As she walked, the young girl held her doll like it was a prop she was forced to carry, her small hand lazily clutching one of its legs, causing the frayed blue yarn of the doll’s hair to sweep and bounce over the wet, crumbled sidewalk outside St. Agnes Catholic Church in Brooklyn. If anyone driving past questioned what a young girl was doing outside and alone at 2 a.m. on a rainy Tuesday night, none had cared enough to stop. Not that she would have wanted their help, anyway. She knew where she was going, and she’d arrived just in time.
“Yes, sister. Yes,” the doll said, or sang, its words dripping out of its crudely stitched mouth and joining the soft patter of the rain falling around them. “Inside, sister. Inside.”
“Shut up,” the girl said through clenched teeth before swinging the doll, more out of annoyance than anger, wildly against the black metal fence lining the sidewalk. “No more.”
“Yes, sister. Yes.”
Another thud reverberated off the fence. It was followed by silence.
When she had caught wind of Shoeless’ move to Brooklyn, the little girl had quickly made for the left pillar standing high beyond the centerfield fence at the Basilica to snatch the doll. Its poorly sewn seams and mismatched colors, like that of the other eight dolls the girl had left behind, were the handiwork of the man living within the pillars’ cinder block walls – Carlos Camacho.
Once an athletic journeyman of a baseball player, Camacho had donned the uniform of nine different BBA organizations and three of the GBC’s during his 19 year career, playing every position in the field outside of pitcher and catcher. But despite playing only 13 games for the franchise that would become the Mad Popes, his days in Sacramento had left a trail of deceit, conspiracy, and darkness.
Upon his retirement as a player, he was hired as a coach within the Sacramento organization and quickly advanced through the ranks, culminating in his promotion to the team’s assistant general manager position. At 52, his association with the team and its nefarious practices administered by the Green Eyed Woman had turned him into something else, something less. And more.
The dolls were an extension of the more, a more only he and the little girl now carrying his first doll knew – a more set on the destruction of everything Shoeless had built or ever will build.
The girl had two questions lingering in her mind as she hopped up the first step leading into St. Agnes: How had Shoeless known about Camacho’s plans and why had he chosen to GM the Robins, the team Camacho had started his career with and played five lackluster seasons for?
According to the doll, and according to the crows who had whispered the existence of the dolls to the girl, the answer lay somewhere within the walls of St. Agnes.
