Chapter One

	While Rickey Henderson ponders how much his wallet weighs, Battlin' Billy and the ump appear to disagree about where Martin will spend the rest of eternity. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

The sun rose like a frozen waffle in the Sheboygan sky -- sickly yellow but weirdly appetizing -- as I awoke. Suddenly, my eyes landed on the gauzy apparition floating above the foot of my bed in Bamberger's Bedbug & Breakfast Motel, a place where dreams go to, if not exactly die, then at least lie around, eat oystercrackers and watch endless re-runs of Hogan's Heroes.

"Billy?" I groaned, swearing off the cleaning products once and for all. "Billy Martin?"

"The 1 and only," he said. He looked pretty good -- very well rested although his suit was out of style -- for a guy who has been dead since 1989.

"Why are you here?" I croaked -- literally, not figuratively

"You hear what Mickey said about me?"

"Yeah, rough stuff." I said, rubbing my eyes.

"Well, I got to set the record straight if I want to get into heaven. They've had me sitting on my ass in the Green Room for 17 years and I've run out of old issues of Redbook and National Geographic to read. Believe me, I know all I care to about the 20 things guys really want in bed and the master potters of Marakesh. I'm ready to swallow my pride and tell all."

"I'll bet."

"I tried arguing with the Big Kahuna, even kicked some dirt on him -- just a little joke, hah hah -- but full confession is a house rule and He's on the rag. He had a wad riding on the Giants against the Eagles last Sunday."

"I thought God was a Cowboys fan."

"He's a Yankees fan."

"Oh, yeah?" I said, propping myself on my elbows. "Then how do you explain 2004?"

"He works in mysterious ways. Hey, I gotta sit down. All this hovering is murder on my back."

Martin settled into a chair by the window and fished a cigar from his jacket pocket. "Mind if I smoke? I love a good cheroot, but St. Pete won't let you light up unless you go outside. Damned cosmic winds keep blowing your match out. I tried going down to the Other Place and your matches sure stay lit, but you can't hear yourself think from all the hammering and electric saws. Halliburton's building an extension on the place..."

"So why have you've come to tell me all your darkest secrets?"

"Good deed. Earn some brownie points. Figured you could use a hand, put the 'truth' in a novel, make heap big scratch. You got kids. I hear tuition's a killer these days."

"So is the price of a red Ferrari. Fess up."

"My brawlin' tough-guy stuff was just an act. It got out of control after the fight at my birthday party at the Copacabana in 1957. Hank Bauer just had to have that last goody bag and I stuck my nose in to stay tight with the team. After that, I had to keep fighting to save my jobs. Heck, I'm a sensitive guy at heart. I liked poetry, puppies, decorating cookies, barbershop quartets. Sheez. I even cried easy. Managed to keep a lid on it until I broke down in K.C. in '78...."

"Your resignation speech was quite touching," I said, offering Billy a tissue from the box on my nightstand.

"Thanks," he said, blowing his nose with a piercing honk. "Everything I did was for the love of the game. In baseball, all you can do is hunt or fish if you want to be accepted. Just try making little bunnies and owls out of popsicle sticks, tufts of cotton and jiggly eyes to pass the time on plane trips and see what happens to you. The injustice! That football player, what was his name? Rosie Grier! He was into needlepoint and you didn't see marshmallow salesmen pickin' fights with him about it."

"Grier had about 10 inches and 200 pounds on you," I said

"True. Man, I had to climb through hoops to keep some stuff quiet, like after I got jumped by a Franciscan Friar who spotted me at a puppet show in Detroit.   But I didn't take the guff. I'm from Berkeley, man. A hotbed of rebellion, though the National Guard never teargassed me."

"Well, it was getting pretty close those last few times you managed the Yanks."

"Hey, sometime's a man's gotta maintain his image. Hell, you think my line 'I didn't punch that doggie' in those beer ads would have worked half as good if it had been 'I didn't compose that sonnet'?"

"No. But many people thought you were comng off the spool."

"They said I drank too much, but that was a sham, too. I swore off the sauce after I got my butt traded to Kansas City because of the Copacabana fight. I kept a flask of maple syrup in my desk drawer for effect, but sugar made me hyper and cranky."

"George was kind of cranky, too."

"Aw, George. Yeesh. He was an act, too. He's from Cleveland, fer cryin' out loud! He thought being a New Yorker meant you had to stick a thumb in the eye of everyone you met. But he's just a big, fat creampuff. He weeps like an old washer woman at the drop of a freakin' hat now."

Tearing open a package of oyster crackers, Martin began popping them in the air with his thumb, and catching them with his mouth.

"See how this kind of crap gets started? Say, you wanna take in the ballet this afternoon? I hear the Greater Sheboygan Dancers do a mean Swan Lake... "