Nieves took his hand and gave him a friendly smile. “I know you,” he said. “You were there last night when those two guys almost got into a fight.”
“Right,” Stevie said.
Nieves knew more. “You and that girl, Susan, right? You’re the two kid reporters who are so famous.”
“I don’t know about famous…,” Stevie said.
“Don’t be modest,” Nieves said. “I read about you in our playoff program.”
The Nationals had done a story on the fact that Stevie and Susan Carol were covering them for the Herald and the Post in their postseason program, which was sold at the ballpark for the startling price of $10. Stevie’s dad had bought one but said, “When I was a kid going to the old ballpark in Philadelphia, you paid twenty-five cents to buy a scorecard and a program-and they gave you a pencil to keep score with.”
“What was it like watching Babe Ruth?” Stevie had said in response to his father’s moaning.
“Well, thanks,” Stevie said to Nieves. “Since I’m so famous, can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Fire away,” Nieves said. He sat down on the chair in front of his locker and pulled a chair over from the one next to his and offered it to Stevie.
Stevie didn’t try to pick up where they had left off in Boston the night before. He asked Nieves first about his own background, which was actually interesting. He was from Puerto Rico and had signed with the San Diego Padres as an eighteen-year-old. He had spent most of the thirteen years since then in the minors, making it briefly to the majors with the Padres in 2002 and then with the Yankees for parts of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
After the Yankees had released him, he had signed with the Nationals as a minor-league free agent and had stuck with the team for most of two seasons because he had finally been able to hit a little. He had hit his first-ever major-league home run early in 2008.
As Nieves talked, Stevie worried that someone might interrupt them. A couple of times he saw writers approaching, but they veered away. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that if someone was seated, talking to a player, you didn’t interrupt.
“So, would you say last night was the biggest thrill you’ve had in baseball?” Stevie said, steering the conversation back to the present.
Nieves thought for a minute. “That and the home run,” he said. “The home run was a walk-off in the ninth inning, so that was pretty cool too.”
Stevie asked Nieves again about Doyle’s performance and then, slowly, returned to what he had said the night before. “Before we were interrupted last night, you were starting to talk about knowing Norbert in the minors…”
“Or not really knowing him,” Nieves said, smiling.
That was a relief. Stevie had been afraid a night’s sleep might have made him more cautious about discussing his team’s sudden star.
“Right,” Stevie said. “Nice guy, just shy…”
“Not exactly shy,” Nieves said. “Always friendly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him laugh, though, really have fun. Even when we were celebrating winning the pennant last week, we had to practically beg him to get involved.”
Stevie remembered that. He had been standing with Doyle while his teammates kept trying to get him to join them in the celebration. Then again, he hadn’t been on the roster for the playoffs.
“You said something about joy not being part of his life…”
“I can’t say it isn’t part of his life, I’ve just never seen it. I asked him about it once-”
“You did?” Stevie said, realizing instantly he had made a mistake by stopping him in midsentence and perhaps appearing a bit too eager. For the first time since they had started talking, he saw Nieves hesitate.
“Well, yeah, it was no big deal or anything…”
This time Stevie said nothing. Thankfully, Nieves filled the silence.
“It was a few years ago. We were both in Columbus, which was a Yankee team back then. He’d been traded over in midseason and I was the only guy on the club he knew, so we hung out a little on the road. One night at dinner I asked about his kids. I knew his wife had died years earlier in the accident…”
He paused again. “You know about that, right?”
“Yes,” Stevie answered honestly. “He told me about it the other day.”
Nieves nodded. “He started talking about how proud he was of them, what great kids they were, and how much he wished his wife could be around to see them.”
“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, not wanting to interrupt, just encouraging him to go on.
“Perfectly understandable, right?” Nieves said. “But then he said something I didn’t understand.”
Stevie waited, afraid to say anything.
“He said that sometimes when he looked at them, he believed in God because they were so wonderful. But then, when he thought about it, he decided God was pretty cruel, because every time he looked at his kids, he was reminded that he had taken their mother away from them.”
Nieves stopped suddenly. Stevie was scribbling madly in his notebook. “Oh wait, hang on, I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t write that. I don’t even know what Norbert meant by that.”
“I promise I won’t unless I talk to him about it,” Stevie said.
Nieves sagged a little. “Okay,” he said finally, “that’s fair.”
“But one more question,” Stevie asked. “What do you think he meant? They were hit by a drunk driver. How could that be his fault? Or was he saying, you think, that it was God’s fault?”
“That’s what I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing,” Nieves said. “He just asked the waitress for some more iced tea.”
11: NORBERT DOYLE, SUPERSTAR
STEVIE STOOD UP A MOMENT LATER and thanked Nieves. Someone was walking around the room saying it would close to the media in five minutes. When they shook hands, Nieves said, “I probably said too much. I hope you handle that gently with Norbert. I know it has to be upsetting for him to even think about it.”
“We talked about it a little yesterday, and he did get choked up,” Stevie said, telling the truth. “It’s probably nothing. He probably feels guilty because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time that night.”
Nieves nodded. “I guess so. Or he somehow thinks he should have been able to avoid the accident. He never brought it up again and neither did I. I’m so happy for the guy right now. I wouldn’t want to see anything take away from this.”
“Me neither,” Stevie said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Stevie felt a little guilty. Nieves had been remark ably honest, and now he clearly felt as if he had violated the confidence of a teammate. But Stevie knew he had to follow up on what Nieves had told him-even if he wasn’t sure what it was he was following up on. He knew it was personal-extremely personal. So, was it really news?
He walked back across the room looking for Kelleher but didn’t see him. He remembered Kelleher saying he wanted to talk to the Red Sox, so maybe he was in their clubhouse.
“How’d you do with Wil?” Aaron Boone said when he passed him on his way out.
“Great,” Stevie said.
Boone nodded. “If I was a reporter, I’d love this clubhouse,” he said. “Most of our guys haven’t been around long enough to become jaded about all this.”
“You’ve been around a long time,” Stevie said.
“Oh yeah-I’m old,” Boone said, laughing. “But I’m not good enough to be jaded.”
Stevie knew that wasn’t true. Boone was famous for his home run in the eleventh inning of game seven of the ALCS in 2003 that had allowed the Yankees to beat the Red Sox and advance to the World Series. He was still known in Boston as “Aaron Bleepin’ Boone” because of it, and many of the pre-Series stories had been about his return to Boston six Octobers later.
“You’re being modest,” Stevie said.