He bought the same thing for himself, so they ate breakfast together in the baseball equipment room."You sent me to bed without a story last night," Maniac kidded.Grayson brushed a yellow speck of egg from his white stubble. "I don't got no stories. I told you.""You wanted to be a baseball player.""That ain't no story.""Well, did you become one?"Grayson drank half his orange juice. "Just the Minors," he muttered.Maniac yelped, "The Minors!""Couldn't never make it to the Majors." There was a frayed weariness in the old man's words, as though they had long since worn out."Grayson --- the Minors. Man, you must have been good. What position did you play?"Grayson said, "Pitcher." This word, unlike the others, was not worn at all, but fresh arid robust. It startled Maniac. It declared: I am not what you see. I am not a line-laying, pickup-driving, live-at-the-Y, bean-brained parkhand. I am not rickety, whiskered worm chow. I am a pitcher.Maniac had sensed there was something more to the old man; now he knew what it was.
