Home, Away. Jeff Gillenkirk

me?”

      “Godzilla, Superfly and Lambchop.”

      Maybe it was some kind of hazing, gibberish for newcomers particular to the Giants’ clubhouse. “I’m with the team now — I came over from the Reds,” Jason offered.

      “I know who you are,” Sands said. “You’re the guy who says I don’t know my kids’ favorite food. Or the names of my kids’ animals.”

      Jason stared, mouth open. “The morning paper,” Sands said. “Read it and weep.”

      It wasn’t difficult to find Najarian’s column. Someone had posted it on the bulletin board outside the manager’s office. He had let B.A. Najarian spend a morning watching him work out, talking about the trade, his pitching philosophy, his custody struggles. But he was mortified when he read the article. It was hard enough being traded to a new team. Loyalties and affection that get built up only through combat have not yet been formed. And most guys are traded to fill some need of the team — replace an injured player, help the team meet the salary cap, rebuild for the future, back up a valuable veteran — rather than the needs of the player. He was a less-than-.500 pitcher with a reputation for flakiness — and now this.

      Jason pushed through the double doors and up the ramp to the field. It was a soft sunny day, a Northern California autumn classic. He did a series of warmup stretches and ran two perimeters of the field, then more stretches and windsprints across the outfield before heading back to the weight room. Sands was there, jerking and pressing unimaginable amounts of weights. Jason went through his own regimen, self-consciously adding plates to his normal amounts but acutely aware that he was lifting nothing close to Sands’s limit. There were a couple of other guys there as well — Darryl Brooks, a backup second basemen, and Felipe Colon, a centerfielder trying to make his way back from shoulder surgery. No one said a word to him.

      After an hour, he made his move. He found Sands between reps, hunched forward on a bench, rolling his shoulders like locomotive wheels.

      “As lame as it sounds,” Jason said, “I was misquoted.”

      Sands didn’t look at him. “If you don’t talk, they can’t misquote you.”

      Jason chuckled. “I’ll remember that.” He paused. “I admire what you’re trying to do — what you’re doing with your kids.” Jason, along with the rest of the world, knew that Sands was going through a bitter divorce and custody battle involving his two daughters, eight and five, and his three-and-a-half-year-old son, as well as the most judicious way to divide up his six-year, $160 million contract. In an argument over money, Sands had pushed his estranged wife and called her a whore in front of their children. It cost him more than six months away from his kids, mandatory enrollment in an anger-management class and the opprobrium of millions. He had completed the twenty-six week anger-management class and now was awaiting the court to assign a custody plan.

      Sands rose from the bench. He was an inch shorter than Jason, but by his bulk and sheer power of presence seemed a foot taller. He grasped Jason’s hand in an old-fashioned soul grip, pulling him closer. “I admire what you’re doing, man. You are the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.”

      Jason was shocked. Sands continued to hold his hand, staring into his eyes. “You got a kid whose favorite food is artichoke hearts?” Jason finally asked.

      “My boy eats them like potato chips,” Sands grinned, dropping Jason’s hand. “He calls them okes. ‘Okes, okes, okes,’” Sands said in a baby voice as he strutted back to a set of weights that Jason estimated at 340 pounds. “He eats any kind of vegetable.” Sands lay on his back and grasped the bar. “If it’s green,” he said, pushing the massive weights above his head, “it’s good.”

      Jason smiled knowingly. “My kid loves salad.”

      “Salad is cool,” Sands grunted, lowering the weights. He gathered himself, then pushed the weights up again. “But mostly my kids love baseball.”

      After Sands broke the ice, the other guys started talking. It was baseball now, and nutrition, who was playing winter ball, who was hurt, who was a comer. Sands held court in the weight room for nearly two hours, quietly sharing insights about pitchers in their division, what they threw, how to beat them. At two o’clock, Jason lowered his last weight. “I’ve got to pick up my kid at school,” he announced.

      “You do that,” Sands said. “Tell him Isaac Sands says hello.”

      Jason grabbed a falafel from Tunisia at 20^th and Valencia and double-parked his Jeep behind the row of SUVs and foreign luxury cars outside Rafe’s school. He sat at the wheel wolfing down the sandwich, wondering what to fix Rafe for dinner. He had wanted to take him to the library but there were so many other things to do. Rafe needed new shoes and underwear, and his hair was out of control. Vicki was leaving more and more of these things for his weeks with Rafe. Fathering wasn’t just Saturdays at Waterworld or a weekend in Disneyland anymore. It was a week-long job, showing up every day at the schoolhouse door, fixing dinner and cleaning up, helping Rafe with homework, drawing a bath, herding him to bed, reading a story, tucking his tired body beneath the blankets, giving that last hug, the last back scratch, the last reassuring word. But all that was fine, really. It took Jason back to the year he cared for Rafe when he was a toddler. What he was having trouble with was Rafe’s total indifference, even hostility, towards baseball.