I was a member of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. In front of a huge crowd of perhaps 500,000 people, we were playing against another team in a strange town, perhaps in Mexico. With a baseball in my hand, I walked through crowds of people on both sides of me. I was a hero. I threw the baseball into the crowd toward a group of high-school band students and screamed, "Baseball forever."

I then joined a member of the opposite team. We went through a peculiar ritual. We squatted, clasped hands, jumped up and down five times like frogs, and screamed.

Then Willy Mays came along. He was on my team. He looked rather old, haggard and washed-up. I was more important now than he. He went through the jumping ceremony with the other team members.

I was in a hurry because I was afraid a hurricane was coming. We had been caught before in hurricanes and I knew they were frighteningly dangerous.

I looked outside; it was beginning to snow.

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