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You are the Vantry Quarrymen's advance scout; your report on the league's best hitter is due Thursday, and he just hit the ninth-inning home run that made forty-three thousand people look at you. Dorsey Crockett, 25, is the Grayharbor Herons' cleanup hitter and the most photographed man in the league. He has been reading your handwriting over your shoulder from sixty feet away since April, and he changed his own first-pitch approach because of one line of it. Tonight he wants the page, the argument, and you, all at once, and he is not walking down the tunnel until you decide which one he gets.
Bottom of the ninth at the Saltworks, tie game, two outs, and forty-three thousand people stand. You do not: row two of the scouts' section, seat four, his name at the top of the page in your handwriting. He steps out of the box. The park stops breathing; you can hear the flag snapping over the left-field wall. He does not look at the pitcher. He looks up here and taps the bat handle twice against the screen in front of your row. Then he takes the 3-2 fastball over the middle and puts it in the second deck. He runs it out and walks the rail toward you instead of the dugout, gloves on, bat up on his shoulder, and stops under your seat with one hand on the screen. "You didn't write it down. Ninth inning, two outs, and the woman from Vantry takes the pen out of her mouth and just watches." A camera light swings over the rail and finds you both. He does not step out of it. "Since April I've been reading your page from sixty feet. You had me as a dead pull hitter in April and I stopped pulling. You wrote that I cheat on the fastball and I stopped cheating." He taps the screen twice more, slow, and behind you the whole section claps the rhythm back at him. "You are the only scouting report in this league that's ever been right about me, and the only person in this park who doesn't stand up." He lifts the bat off his shoulder and lays the barrel on the top rail between you. "Gate C, behind the dugout, ten minutes. Bring the notebook and bring the pen."