Damned Yankee

John squeezed hand grips to bring back the wrists. He swam laps at the Y. He spent hours taking cuts in batting cages and playing catch with Ron's son. John pitched and Ron played second base in a New Jersey league for men over 40. By 1994 they found themselves in Florida, playing in the Roy Hobbs World Series. John won two games on the mound and singled home Ron for the run that won the national title for the New Jersey Wonderboys.

John lives in a trailer today, retired from his two jobs and separated from his wife, spending his days fixing cars for friends, playing ball with three or four teenagers whom he has taken under his wing to make sure they never give up, and learning, with Ron's help, how to read. "Symphonies," John calls their method.

Rescued? John almost thought so, but in truth, he had only reached a reef where the rescue might begin. One Sunday morning last March, on opening day of the 1997 over-40 season, Ron miscalculated the power of guilt. He gave John a few articles he had clipped, one about a Houston Oilers defensive lineman who killed himself with a shotgun in 1993 just moments after losing control of his car and causing a crash that killed his best friend, and one about a girl whose face was impaled by a javelin at a high school track practice.

You know what happened next. John couldn't play ball for three months, so fierce was the volcano, but then he staged another comeback, on a Sunday three months ago. The oldest pitcher in the league took the hill for the Bergen Rockies and twirled a four-hitter against the Bergen Cardinals for a 14-1 win, and he was so damned excited each time he returned to the dugout, so full of hope—honest-to-God 65-year-old half-scared-to-death hope—you just wished to hell someone had been there to take a picture.