Dennis Eckersley walked into the clubhouse while you were in the middle of having sex, and the rookie almost jumped out the window he was so shocked. Eckersley didn't seems to notice, just threw a hand over his eyes and said, backing quickly out the door, "Oh jesus, I didn't need to see that."

The rookie was horrified. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, oh my god," he kept saying, over and over, his face red with embarrassment. "Oh my god, I can't believe that just happened, we're both going to be thrown out of the league, it's going to be in all the papers, my mother's going to disown me, it's going to be--"

"Fine." He looked up at you, confused, and you gave him a smile and a pat on the head. Just like a puppy, so soft and young and eager. Staring at you with big puppy-eyes, begging for an explanation. "It's going to be fine, kid. It's happened before. Dennis won't say anything."

"Really? We're not going to get in trouble or anything? They're not gonna send me down?"

You laughed and wrapped your arms around his slender waist, pulling him back down on top of you. "Kid, are you kidding me? With the way you throw? They'd have to be insane."

***

You watch him now and he's not the man you knew. Not the eager rookie he was all those years ago, young and green and hungry for praise; nor the competent man you left behind when you retired in '93. He's older, of course, but that's not the difference. It isn't that he's grown older, it's that he's finally grown up. Of course he has, you think. You haven't seen him in ten years. Oh, you've seen him, sure, on TV; he's kind of hard to miss. But not in person, not in a decade; not even so much as a telephone call. As you watch him warm up on the mound you realize with a brief sense of disorientation that he's now the same age you were when you first met him. Christ, were you that old? Somehow you never felt old with him.