So I spent my thirty-second birthday in the hospital, feeling miserable. But the second or third day there, Doc Trurow comes to visit me, and it was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. She’s really pretty, and her smile lit up the whole damned hospital.
Stem cells again. This time they helped my ribs heal and even repaired the rip in my lung. I got back to the team before the end of the season and ran off a four-fifty average on our last home stand. Better yet, Doc Trurow was at every game, sitting right behind our dugout.
So on the last day of the season, I worked up the nerve to ask her out for dinner. And she says yes! Her first name is Olga and we had a great evening together, even though the team finished only in third place.
«Mr. Caruso,» the commissioner intoned. «Kindly stick to the facts of your physical enhancements.»
Vic looked kind of sheepish and he nodded his head and mumbled, «Yessir.»
Instead of going back to Michigan for the off season, I stayed in Oakland and dated Olga a lot. I even started thinking about marriage, but I didn’t have the nerve to pop the question—
«Mr. Caruso!»
Well, it’s important—Vic said to the commissioner. Olga told me how stem cell treatments could improve my eyesight and make my reflexes sharper. There wasn’t anything in the rules against it, and it was my own cells, not some drug or steroids or anything like that. So I let her jab me here and there and damned if I didn’t feel better. Besides, I worried that if I said no to her she’d stop dating me and I didn’t want to stop seeing her.
So this goes on for a couple seasons and all of a sudden I’m coming up on my thirty-fifth birthday and I can see the big four-oh heading down the road for me. I started to worry about my career ending, even though I was hitting three-twenty-something and doing okay behind the plate. News guys started calling me Iron Man, no kidding.
Danny Daniels looks piss … uh, unhappy, but he doesn’t say anything and I figure, what the hell, so he has to sit on the bench for another season or two. But the front office trades him to the Yankees, so it’s okay. I don’t have to see his sour puss in the clubhouse anymore.
Meanwhile we’re in the playoffs again and we’ve got a good chance to take the pennant.
Then I got hurt again. Dancing. No kidding, Olga and I were dancing and I guess I was feeling pretty damned frisky and I tried a fancy move I’d seen in an old Fred Astaire movie and I slipped and went down on my face. Never been so embarrassed in my whole life.
I turned from Vic to take a peek at the commissioner’s face. Instead of interrupting the big lug, the commissioner was listening hard, his eyes focused on Vic, totally intent on the story that was unfolding.
Something in my hip went blooey—Vic went on. I got to my feet okay, but the hip felt stiff. And the stiffness didn’t go away. It got worse. When I told Olga about it she toted me over to the medical center for a whole lot of tests.
It was nothing serious, the docs decided. The hip would be okay in a couple of months. Just needed rest. And time.
But spring training was due to start in a few weeks and I needed to be able to get around okay, not stiff like Frankenstein’s monster.
«It’s just a factor of your age,» says the therapist Olga sent me to.
«I’m only thirty-six,» I said.
«Maybe so,» says the doc, «but your body’s taken a beating over the years. It’s catching up with you. You’re going to be old before your time, physically.»
I felt pretty low. But when I tell Olga about what the doc said, she says, «Telomerase.»
«Telo-what?» I ask her.
She tells me this telomerase stuff can reverse aging. In mice, at least. They inject the stuff in old, creaky, diabetic lab mice and the little buggers get young and frisky again and their diabetes goes away.
I don’t have diabetes, but I figure if the stuff makes me feel younger then why not try it? Olga tells me that some movie stars and politicians have used it, in secret, and it helped them stay young. A couple of TV news people, too.
So I start taking telomerase injections and by the time I hit the big four-oh I’m still hitting over three hundred and catching more than a hundred games a year. And other guys are starting to use stem cells and telomerase and everything else they can get their hands on. Even Danny Daniels is using, from what I heard.
«That’s what I’ve been telling you!» Bragg yells, jumping up from his seat on the front row of benches. «They’re making a travesty of the game!»
The commissioner frowns at him and Bragg sits back down. Vic Caruso stares at him, looking puzzled.
«Look,» Vic says, «I didn’t do anything that’s prohibited by the rules.»
Bragg seems staggered that Vic can pronounce «prohibited» correctly.
The commissioner says, «The point of this hearing is to decide if the rules should be amended.»
«You make stem cells and telomerase and such illegal,» Vic says, «and half the players in the league’ll have to quit baseball.»
«But is it fair to the players who don’t use such treatments for you to be so … so … extraordinary?» asks the commissioner.
Vic shakes his head. «I’m not extraordinary. I’m not a superman. I’m just young. I’m not better than I was when I was twenty, but I’m just about as good. What’s wrong with that?»
The commissioner doesn’t answer. He just shakes his head and glances at the two league presidents, sitting beside him. Neither of them has an answer, either.
But Bragg does. «Do you realize what this means?» he yells at the commissioner. Pointing at Vic again, he says, «This man will be playing until he’s fifty! Maybe longer! How are we going to bring young players into the league if the veterans are using these treatments to keep themselves young? We’ll have whole teams made up of seventy-year-olds, for God’s sake!»
«Seventy-year-olds who play like twenty-year-olds,» the commissioner mutters.
«Seventy-year-olds who’ll demand salary increases every year,» Bragg snaps back at him.
And suddenly it all becomes clear. Bragg’s not worrying about the purity of the game. The revelations in the news haven’t hurt box office receipts: attendance has been booming. But veteran players demand a lot more money than rookies—and get it. Bragg’s bitching about his pocketbook!
The commissioner looks at the two league presidents again, but they still have nothing to say. They avoid looking at Bragg, though.
To Vic, the commissioner says, in a kindly, almost grandfatherly way, «Mr. Caruso, thank you for your frank and honest testimony. You’ve given us a lot to think about. You may step down now.»
Vic gets up from the chair like a mountain rising. As he heads for the front bench, though, the commissioner says, «By the way, just to satisfy my personal curiosity, did you and Dr. Trurow get married?»
«We’re gonna do that on Christmas day,» says Vic. «In Stockholm, that’s her home town and her family and all her friends’ll be there.»
The commissioner smiles. «Congratulations.»
«We’ll send you an invitation,» Vic says, smiling back.
Glancing at Bragg, the commissioner says, «I’m afraid it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to attend your wedding, Mr. Caruso. But I wish you and your bride much happiness.»
So that’s how it happened. The commissioner and the league presidents and all the owners—including Bragg—put their heads together and came up with the Big Change.