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was understanding every word, but they weren’t really registering deep. I took a breath and then another,
    â€œNext spring in Florida, Castro airlifts in twenty-four elite baseball players to play for the New York Yankees. You realize how much this cuts my payroll? I’m arranging for them to have rooms all together on a floor in the East Side Hotel.”
    This was the name of a well-known SRO and welfare hotel on the east side of Manhattan. Its ambience is halfway between a YMCA residence and a West Texas county jail. It turned out later that George owns this high-rise semi-slum.
    â€œGeorge —”
    â€œThe deal costs me five million, half to the Cuban government, the rest to the ball players, Man, do you realize these kids who probably didn’t even have shoes when they were kids are going to have $100,000 a year each?”
    â€œThe union —”
    â€œFuck the fucking players’ union, this is bigger than them and there’s nothing they can do about it if the players’ green cards are sanctioned by the State Department. Man, they are going to have jobs. What’s the matter, are you prejudiced against Cubans?”
    â€œGeorge, you really thought this thing out?”
    â€œThis thing is a done deal, Ryan.”
    â€œI don’t like this, I feel like I’ve been let in a conspiracy.”
    â€œYou been let in a last chance to rob me of another $625,000, Ryan. This ain’t shoveling shit in Louisiana, boy, this is real money and I know it and so do you. In fact, I know you know it, which is why you agreed to it.”
    He had me there.
    I looked at the contracts in my hand and folded them and put them in my sports coat. George might be crazy, but there were enough lunatics running the game these days to make anything seem sensible.
    â€œWhat about the press?” I said. “The fans?”
    â€œFuck the fans and fuck the reporters. The fans will come if there’s a winning team on the held, and the reporters, as long as they get their free passes and their lunches comped, they’re irrelevant. Besides, this is a liberal town, Ryan, we’re not in West Bumfuck, Texas. I can see the editorials streaming out of the
New York Times
hailing me for my bold opening to Cuba and to restoring normalized relations blah-biah-blah.”
    â€œNobody who’s a fan reads editorials, George. They read the sports pages.”
    â€œLet them read. I'm going to have a good team, better than the one I'm getting rid of, maybe the best team in baseball, and all in one year and all for a tenth of what I'm paying out now. Salaries and egos, that’s all I got on the field “
    â€œAnd what do you want from me?”
    â€œI want you to be present at the creation,” George said. “And I want you to
parlez
with them.”
    â€œSurely you’re kidding.”
    â€œI don’t call $625 thou a year kidding, Ryan. If you failed your Spanish test with Sam Ortiz, you would be in your fucking Buick now heading across the river to pick up your clothes and drive back to Texas. Believe me when I say it.”
    â€œI believe you, George.”
    â€œBesides, there are some on the team now speak Spanish. But I don’t trust them. They’re spies, and when they all get together, talking their Spanish jive, they’re tighter than clams in champagne. I need an Anglo on the team, sort of an identity thing, the leader of the rebels. Like John Wayne when he led all those Filipinos in that movie. You can be a spokesman for the players.”
    Pimping for a bunch of Cuban scabs.
    Man, Ryan, you must want it bad enough to sell your mother’s cow.
    I looked at George and I couldn’t express how low I was feeling just then. I almost was ready to throw the contract on his desk and walk away from the whole mess. Go down to Houston and sell cars for Jack Wade. Talk it out with Charlene Cleaver, who could probably make sense of it for me and make me