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about how much someone is making or some owner is losing or attendance or television, anything but marks on a scorecard or the sound of a bat.
    â€œSort of like a new Charlie Finley.”
    â€œCharlie would have loved this idea.”
    â€œWhat idea?”
    â€œSign the fucking form, Ryan.”
    Shit. I was intrigued enough to sign it. I also signed the contract and made George sign his. We were a team again.
    George gave me my copies and he slipped his into a drawer of his desk that locked.
    â€œDon’t we need a witness?” I said.
    â€œI’ll fake that later,” he said. “Now, Ryan. The secret. It’s worth it, all this fooling around. But it stays secret until after the winter meetings in Las Vegas, until I can finally dump all the players I want to dump.”
    â€œHow many is that, George?” My voice was sort of quiet. Baseball is a brutal kind of business and you’re here today and traded tomorrow. Still, you play with those guys, live with them on the road, they’re flesh and blood and they have families and friends and hopes and fears. You wouldn’t know it to read about them in some of the sports columns. Or listen to an owner.
    â€œTwenty-four. Everyone but you, Ryan. I told you, you survive like Ishmael.”
    â€œAnd you’re going to kill a white whale, George?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œWhere are the best ball players in the world? Besides here?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe Japan “
    â€œToo little. No power.”
    â€œVenezuela. Mexico.”
    â€œYou’re getting warmer.”
    â€œI was never good at this kind of questioning, that’s why I got bad class discussion marks in school. You want an answer, you furnish it.”
    â€œCuba.”
    I let that sink in.
    â€œCuba, what?” I said.
    â€œCuba, Cuba,” he said.
    â€œYou’re going to buy some ball players in Cuba? I thought we didn’t trade with Cuba, something like that.”
    â€œReality is setting in, in the world and in Washington, even in Havana.”
    â€œAnd what is reality?”
    â€œCastro wants dollars. And recognition. And he wants the U.S. to lift trade embargoes. Funny thing is, so do we. But the administration doesn’t want a backlash here so it has to proceed with caution.”
    â€œI didn’t know you knew so many famous people.”
    â€œI do. I was just in Washington. Spent the night at the White House. You know where I slept?”
    I thought of several smart-ass answers but offered none of them. I was fascinated by the lizard in the blue suit across from me.
    â€œIn Lincoln’s bedroom.”
    â€œHow is it?”
    â€œI saw his ghost.”
    â€œDid you.”
    â€œYou don’t believe me?”
    â€œI believe you, George, if you believe you.”
    â€œHe just stared at me and then he nodded once and disappeared.”
    â€œMaybe he had to go to the bathroom.”
    â€œI was dreaming about Cuba and what I want to do and he knew it. Lincoln. You know, aside from everything else, this is a good thing I’m doing. A good thing for our Hispanic friends.”
    â€œLike that spic, Sam,” I said. I shouldn’t have bothered. It just rolled off that chubby blue suit.
    â€œThe deal is done, but it has to stay secret until I get rid of my payroll,” George said. “You signed a confidentiality agreement and I can have your ass in prison if you breathe a word of this to anyone. But I’ve got to have, you know, be in at the beginning, be able to give testimony on it when the time is right.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTwenty-four Cubans. The twenty-four best Cuban baseball players. The best. The best ball players from one of the best baseball countries in the world. They’ve been living under Castro for more than thirty years, but they can play baseball. Castro plays baseball. It’s the national sport.”
    I