And every once in a while, a kid on his team would ask, “Coach Brooks, were you ever really good?”

This is a story about the summer he almost disappeared for good. Brooks was twenty-six, living in a converted garage behind his parents’ house in Bellingham, Washington. He worked the overnight shift at a 24-hour diner called The Rusty Spoon, pouring coffee for truckers and stitching together short stories on napkins during the lulls. His one published piece—a strange, lyrical account of a teenage pitcher who throws a perfect game and then quits baseball forever—had appeared in a small literary journal two years ago. People still asked him about it sometimes. He always said, “That kid wasn’t me. I was the one who walked.”

The old man picked up a bucket of baseballs. “Because I have one pitch left in this arm. And I’m tired of being the one who walked.”

“You don’t have to throw it,” she said. “Just hold it sometimes.”

“You’re me,” Brooks said.

“Why?”