Eighteen days of work: a sort of inverse
vacation. Years of bus rides, ice packs
small towns with empty streets and bars
all for this: Three airports, two plane rides

to scenic Kansas City and Milwaukee, 
powder blue pullover business suits,
flat warm beer. A September call-up 
on a team made of September call-ups.

Less than three weeks’ life, and
a legacy like a junk drawer as deep
as the internet: photographs for  
baseball cards never earned, index

cards with ballpoint autographs, box 
scores in triplicate. The man forgotten, the
deeds enshrined in cuneiform. Never quite 
a ballplayer, forever a Seattle Mariner.


He walked away in October, headed
home, finished the degree he’d knitted
together over the winters. He understood
the eighties before the eighties did.

Soon he was wearing real suits, boarding
flights to real cities, shouted numbers
into phones, and did it well. We
assume. They did not save statistics.

Except for one. Working together at
Salomon Brothers, Michael Lewis
tossed his name into a book: Another
colleague bragged about a vacation

so he stole the man’s suitcase, emptied it
and filled it with wet paper towels.
The man found out in Puerto Rico that
night. At last Greg Erardi was a ballplayer.