The name on the chart, Winnaker, tightened my throat. Funny how, decades later, a word can evoke a memory that evokes a physical response. It's a good thing the evil woman's name hadn't been Smith ... [+]
It was a slow, massive roar. A dense wall-of-sound that couldn't possibly be made by one person, no matter how many microphones were hooked up to how many speakers. A scratchy, grainy blend of thousands of voices in a low-to-mid-sized stadium, impossible to break down into its individual components and musical keys, not so much meant to be heard but felt as it rippled through your ears, your chest, any cavity your body has that's big enough to vibrate, which is most of them. And in the hallway between the locker room—where I was—and the baseball diamond—where the roar was waiting—it sounded pi