smoke, he detected the scent of hair tonic and cheap aftershave  He wasn't sure why Joseph Brooks would be in the jazz club, but then he was there. 
         “Michelle?” Brooks said.  “Jack?  How are you?” he stuck out his hand and Jim gave a tepid shake.
         “Mind if I sit?” Brooks said and pulled up a chair before Jim could answer.
         Brooks pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and shook a cigarette loose. He struck a match and the flame flared up in the dim light.  He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.
         “So, you're a jazz aficionado?” Michelle asked.
         “Yeah,” Brooks shrugged.  “I guess so.  I go to all the clubs, you know.  You two like jazz?”
         “I just like music,” Jim said.  “Anything to relax.”
         “Sure, sure,” said Brooks.  “You have a high pressure job.  Even though, I have to say I don't see the Orioles doing much this year.  It's probably less pressure if you aren't a contender, huh?”
         “I don't know,” Jim said.  “I haven't had the experience of being a contender yet.”
         “Sorry,” Brooks shifted in his chair.  “I didn't mean to offend.  I know when you actually play it's different than being just a casual fan.  It must be like a lawyer losing a case.”
         “It's worse for his client,” Jim said  with a tight smile  and he saw Michelle tense up.  He didn't know what it was.  He just didn't like or trust Joseph  Brooks.
         “Yeah,” Brooks stubbed out his cigarette.  “Well, I'll let you two enjoy your evening.  Good luck on the pitching thing.”  He slipped off into the shadows of the room.
         “Why is that guy hanging around?” Jim asked Michelle.
         “I don't know,” she said quietly.  “He gives me the creeps.”
         Jim wanted to say “me too,” but was silent.
         Then it was like walking through a door into another room.  He was back at the Crystal Palace in Bakersfield with Flamingo.  Flamingo was obviously enjoying the music.
         “I never thought I'd like hillbilly music,” Flamingo said.
         “Then let this day go down on your calendar,” Jim said.  He sounded snide and he immediately regretted it.  “Sorry,” he said.  “Something was on my mind.”
         “I've noticed,” Flamingo said loudly over the music.  “What are you planning to do when you get back to the real world?  You know, this league and this pitching thing aren't going to last long.  Is it back to the office?”
         “If things go well enough, maybe I'll write a book,” Jim said. 
         People were line dancing in front of the stage.  It looked like good exercise, Jim thought, but not something he wanted to do.
         Flamingo's question stayed in his mind.  What would he do?  He was in his mid-fifties.  What kind of a career would he have now?  I wish it were possible, he thought wistfully, to go back to 1960 and be Jack Carlyle and not get shot. 
         When  the team returned to Fresno he checked out the Jack Carlyle website he had found earlier.  He was looking for a contact number.  He wanted to find out how to contact Michelle Carlyle/Brooks.  If the Joseph  Brooks she had married was the same man  he had seen in 1960, he wondered why she married the guy.
         He found an email address to contact the site administrator.  He composed an email explaining who he was, that he was a Jack Carlyle admirer, and was doing research on Jack.  He wondered if Michelle would consent to an interview.
         A few days later he got a reply directly from Michelle Brooks.  She said only that she  was living in California now, that Joseph had died about ten years ago, and that she would answer what questions she could about Jack, but that it was a long time ago.
         Jim sent her information about the Fresno Mules and articles about the games he had pitched.  He also sent a photo.
         She replied, “It's amazing how much you look like Jack.  You could almost be his twin brother.  Jack was the love of my life.  I admired some things about Joseph, but I married him mostly out of loneliness.  I'm not sure I can ever say I truly loved him.  We were companions and we lived mostly separate lives.”
         Jim asked her, “Do you think Joseph had anything to do with Jack's murder?”
         “God no!” she answered.  “If I thought that Joseph killed Jack, or had him killed, I would never have married Joseph.  I don't know of any motive Joseph would have had to kill Jack.  Joseph was a good businessman, if not a great one, but as far as I know he was always honest.”
         Now it wasn't just idle curiosity that drove Jim.  He had to find out why Jack Carlyle was killed or, more importantly, who killed Jack.  He wasn't sure he could control his travels back in time.  He could suddenly find himself in front of that diner and the shotgun blasts could be at him.
         As he was mulling that over he got another email from Michelle:  “I thought you might want to know about a baseball historian named Calvin Weber. He has taken a real interest in Jack for some reason.  Maybe he has some information for you.”
         Jack sent his picture and the stories of his short baseball career to Calvin Weber.  In the meantime, he did some research on Weber.  He found out that Weber was living in Baltimore when Jack Carlyle was murdered.  Weber was young then, only about sixteen, and said the Jack Carlyle murder inspired him to become a baseball historian.  He took a special interest in players he called “could have been great.”  Weber maintained that Jack Carlyle would have won over 300 major league games, struck out 3,000 hitters, and pitched six or seven no-hitters.  It was all speculation as far as Jim was concerned, but Weber said his statistical analysis was sound.
         Jim waited two or three days and thought he wouldn't hear back from Calvin Weber.  Then he finally got an email.  “I heard from Michelle Brooks,” Weber wrote.  “I agree that you look amazingly like Jack Carlyle.  From what I hear, your pitching style is also very similar.  Do you believe in reincarnation?  Ha!”
         For some reason, Jim found the “Ha!” disturbing.  Had the  soul of Jack Carlyle somehow taken over Jim's body?  He didn't think so, but he never thought time travel was possible either.
         His next start was in Fresno against the Sacramento Pols.  Sacramento was in last place, so he felt pretty confident he would get a win.  When he went out to the bullpen to start his warmups he caught a glimpse of a man wearing a dark derby hat and sunglasses.  The man looked amazingly like the man in his dreams, the man who had shot Jack Carlyle.  He tried to dismiss the man from his mind and he had a good  warmup.
         As he threw in the bullpen, he remembered the last start Jack Carlyle made was against the Cleveland Indians.  It was a pleasant night in Baltimore and there was a good crowd.  Jack had good stuff that night and got the win with a strong seven inning stint.  One of the hitters taking batting practice for Sacramento reminded Jim of Jimmy Piersall, who played for the Indians in 1960.
         The sky was clear and he went behind the mound and watched the evening stars emerge.  The moon was full.  It would be good for his fastball, he thought.  The moon and gravitational forces and the physics of baseball all working in tandem.
         He finished his warmup pitchers to the catcher and the catcher fired the ball to the second baseman.  The ball went around the horn and he was ready for the first pitch.  The first pitch was often a preview of the game to come, he thought.  If the pitch went where he wanted with the velocity he wanted, it was a good sign.
         He went into his windup and then he was in Baltimore on that night in 1960.  The game against the Indians was over and he had a win.  He felt good from his shower and was walking along the players' runway.  A young man stuck out a baseball for his autograph.  Signing autographs was new for Jack Carlyle and he still found it flattering. 
         He realized with a start that the young man was Calvin Weber.  He was sixteen in this time, but he looked much the same as he did years later.
         “You were wonderful, Mr. Carlyle,” Calvin Weber said.  “Thank you for the autograph.”
         “My pleasure,” Jim Weston said.
         He heard just a murmur from the crowd as he stood on the mound back in Fresno.  He looked at the scoreboard and the Mules had a 2-1 lead over Sacramento.  He thought about Calvin Weber and he knew, without a doubt, that it was Calvin Weber who killed Jack Carlyle.  He wondered briefly if Weber was here now to kill him.
         He came out of the game in the eighth inning with a 3-1 lead.  There was a runner on base.  He heard a smattering of applause as he headed for the locker room.
         When he neared the door of the locker room Calvin Weber stepped from the shadows.  Weber had taken up smoking since the years before in Baltimore.  The end of his cigarette glowed in the dark and blue smoke drifted up toward the security light.  “Good game,” Weber said.
         “Thanks,” Jim forced himself to say.  Be calm, he told himself. 
         “The last time I saw Jack Carlyle pitch,” Weber said, “ I think he was leading 3-1 when he came out of the game.  The Orioles won that night 4-1.”
         “They didn't win enough that year,” Jim said.  “It was another six years before they won the World Series.”
         “But it was a good time,” Weber said.  He flipped the cigarette butt to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe.  “There were problems then, sure, but it was a better time.”
         “People always say that about the past,” Jim said.  “Some day people will say that about the time we're living in.”
         “You think so?” Weber said and let the question hang in the air a moment.  “I doubt it.”
         “Nostalgia is tricky,” Jim said.  “It puts a nice veneer on everything.”
         “Listen,” Calvin Weber said, “I know you love Jack Carlyle.  If you had the chance to live in 1960 and be Jack Carlyle would you do it?”
         “There was that little thing about him getting shot and killed,” Jim said.  “I'd like to get a few more years in before I shuffle off, if you know what I mean.”
         “People have all these mixed up ideas about time,” Weber said.  “You get into paradoxes like what if you killed your own father and all that.  But it's not all that complicated really.  It's like a story.  A story can have lots of endings.  You try out the ones you like and throw away the ones that don't work.”
         “Stories aren't real life,” Jim said.  “If a guy dies in a story he can come back for the next movie.”
         “You think it's all that different with time?” Weber said.  He ticked the question off like someone flicking off the ash of a cigarette.  “We all take ourselves way too seriously.  Really.”
         “If you don't mind, I need a shower,” Jim said.
         “Sure,” Weber said, stepping aside.  “Think about what I said.  I can make things happen.  Think about Michelle.  Wouldn't you like to spend some years with her?”
         Even in the shower Jim kept expecting Calvin Weber to suddenly appear.  Weber was suddenly like a ghostly presence following him everywhere.  As he had gotten older Jim had learned to trust his intuition.  The times he had ignored his intuition he had paid dearly.  He wished that his intuition would kick in now so he could decide what to do.  Assuming that what Weber said was true, did he want to change the order of things and go back into time and be Jack Carlyle?
         As he toweled himself dry, he knew.  The past few months as a member of the Fresno Mules had been the happiest of his life.  Pitching had been his calling, if there was such a thing, all his life.  Even if he could be Jack Carlyle pitching in the major leagues for just a brief moment, even if he could love and be loved by Michelle for just a brief moment, that was what he wanted.  What would be the  ending if he stayed in this specific reality, this “story” as Weber called it?  He liked the other story better.
         The man called Flamingo was the first man in the locker room after the game.  The Mules had held on to the win and a win always gave him a brief moment of happiness.  Baseball had a history recorded in box scores and batting averages and Earned Run Averages and as long as there was a recorded history of baseball this night would have its own recorded place in history.
         Something felt different about this night, he thought.  He kept a baseball encyclopedia in his locker.  He prided himself on his knowledge of pitchers in particular.  A name occurred to him:  Jack Carlyle.  He turned the pages until he found the article about Jack Carlyle.  Anyone who knew baseball knew about Jack Carlyle, of course.  He  won 300 games for the Baltimore Orioles, racked up several Cy Young Awards, won All Star Games and games in the World Series.  He also died tragically when a gunman killed him outside a Baltimore diner shortly after he retired from baseball.
         When he looked at old photos, particularly the old black and white ones, he felt a sense of deja vu.  It seemed he had been in those games, or known those players, but that wasn't possible, he thought.  Time was a linear thing. You were here in the now and even your own past was forever past.
         The Mules players trooped into the locker room and he heard the sound of showers.  It was time to get dressed and go find dinner somewhere the way he had done so many times after games.  Yeah, he sighed, things never changed much.