First coffee in hand, Rusty Woodward read a text from Peter Roche of the Society for American Baseball Research: “Sam Miller. Sept call-up w/ Seattle in 70, then 12-8, 3.36, for Seattle in 71.”

“Come on, Peter,” Rusty texted back. “We agreed my next bio would be a star.”

Peter replied: “Miller’s a personal priority. No one has been able to do him. You do Miller, you get to pick your next.”

Rusty sipped coffee, contemplating. Peter Roche, co-director of the Society’s BioProject, was pushing his buttons by telling him no one else could do it.

More than 21,000 men have played “major league” baseball since the first league premiered in 1871. The Society’s BioProject mission was to research and publish detailed, scholarly biographies on the careers and lives of every one of them, whether legendary, good, mediocre, or insignificant. The Society marshaled a volunteer army of moonlighting writers, historians, professors, teachers, librarians, investigators, lawyers, fact-checkers, and editors—all of them crazy baseball fans. In his day job, Rusty was an in-house writer for a law firm, crafting everything from closing arguments to press releases. He prided himself on fact-finding like the lawyers and writing like the authors he worshipped in college as an English major. Rusty loved baseball without knowing why.

He vaguely knew of Sam Miller, a pitcher the year Rusty was born.

He found a short wiki biography, with a head-and-ball cap picture: white, dark hair, piercing eyes, crisp cheekbones, thick mustache, seductive smile. Miller was from Shelby, Ohio. The Detroit Tigers drafted him out of high school in 1966. The expansion team Seattle Pilots claimed him from the Tigers in the 1968 expansion draft. He made his Major League debut for the Pilots in the closing days of the 1970 season.

In the 1971 season, Miller pitched well enough to finish second in the American League’s Rookie-of-the-Year Award voting, behind Cleveland first baseman Chris Chambliss. However, Miller was injured late in that season, and he never returned.

Miller’s story ended tragically in an accidental drowning in 1975.

So, he was a one-season wonder. Most one-season wonders—Simpson, Fidrych, Charboneau, LaHair—limped along through one or more additional seasons in the Big Leagues, or somewhere, reduced by injuries, or humbled by exposure of some fatal flaw. Not Miller. He had a fine rookie season and then vanished. And then he died.

One sentence tantalized: “After Miller out-dueled star pitcher Sam ‘Sudden Sam’ McDowell in Cleveland, leading Seattle to a 1-0 victory over the Indians on July 15, 1971, The Sporting News proclaimed Miller, ‘The Next Sudden Sam.’”

Rusty texted Peter back, “I’m intrigued. I’ll take Miller.”

***

As Rusty finished a shower, his phone rang. He thought it might be Peter, so he shut off the water, toweled his hands, and grabbed the phone from the sink counter. It wasn’t Peter. It was Rusty’s daughter.

He took a slow, deep breath to prepare himself.

“How are you, Katrina?”

“Daddy, I need money.”

“What you need is help. I told you: come home, let me get you to—”

“Fuck you, Daddy. Please. Don’t. I need goddamn money, not a fucking lecture. I need a thousand dollars right away.”

Rusty knew better than to ask why. They’d had this conversation many times since Katrina had left home at sixteen. If she said anything, she’d lie. He’d reason with her, even beg. She might play along, maybe agree. He’d give her money. Then she would disappear. Who knew what she did with the money? Once, some tough-sounding bagman followed up, threatening him. Rusty told the truth: he didn’t know where Katrina was, or the money. Usually, months would pass before she’d call again, wanting more cash.

Finally, painfully, Rusty taught himself to say no. The tactic left him resolved to some tough-love strategy he barely comprehended. Yet it didn’t have any effect on the ache that pummeled him from inside whenever he rejected Katrina in her troubles.

“No,” Rusty said.

“You are such a cheap-ass, goddamn prick! You know that? Just a thousand. Fuck I know you can afford it. Why won’t you help your daughter?”

“Because it’s not helping you.”

“Yeah, right? That’s why I hate you. That’s why everyone hates you. You are such a fucking tight-ass! You just let your own flesh and blood, just. Jesus! Fuck! I hate you.”

Rusty wondered when this would ever stop hurting. It never did. He stood firm and silent.

“Please,” Katrina said it like a cry. “I need it. These people. These people are going to fuck me up, Daddy.”

Rusty felt ready to burst. No father should endure such desperation from a child. Shouldn’t he just help her?

“I’ll pay you back, I swear.”

“I don’t care about the money, honey. I told you before, I’m not bankrolling you anymore. I’ll help you get into a hospital or whatever, but I won’t—”

“You don’t care if I die. You don’t care if they kill me. Holy shit! What kind of parent are you?”

“Please come home. Then we can find someone to help.”

“Fuck you, asshole! I don’t want you and your bullshit! You’ll never hear from me again. Do you hear me? I hope you die. And I hope it’s a goddamn painful death.” She hung up.

This was his first contact with Katrina in several months. He had not seen her for nearly a year. He missed her twenty-first birthday. Rusty didn’t know where she was or how she was living. He could do nothing more to protect his daughter from her demons. He would live each day, sometimes each minute, convincing himself not to worry whether his only child was alive or dead, or suffering, terrified, hungry, living on the streets, stoned in a flophouse, pimped out, or intubated in a hospital ER. She wanted him only when she wanted money. She only ever offered lies and heartache, and every encounter left him battered. Katrina’s mother, Rusty’s ex, cut ties years earlier, wouldn’t take Katrina’s calls. Deborah feared Katrina and blamed Rusty.

Rusty’s legs wobbled. He put down the toilet lid and sat. Breathe. Breathe. Steady. He fixed eyes on himself in the mirror, steadied himself by studying himself: still strong shoulders, chest, and arms, but with a growing belly, bushy rust-colored hair and a short beard that didn’t really hide his double chin.

The phone rang again, and he jolted. He sucked in another deep breath before looking. It was Peter.

“Hey, man, I’m so glad you agreed to take Sam Miller,” Peter said.

“Yeah, well.” Rusty formed those words within a deep sigh. He wanted to say that he’d just had all interest in Sam Miller—or anything—smacked out of him.

But Peter took the sigh as cool nonchalance. “That’s great. You’re my go-to guy. I just sent you everything we’ve got. I did some of the original research. Several people looked and passed. I got Connor Berens to try, and even he gave up. This needs dogged persistence. That means you.”

Rusty wished Peter could see him roll his eyes.

“Anyway, I sent you a link to the dropbox. It’s all in there. I gotta go. I got a class to teach, and I’m running late. I owe you, Rusty. Next one, you’ll get a Tom Seaver. Not Seaver, of course. Seaver’s done. Someone like him. I promise! Bye.”

Maybe, Rusty told himself, this is what he needed right now. Not daily grind. A real distraction. Sam Miller. Rusty stood, and his knees worked.

***

The dropbox contained old newspaper and magazine stories, including The Sporting News article titled, “The Next Sudden Sam;” press releases and other items from the Seattle Pilots and Major League Baseball; reports from a couple of paid research services; some email chains (with attachments) between Peter and his sources; and a report from Berens.

Samuel Clemens Miller was born on November 16, 1947, in Shelby, Ohio, the son of Howard Miller, a copper worker, and Bernice Miller, a homemaker. He had an older sister, Daisy. Sam led the Shelby High School Whippets to the 1966 league baseball championship. A fourth-round draft pick of the Detroit Tigers, he played for the Tigers’ minor league teams in Montgomery and Toledo, and then for the Pilots’ teams in Jacksonville and Portland. On September 5, 1970, he made his Big League debut relief pitching against the Baltimore Orioles. He made the 1971 Pilots team out of spring training.

A September 16, 1971, press release from the Pilots announced that Miller suffered an elbow injury, but provided no specifics, except that he required surgery. Another release, from February 1, 1972, listed Miller as rehabilitating and not available for spring training. A June 16, 1972, release announced that the Seattle Pilots had placed Miller on waivers. It offered no injury update or explanation of why the team cut him.

There was nothing saying what Miller did next in life, until a March 6, 1975, Los Angeles Times story on his death. Former Seattle Pilots pitcher Sam Miller drowned while surfing in Malibu, The Times reported. An obituary announced a private service at a Los Angeles funeral home. A medical examiner’s report concluded Miller’s death was accidental.

Berens tracked down Miller’s sister Daisy, but she refused to talk with him. He also reached three surviving members of the 1971 Seattle Pilots: pitcher Milt Knuth, shortstop Otis Greene, and catcher Roger Galvan. They also refused to talk. Berens found a retired Seattle Post sportswriter who had covered the Pilots, but he said he couldn’t remember what happened to Miller.

That evening, Rusty called Daisy Miller Rinehart in Ohio.

“It’s like I told that other reporter. I would appreciate it if you would let my brother rest in peace.” Her voice came sharp and assertive, as if she’d weaponized it her whole life and expected nothing less than capitulation.

“Ma’am, I’m not a reporter. I’m a historian. We’re trying to set every single ballplayer in his place in baseball history, for posterity’s sake. Your brother was a darn good pitcher. There’s a lot to be proud of, I’m sure, and—”

“My brother was an abomination. Nobody was proud of him.” She slung the word “proud” like a slap.

Rusty felt the sting because he still was psychologically bruised from Katrina’s hits, and Daisy smacked the same spot.

“What do you mean by abomination?” he asked.

“Goodbye,” she said. The line went dead.

Knuth’s phone was not a working number. Galvan’s rolled to voicemail.

Greene, in Texas, answered. He started the same as Miller’s sister: please, just let him rest in peace.

“All I want to know is,” Rusty got out, “what was he like as a pitcher? Come on, you played right behind him. Just tell me about Sam Miller, the pitcher. I promise I won’t ask about him outside the game. Just tell me about his game.”

Rusty rode the silence.

Greene said, “He was a lefty.”

“That, I know.”

“OK, well, Sam Miller had the most relaxed windup and delivery motion you ever saw. It was like he was playing catch with a kid. The ball would snap out of him like a slingshot. Batters were like: ‘What was that?’”

“Something fast?”

“I’ll say. He used that same motion for his change-up and his curveball. He fooled a lot of dudes.”

“I saw where The Sporting News compared him to Sam McDowell after you guys beat McDowell in Cleveland,” Rusty prompted.

“Miller struck out fourteen in that game. Those Indians dudes were swinging at air. You know, that stood as Seattle’s strikeout record for decades, until Randy Johnson came along? You should talk to Ray Fosse. I played with Ray a few years later, and even then he said he didn’t remember no one who threw harder than Miller did that day. And he caught McDowell for years.”

“I’m pretty sure Fosse’s dead,” Rusty said. “Is that how it was though? Guys’d talk about Miller years after he was gone?”

“Yeah, well. Some would, I guess.”

“So, guys must have been curious about what happened to Miller. Why did he disappear? Where did he go?”

“I dunno.”

“Who would know? Who could talk to me about what happened to him?”

“No one.”

“Excuse me?”

“No one is going to say shit to you about what happened to Sam Miller,” Greene said.

“What do you mean by that? Was there something—”

Once again, the line died.

That night Rusty’s thoughts swirled around Katrina and Sam Miller as if they were the same story. A hazy semi-consciousness of surreality carried Rusty slowly through a night of punching his pillow, forcing thoughts away from Katrina, and then worrying about Sam Miller as if he’d known him. Greene had said no one would talk. Like people were scared. Miller’s sister called him an abomination. Katrina said people were going to fuck her up. No one was proud. Seems everyone hung up on him. Does everybody really hate him?

Rusty called in sick. On several levels he was, but not so sick he couldn’t sip coffee and push notes around his home desk.

He cross-checked players’ careers. Rusty came back to the catcher, Roger Galvan. He and Miller had played together in the minors, in Jacksonville and Portland. Galvan got called up to the Pilots only a couple of months before Miller. That meant he’d caught Miller for the better part of three seasons. They had to be friends.

Rusty called Galvan again but got voicemail again.

He scanned the obituary. No next of kin listed. The only traceable detail was the funeral home. He found it. Still there. He called, asking if they might retain some sort of a sign-in sheet from a 1976 funeral for someone he was researching. The receptionist transferred Rusty to someone named Helen, who sounded willing to help.

“We digitized all our records some years back. So if we have it, this won’t take long. You know we’ve been in business since 1962? One moment. Ah, here we go. Samuel Clemens Miller, March 28, 1976. Looks like he was cremated. We held a memorial service in our old chapel. We don’t use that anymore. Hmm. Well. Let’s see. No. Sorry. I don’t see a guest book. We usually let the family or host keep those. Nowadays, we try to keep a copy.”

“Host?”

“Whoever paid for the funeral.”

“Who was the host? Does it say that?”

“Here: Steve Heidemann,” she said.

There was a Steve Heidemann in Los Angeles, and a phone number.

When Rusty introduced himself, Heidemann gasped—as if Rusty had prodded some longstanding, deep-seated fear—or hope.

“You have to understand how different things were back then,” Heidemann said.

“Sam lost everything he thought mattered. The game. His family. His self-respect. He could never go back. They wouldn’t accept him. And worse, they treated him like crap. Then that week. Man. His mother and his sister came out here to get him. Cruelest people in the world. Man, that was rough. On me, yes. But on Sam? They crushed him. Then they demanded that he come home so they could fix him. Fix him. Do you have any idea what that must have been like?”

Heidemann smacked the same bruise that Miller’s sister had found. Rusty felt ache rumble and echo. “I think I do,” he said.

Heidemann kept going. “If only I had seen how badly Sam was taking it. I didn’t understand. I blame myself. I know I shouldn’t. I didn’t realize. I should have seen what they were doing to him. I wish. I wish every time I think of Sam. I wish I had comforted him instead of what I did: blame him.”

“So?”

“So, after his mom and sister flew back to O-hi-o—” Heidemann mocked the state’s name with pronounced disdain, “Sam went out into the Pacific Ocean the next morning and—” His voice rose into cry register, “he never came back.”

“You think Sam killed himself?” Rusty finally asked.

“I know he did. But I never said anything to anyone because it was messy. There was the other thing. But today I’m like, people should know. His family? They can go to hell, if they’re not there already.”

“What other thing?” Rusty asked.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Pretend I don’t.”

“Sam was gay,” Heidemann said. “There’s no gay in baseball. There’s no gay in O-hi-o. At least not then there wasn’t.”

Rusty’s mind said, “Wait! What?” His mouth said, “Is that why he quit baseball?”

“Quit?” Heidemann mocked.

“Look,” he said. “For the longest time, Sam never talked about it. I mean, he didn’t tell anyone he was a former ballplayer. I don’t think anyone knew. I didn’t for the longest time. He just, Sam sold appliances. He was good at it, too, so I think everyone just assumed he’d always been in sales, somewhere. No one made the connection between our Sam Miller in a suit, who gave you a great deal on a washing machine, and that Sam Miller in a Pilots’ uniform, who threw baseballs past Reggie Jackson. No one knew.”

“How’d you meet?” Rusty asked.

“I bought a TV from him. He was so cute. He asked me to a movie. The Godfather. You thought I was going to say something like Cabaret, right? We went to that first movie like two straight pals catching a movie together. Sam was very macho. But he did have this, um, flair, if you watched him. It didn’t take too long to become romantic. We were together for almost four years. Until he died.”

“Did he ever talk about baseball?” Rusty asked.

“Not for the longest time. I actually figured it out at some point. I said something like, ‘You’re not the same Sam Miller who pitched for Seattle, are you?’ He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. He said he couldn’t talk about it.”

“He said he couldn’t talk? Did he mean?”

“A non-disclosure agreement? I don’t think they dared put anything on paper. But yes; they made sure he kept his mouth shut.”

“What? Who? Why?”

“Baseball? The Seattle Pilots? Some lawyer? Who knows? Out of the blue, Sam finally told me all about it one night. We were watching the World Series on TV. Yastrzemski batted. It was casual, like we talked about this sort of thing all the time. Sam says something like, ‘Yaz was the toughest hitter I ever faced.’

“So I asked him the question: ‘Why did you leave baseball?’”

“And?” Rusty asked.

“And he just opened up. Like it was time. They were in Chicago, and some of his teammates broke into his hotel room one night. They thought they were going to catch him with a girl. It was like a prank they did sometimes, raid some guy’s room while he was having sex. But Sam was in bed with a man.”

“And?”

“They couldn’t deal with it. There were five or six of them, Sam said. They beat the shit out of him. They twisted his left arm until they hyper-extended his elbow. Tore all the tendons and ligaments. That was a career-ending injury. Even with surgery, which he had. The Sam Miller I knew had trouble threading his belt through belt loops. No way he could throw a baseball. His own teammates did that to him. They were not going to have a fag on their team.”

“And?”

“The cover-up was swift. There were some stars involved. This was a scandal that could have rocked baseball. They got Sam to their own doctors. They paid him to leave quietly and keep his mouth shut. Truth is, they didn’t have to. Outing someone back then was ruinous enough. And Sam said he figured the police would never have believed him.”

“He told you,” Rusty said.

“Not for the longest time, he didn’t. And I loved Sam. A few months later, he was dead.”

“You sound like you’ve been waiting for someone like me to ask about Sam Miller.”

“For fifty years,” Heidemann said.

Rusty needed a moment to calibrate. Could he get this through the Society’s editors? He must.

“If I’m going to tell this story, I need confirmation,” he said to Heidemann. “Who else would know?”

“Well, for sure,” Heidemann said, “every player in that hotel room that night.”

***

While Rusty was on the phone, Katrina called twice. He bumped both calls to voicemail. No messages. What was up? It was unusual for her to follow up after a failed extortion demand. Did she have a change of heart? Would she want help? Or was she so desperate that she was trying again, intending to up his pain, hoping he would cry “when?”

Rusty wanted to call her back. Hope battled sense. He felt the pound of those two angels wrestling, banging off the walls of his heart. Wasn’t he just like Sam Miller’s family when they abandoned Sam, made demands, and then left Sam to die? Couldn’t he just try to help Katrina again? What would it cost? Would that have saved Sam Miller?

No, Rusty could not let himself call her. There was no hope. Only sense. Katrina was not like Sam. She perpetrated the psychological violence.

He steadied himself. Work, remember? Sam Miller.

He called Peter.

“I need a home address for Roger Galvan,” Rusty said.

“A home address? You’re not—”

“Yes, I am,” Rusty said. “If you really, really need something from someone, you have to nut up. Talk to them face to face. Don’t let them weasel out without eye contact. I really need this.”

“For a bio? Come on, Rusty. That’s crazy. This is a volunteer gig. Remember? We’re not paying you.”

“Galvan has an Arizona phone number.”

“We don’t cover expenses, certainly not a cross-country trip.”

“I know.”

“OK. He’s got you hooked, doesn’t he? This Sam Miller?”

“You have no idea. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Yeah, I think I have some idea. I’ve found myself obsessing about these guys. I know what it’s like. But Rusty, tell me you’re sure it’s worth it.”

“Peter, this feels like the most important thing I have done in a long time.”

***

Late that night, Rusty’s airplane landed in Phoenix. During the flight, Katrina called again, leaving no message.

Mid-morning the next day, Rusty maneuvered a rental close behind a delivery truck and slipped through the gates at a fifty-five-and-older golf community. Galvan’s address was a duplex patio home of white stucco. No one answered the doorbell. A Lexus filled the one-car driveway. Beside it, carved out of a pebble front yard, was an empty offshoot parking pad, big enough for a golf cart.

Rusty found the community center and golf club. The clubhouse, pool, patio bar, tennis courts, pickleball courts, and 19th Hole Tavern & Grille were impressively busy for a Wednesday morning. Rusty bought a bloody Mary at the patio bar, plopped down at a cast iron table with his back to the clubhouse, laid open a paperback book, and people-watched through dark glasses.

Peter, bless him, had sent a recent photo of Galvan at some sort of old-timers get-together during the previous spring training. Galvan was seventy-eight, but looked sixty, with a salt-and-pepper crewcut, light-beige skin, a block-shaped face, a beat-up nose, teeth that had been expertly rebuilt and whitened, and, like every catcher Rusty ever saw, a barrel chest.

Shortly before noon, Rusty made him—coming out of the 19th Hole. He walked alone.

Fifty feet away, Rusty stood and yelled, “Roger!” Galvan saw him. Rusty waved. Galvan hesitated, then obliged. Curiosity kills again, Rusty thought. A server passed by, and Rusty grabbed him.

“Do you know what Mr. Galvan usually drinks?”

“He likes mojitos.”

“Please bring one.”

Galvan pulled up. Rusty stood and offered his hand.

“I’m Rusty Woodward from the Society for American Baseball Research. I already bought you a drink. Please. Sit. Join me.”

Galvan did not take his hand. But he did take a seat.

“You’re the dude who’s been asking about Sam Miller?”

“That’s right,” Rusty said.

“I don’t think I can help you.”

“I think you can.”

Galvan did not look as if he would get up and leave. He wanted to stay. He wanted to see where this went. Play it out. So Rusty produced his cell phone. He tapped on a recording app. “I want to record this,” Rusty said. “If you don’t want to be recorded, say so, and I’ll turn it off.” Galvan said nothing. He didn’t shake his head or nod. Rusty set the phone down. “I’m talking with retired baseball catcher Roger Galvan. Roger, I read the Society’s bio on you. Impressive. Very flattering for a guy who hit two-thirty-three for his career.”

Galvan leaned back defensively. “Two-thirty-six. And I won a Gold Glove.”

“Yes you did, and a World Series ring with the ‘79 Pirates, although you never actually appeared in that series, did you? All I’m here for is this: you got yours. Sam Miller deserved some of that too. He was a good ballplayer. Far as I can tell, he was a good man. I need to find people who can talk to me about him so I can write a bio like yours, for him.”

“Once again, Rusty, I don’t think I can help you.”

The server set down the mojito.

“Roger, you caught him for three years, in the minors and in Seattle. You two practically came up together. Usually, catchers and pitchers, they’re brothers. I know you guys were friends. I can see that in your eyes right now. If not you, who then? Huh?” Rusty tilted his head to look deeper. Galvan’s eyes flinched. “Did they make you sign something?”

Galvan swirled his swizzle stick. He studied his ice. “Can you imagine what it’s like to abandon a friend when he needs you?”

“I, yes, I believe I can. Yes.”

“I think about Sammy all the time. Still,” Galvan said. “Remember Cheers? Christ. Sam Malone? Ted Danson looked like him, moved like him. Same name. I thought somehow he was based on Sammy. I couldn’t watch that show. Shit. If you only knew.”

“I know Sam Miller was gay. I know he got the shit beat out of him because of that. And I know that ended his career,” Rusty said. “What don’t I know?”

The mojito had vanished. Galvan waived an empty plastic cup at the server.

“We were young, and stupid, and drunk. When you’re young, and stupid, and drunk, you just do stupid things,” Galvan said, his voice defiant. “Hell, I bet you did. Yeah, you did. Being stupid is part of being young. Tell me, Rusty, should someone suffer the rest of his life for what happened when he was young and stupid?”

“Sam Miller did.”

“Yeah, Sammy did.” Galvan leaned in, abandoning his defensive posture. His voice came off attack mode, softening. “The thing is? I already knew Sammy was gay.” He tapped the table. “We sorta talked about it in Portland once, just enough that I knew what he wanted to say, and he knew that I knew. We left it at that. I didn’t care. To each his own, right? That was my attitude then. Still is.”

The server brought another mojito and Galvan drained it while he waited, stacked it in the other cup, handed up both cups, and nodded.

“Shit, these guys are all dead now. Rocco Messina?”

“Rocco Messina?” Rusty repeated the name in surprise. He’d been the Pilots’ star hitter, practically a Hall of Fame candidate.

“Rocco Messina, Hal Whitten. Let’s see, John Denery, Rondell Baxter. They wanted to raid Sammy with a girl, see? I knew this could turn out bad, but I didn’t know how to stop them. I just prayed Sammy was alone in there. Well. Somehow, these guys conned the front desk to give them a key. And boom! There was poor Sammy with some guy.”

“You were there!”

“I was there.

“Rocco screamed all kinds of shit at Sammy about fags and how creepy it was he was in our locker room showers. So Sammy—Ha!—he says something like, ‘I’ve seen you naked, Rocco. Don’t worry. No gay man’s going to want your peanut dick.’

“That’s when Rocco first hit him. And that was fair, ‘cause of what Sammy said. But then a couple guys grabbed Sammy, and it got real ugly.” Galvan shivered. “Rocco pounded and pounded him. Sammy went down. He was on the floor and Rocco stands on his back and grabs his arm and pulls, like he’s trying to twist a wing off a roasted hen. God! I can still hear Sammy’s shrieks.”

“You didn’t try to stop them?” Rusty asked.

“Them? I was holding Sammy’s legs.” Galvan squeezed his face with big, catcher’s hands.

“Stupid. I was stupid. We were all young and stupid and drunk. I am so sorry. All my goddamn life. I can never forgive myself. I hurt my friend. I abandoned my friend. Not just that night, but for the rest of his life. We all did. But I was his friend. Stupid.”

“The statute of limitations has probably expired,” Rusty said. “But you’re going to have to deal with me writing this up.”

Galvan gave Rusty a slow, continuous nod. “Good,” he said. “My first act of repentance. Finally.”

***

The whole trip back, Rusty played the horror and physical pain of the gang-beating Sam Miller took from his own teammates and considered the consequences. When he pushed open the door from his garage to his kitchen, he stopped.

His refrigerator stood open, its contents spilled and shattered on the floor, along with smashed dishes and glasses. Beyond the kitchen, the whole house was trashed. In Rusty’s bedroom, scarlet lipstick declared, in two-foot-tall letters across eight feet of wall: “Fuck you”.

By the time police arrived, Rusty had tallied theft of his two TVs, his modest men’s jewelry including a couple watches and his old wedding band, $500 emergency cash from his sock drawer, and bottles from his booze cabinet.

A uniformed police sergeant told Rusty he was lucky he wasn’t home. “I been a cop twenty-six years. I seen lots of people as far gone as your daughter appears to be. They’re dangerous. Beware.”

“My daughter is ill,” Rusty said. “She needs help.”

The sergeant left his card. But little hope or comfort.

***

Once again, Rusty’s dream state tortured him with a blur of Katrina and Sam Miller in a long, tossing night of semi-conscious surreality. Later, out of that ether, words strung. Sentences formed. Paragraphs stacked. Shortly before sunrise, an exhausted, wired, angry, yet focused Rusty Woodward climbed out of bed. He flipped on lights. He powered his laptop computer, which had safely accompanied him to Arizona.

Rusty felt mission-driven, striving toward something at least related to truth and justice, to set something right in the world. He began:

Seattle Pilots rookie pitcher Sam Miller was not a one-season wonder by just fate, and he was abandoned for half a century.

Miller’s blazing fastball brought him acclaim as “The Next Sudden Sam,” but his sexuality, in 1971, made him a locker room leper. Late in that season, on one violent, terrifying, shattering, lonesome night in Chicago, Miller had his promising career, his hopes and dreams, and perhaps most of his life, beaten out of him by teammates. Just a few years later, he died tragically and young, a long way from baseball.

THE END

***

Scott Michael Powers is a retired newspaper journalist turned novelist and short story writer. Scott has published two novels and several short stories, including “The 291” published here in July 2025. More about Scott and his work can be found on his website: www.scottmichaelpowers.com.