Many times I thought about taking a few hours to go see how Max was doing, but just as many times I found reasons (or they found me) for not going. School work, honey-dos, coaching my son's two baseball teams, car trouble, truck trouble and a job on the side all conspired to keep me busy and free from free time.

In March 1996, my classes were over by 3 p.m. on Tuesdays that particular semester, and, since my wife worked in Raleigh and my kids attended school in Raleigh, it only made sense for us all to ride together with me being the cab driver.

This one afternoon, my professor decided to extend class about 20 minutes. Oh, boy. If I took the time to call my wife and the school, I'd be another 10 minutes late. So the heck with calling.

When class was finally over, I walked that mile and a half as fast and hard as I could to my parking spot - muttering some real vile stuff about my professor all the way from Poe Hall to the other side of Doak Field, the Wolfpack baseball facility.

I was out of shape at the time, so that also explained my being out of breath. I leapt -well, fell - into my car and headed out the gravel parking lot to the street when a real cab pulled right in front of me at the exit and stopped.

I didn't have time to kill somebody right then, I thought. I was already 22 minutes late, and my wife and kids were going to be mad. The cab was still there, yellow and ruining my life.

I took both hands off the wheel and was about to blast a double-handed sustained honk point blank into the side of that guy when the door slowly opened. I froze.

I stared transfixed as Max Mangum got out of the cab, handed the driver a bill and then walked across the street to where State's baseball team was practicing. I guess he was just trying to find somebody to throw with.

Since I was in a great big hurry as always, I didn't even have time to stop a minute and speak. After a moment or two of shock, I closed my mouth, slapped myself back to my senses and drove slowly away to retrieve my family. I was already late, so there was no need to rush.

Yes, they were ticked off, but telling them about seeing Max at Doak Field took a little edge off. It also added another chapter to a story that appeared to have no end.

I graduated college that December and began teaching in January 1997. I had come a long way in the last five years, and I realized I owed much of that success to a man who lived in a different world.

Max's world is one I can't describe and few can understand. Everything happens for a reason, and I believe our paths crossed so I could write his story, even though bits and pieces of my little life are thrown in there for good measure and logistical purposes.

My first principal - Zebulon Middle School's John Wall - read "Phantom of the Bullpen" and gave me permission to share it with seventh-graders. Milder words here and there, change this concept a little, and the story was suitable.

This is now something I do with my students every year.

In May 1999, student Gabe Ingino gave me a present. It was the 1999-2000 Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents. Gabe said I should have "Phantom of the Bullpen" published in book form.

I was flattered, to say the least. It enabled me to return a similar one I'd held hostage for a year from the Zebulon Public Library.

Inspired by this gift, I sat down and wrote the first 100 pages of my first novel. It's a real thriller about bioterrorism close to home, and has many twists and turns that will keep the reader turning the pages well into the night. I should be finished in about 50 years, since I'm still on page 101.

I was motivated to write purely by the thought of this gift, because I had yet to look inside it. But I knew that when I did happen to finish one of these writing projects I've gotten myself involved with, I'll have somewhere to find an agent or publisher.

I use "Phantom of the Bullpen" every spring with my students in language arts. I can teach reading, spelling, new vocabulary words, revising, foreshadowing, oxymorons, perseverance, ask the author, respect all people and life - among other things. The students really seem to enjoy the story, and they love watching the few minutes of video I have of Max and his "Field of Dream" with popcorn and sodas as the culminating event.

During my first full year, I taught at Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School. Sure enough, one of my students was a distant relative of the "Phantom," and the students really connected with the story. They all wanted to hijack an activity bus, drive it to Max's house and play some ball.

I could just see Max's reaction to a hundred screaming adolescents taking over his field. No. I just lied. I couldn't see that at all.

I ended up over-explaining why we couldn't go to "Shade Stadium" to spend a day with Max. The students had forgotten they'd asked by the time I had paraphrased my reasoning for the third time. Kids today have no attention span.

Just the other day ...

Oh, I probably should say something about the time the tape of Max went missing. It was during my third year teaching, and we'd just finished reading the story and answering all the questions. My students were chomping at the bit to see the video, and I couldn't find it.

Like all good teachers, I locate all my resources before beginning a unit. Except for this time.

I just knew I could find it among our hundred or so unlabeled videos at home any time I wanted. I looked at old home movies for a year and a half before I found the one I'd hidden it on. It is now clearly marked and is kept separate from the others.

What is it with me or with Max or with me and Max or any other combination thereof, and any kind of photographic equipment? Do I really want to know?

Nope.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

I was able to make hundreds of phone calls from January to March in 1991 and put together a baseball team, get us in a league, locate a sponsor, shop for uniforms and equipment, schedule fields for our home games, nail down a manager, and find some bat boys.

My job at work was to answer the phone and help customers. I never failed to do my job, as I found all the time I needed to form the Zebulon Pirates when the phones were silent. And that was most of the time.

I had also planned the Father's Day weekend tournament during such breaks. I tied up every loose end - umpires, entry fees, advertising, fields, trophies and a lot of other stuff I can't remember. By the first of May, I was cruising.

It was a short cruise.

"Play at the stadium," I heard in my head one night.

My eyes shot open from a not-too-deep fitful sleep. "What?"

"Play at Five County Stadium," came the echo.

I asked, "Why?"

No answer.

So I answered myself. "So Max and the other guys can play in a real stadium with a grass infield, box seats for their wives and nice dugouts." I thought that was all, but it wasn't. "And so I can play in a real stadium with all that stuff, too."

Now we're getting somewhere.

I checked the Carolina Mudcats schedule and made sure they were away from Five County Stadium that Father's Day weekend. That took about three seconds. The next three weeks, however, I recall in a haze of mostly confusion and anger.

It was a most confusing time for the town of Zebulon, the Mudcats, Carolina owner Steve Bryant, the Triangle Sports Authority, the Wake County Board of Commissioners and, oddly enough, the Zebulon Parks and Recreation Department. I started by explaining it all to Zebulon Town Manager Charles Horne who said the idea sounded interesting, and he'd get back with me the next day.

I still hadn't heard from him three days later, so I called Mudcats General Manager Joe Kremer. I believe he was totally clueless, and I mean that in a good way, because he hadn't been told of my request.

Still no toot from Horne a week later, so I tried the Triangle Sports Authority route. I talked to at least four people there, and none of them had the authority to tell me anything.

Keep in mind I'm explaining to all these people what we want to do - a baseball tournament, old-timers, Father's Day, food bank, etc.

I called Horne again two weeks after he said he'd call me back. He said he was sorry but he didn't think we'd be able to "do your thing."

I told Mr. Horne I was sorry, but just because he didn't think we could do our thing didn't necessarily mean we couldn't do our thing. Click.

My last shot was Bryant. I could never gain audience with the man, so I simply faxed him the proposal and reminded him the Men's Senior Baseball League carried a $1 million insurance policy against any kind of accident or damage during any of our games, and covered spectators, as well.

Another week passed and it was near the end of May, and I had to finalize the arrangements on where the games were going to be played. I had told all the managers about possibly getting Five County Stadium for half the tournament. They told their players, and everybody was pumped.

Still no word from Mr. Bryant by the Friday before Memorial Day, so I had the honor of calling all the managers and my players, and telling them that Five County Stadium was a no-go. I told them we would be playing at Zebulon Community Park and the Zebulon Middle School field, and to call me at work if they had any questions.

At 4:30 p.m. that same day, my boss wandered in and told us, "as of 5 p.m. this afternoon, we are out of business."

Can you say "unemployment line"?

Actually, I thank God for this down time. The unpaid vacation afforded me valuable time to spend with my family. It also allowed me the quiet time to reflect on my so-called life.

When I graduated from high school in June 1973, I had all intention of going to college for four years and then either playing baseball or becoming a teacher/coach. By that December, I was driving a truck for a local food distributor.

I failed to realize intentions have to be backed up by sacrifice. I stumbled through several more jobs (carpenter, farmhand, commercial fisherman, sports editor for the local weekly newspaper) over the next few years before I settled down and settled in as a counterman/salesman for various auto parts stores and warehouses. This I did from about 1977 through May 1991.

To that point, except for the newspaper job, I hated every job I ever had. Loved almost everybody I ever worked with, but always hated the jobs. Putting food on the table takes precedence over likes and dislikes sometimes.

I was some kind of depressed when the company I worked for went under. I wanted to do something different, but I was at an age where, let's face it, people don't change careers at 36. I had a few weeks to think about it, anyway.

I'd always enjoyed writing, and this had turned into an incredible adventure, figuratively and literally. If ever I had a spare minute or two, I was always tweaking my story, and had accumulated about 20 versions and revisions.

I felt in my heart this story was special, and I was very diligent trying to get it exactly right, exactly as it happened, while still mixing in some misadventures.

My wife read the story one evening and suggested rather calmly I should go to college. "For what, babe?' I asked, because I'm sometimes stupid and really don't know.

She put the story on my desk and said, "So you can teach writing and coach baseball. You know, realize your dream - that sort of thing."

"We can't afford ... " I began.

"Yes, we can," she argued.

"But what about ... " I asked.

"You can go to classes at night at Nash Community College. They have a college transfer program," she said.

"I can't ... " I began, only to shut myself up that time. The clouds rolled back, and suddenly I could see the light. I had a chance to do something I've been wanting, longing, needing to do for two decades. And all I had to do was get out of my own way.

On the other hand, Max had been working every day possible for 45 years trying to do something he will never be able to do - pitch in the major leagues.

"I can do this, babe," I said proudly.

"I know you can," she said sweetly. "Now take out the trash."

On the baseball front, ZPRD Director Jean-Marc Savory called me a week after I declared and committed our tournament to the community park field and the school field, and made a thousand calls to make it official. If I'm not mistaken, the very first of those calls went to Mr. Savory.

See if you can make sense of this conversation.

"Allen. Jean-Marc," he said. "Good news. Mr. Bryant wants to talk to you about possibly using Five County Stadium for your tournament."

"It's too late, Jean-Marc," I said without much emotion. "You know that." The tournament was the next week.

Mr. Savory stopped speaking. My turn?

"Jean-Marc, all we wanted to do was give some old-timers a chance to play some ball on a nice field. They call it a stadium, and it will be one day. I've seen the plans. But right now, it's just a nice field with a nice big wall in the outfield and some Mickey Mouse bleachers thrown up down both foul lines. A few of the guys in my league are former major- and minor-leaguers. Some are former college players. But most are like me - guys who were good ball players, but never made it past their expectations for millions of different reasons. I just wanted some of the guys to feel the big-time again, and I wanted some of us to feel it for the first time. But that's all right, Jean-Marc, because I know you somehow got in the middle of this nonsense, and it's not your fault, and it's really no big deal. If we never mention it again, that will be just fine with me, because it's over. Let it be" is what I wanted to say.

What I actually said was, "Thank you kindly, but we've already made other arrangements."

You don't burn bridges if you can't swim.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

When I reached home that night, the wheels were already turning in my head to plan a tournament and somehow talk my Zebulon Pirate teammates into letting Max pitch for us in one of our games. With support from the late Jean-Marc Savory and Greg Johnson at the Zebulon Parks and Recreation Department, I organized a tournament for Father's Day weekend with four teams from the Men's Senior Baseball League and and four teams from the Research Triangle Area Roy Hobbs Baseball Association.

Each team would play a team from the opposing league one time during the three-day event, with doubleheaders on Saturday. There would be no championship nor pressure games, just games to have fun. Admission to each game for players, fans, wives, kids, umpires and dignitaries was set at $1 or one food item per game. All the proceeds would go to the Food Bank of North Carolina.

Since my Pirates had four games to play and only three roster pitchers, the vote was unanimous to add Max to our roster for the weekend.

Other things were not going so well, though. Oddly enough, the pictures I had taken that day while visiting Max turned out to be duds. It seems the film in the camera had already been used up at a birthday party for my daughter, Taylor. Lots of cake-smeared smiles, birthday hats and candles, but no Max.

A few weeks after planning the tournament, I finished "Phantom of the Bullpen" without actually telling the real story. In the version I finally submitted to Hardball magazine, I suggested Max wasn't exactly the "guy next door" by mentioning he was extremely eccentric, to put it mildly.

I made no mention of his illness in that version, because I felt uncomfortable revealing someone else's disability for all to see. I wanted everyone to know about his daily monumental struggle to get over a mountain that can't be climbed. Yet I felt I still needed to protect his privacy.

The ending of the Hardball version was simply the last exchange of words between Max and me that April Fools' Day afternoon. We'd said, "Goodbye," and I was groping for my keys when I noticed again how green everything looked after several weeks of rain and chilly temperatures. "I'm glad to see we're finally getting some good baseball weather for a change," I remarked as we parted company.

I had stopped to look back to see if Max had heard me when I saw him hang his head momentarily and say, "Yeah. Me, too. I just hate that another spring is about to get by me, and I still ain't signed a contract with nobody yet."

I knew that Max was serious, so I left it at that. So much for your happy endings.

Anyway, I needed to put this story behind me and get on with the business of my life - my wife, my kids, my job, etc.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

In 1991, our baseball league had more than 25,000 players nationwide and a great magazine, 'Hardball,' that came around four times a year. I thought the guys would enjoy this true but extremely weird occurrence, so I decided to write it all down, and send it in just to get it off my chest once and for all.

The old man's disappearing act after my injury gave me the perfect angle, and everything else fell neatly into place. It's a true story. All I had to do was remember it.

I mailed the story to our editor in California sometime in late November and, by Christmas, I forgot all about it. NOT!

I was actually hurt by the absence of a response. I thought the story was plenty good enough for 'Hardball.' I could have said the guy was Elvis and made the front page of 'The National Inquirer.'

Still no word by mid-February, and then, out of the cold blue, editor David Krival called me. He said he loved the story, but he didn't know whether or not to believe it. I told him there were close to 40 players and about 50 or 60 fans who saw the same thing I did. I was confident they would back me up.

He told me that wouldn't be necessary, but there were a few small changes he would like for me to make before he could put the story in the next issue. After the story appeared, Mr. Krival felt sure he could sell it to one of the large monthly sports magazines and make "a couple thousand bucks" with no problem.

Remember that movement I almost had? I almost had it again.

"That sounds great," I said. "What are the changes you want me to make?"

"I don't care for the ending," Mr. Krival stated stiffly. "The bit about the sporting goods store and the baseball cards - all that crap has to go."

"No problem, sir," I beamed, smiling to myself at the unintended pun. "Is that all?"

He was supposed to say "yes," and I was all ready to thank him and bid goodbye. But that's not how it went down.

Remember? I don't have that kind of luck.

"No, there's one other thing," the editor said, matter-of-factly. "I want you to find this guy, interview him, get a few pictures and end the story with his story. You have until April 30." Click.

"Hello?" I asked.

Imagine my joy and confusion. A story I wrote was going to be in a national magazine, and all I had to do was find a certain wino or ghost in the big city of Durham.

Yes, my head was shaking again.

Since I had come to grips with reality, I admitted to myself the old man could not have been a ghost. I didn't want to, but I did anyway because, after all, we all know there are no such things as ghosts. Don't we?

We'll see.

Now I was stuck with my ex-pro-down-in-his-luck-turned-wino hypothesis. Finding a wino in Durham would be easy as going downtown, closing my eyes, throwing a rock and hitting one. But finding a particular wino in Durham was going to be the trick of the century.

And I ain't no David Copperfield.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

It's quite possible the events of that afternoon were on my mind too much. I made a point of telling everyone who would stand still long enough my little story about the old man and what had happened.

My co-workers, customers I knew personally, the preacher, even wife Pam - who doesn't know her bunt from first base - thought it was "interesting." My son, Jameson, wanted him to be Shoeless Joe Jackson.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became this old man was a fine pitcher at some time for some team somewhere. He was still a good pitcher.

Nobody can throw that kind of heat with that kind of control only once in a lifetime. This was no fluke. He had done it before, but when? Where? Was he a former big-leaguer who's just a little down on his luck?

Perhaps he was older than I first estimated. Maybe he pitched with Walter Johnson or Dizzy Dean. Whoa! Maybe he was Walter Johnson or Dizzy Dean.

Sometime in early November, I was in a sporting goods store when I noticed a plastic bucket on the counter beside the cash register. It was full of clear-wrapped packages of black-and-white remakes of 1910-1950 baseball cards (the Conlon Collection). Each pack contained 20 cards with only one in front and the one in back visible.

I began browsing innocently, trying to see if I recognized any of the names. When I got to the last 30 or so, there was my hero - Dizzy Dean. I turned the pack over and there, on the other side, was (you guessed it) Walter Johnson.

I nonchalantly tried to talk myself out of thinking the old-timer I met in Durham might be featured on a card sandwiched between these aforementioned greats. I did a decent job of it, too, and almost made it to the door when it happened.

I heard that voice again.

"Buy it and be sure," it whispered, just like the voice in "Field of Dreams" did. At first I thought it was the store manager trying to make a subliminal sale. No. He was back in the storage room putting up the four pairs of spikes I had tried on but couldn't afford. I may have led him to believe they didn't fit properly, but that's not important.

I didn't want to make a fool of myself by haggling with someone or something who may or may not have been there, so I left a $1.25 on the counter for the $1 package of cards and hit the street.

Safe in my truck, but visibly shaken by the way I bumped my head getting in, I peeled the cellophane away. I scrutinized Dizzy and Walter very carefully, and determined that even with some serious and/or celestial plastic surgery, neither could be the man I was searching.

Of the 18 remaining cards, only six were pitchers. I separated these from the others and began scouring the half dozen faces with a Cracker Jack magnifying glass I kept in my glove compartment. Numbers one through five slowly bit the dust.

I was down to my last card.

It was turned to the backside where the player's name and career stats were. Nothing really rang a bell until I read this particular player was born in Wilson, a scant 24 miles from Zebulon. Bing - not quite bingo, just yet.

I turned the card over to get a look at the mug in question. When I did, my heart fell through the seat, hit the floorboard, bounced back up through the seat and wound up stuck sideways in my throat.

The eyes, the broad nose, the innocent smile and the lanky build. All wrong. It can't be this clown. He ain't even close. Man, was I ticked.

The story should have ended there.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

I saw Max on Sunday, less than a week before the tournament began the following Friday night. He hitched a ride to the field in Wake Forest where we were playing the Dodgers sister team - the Cardinals. We invited him to sit with us in our dugout.

I told him he was starting next Saturday in the Father's Day tournament, and he went ballistic. He warmed up on the sidelines and even did some sprints.

I hate to admit it, but he runs better than most of the guys on our team. I had my camera with me and sneaked a few shots of Max while he wasn't looking. As I took the last one, he turned and gave me that funny little smile again.

Five of the 24 pictures I took that day were of Max. Every picture was perfect and clear as a bell, except for the five of Max. Each one of those photographs sported a big, dark, fuzzy blob outlined in red light in the middle of the print. Don't ask me why. I don't know what the problem was, and I was getting to the point where I didn't really care. If it was not meant for me to have a photograph of Max, then I certainly wasn't going to force the issue.

It was as if some unknown entity was interfering every time I tried to get his picture. I knew from watching television when you mess with things you end up with star billing in a scary movie, and I'm just not cut out for that kind of excitement.

The big weekend slowly rolled around. I drove to Wake Forest and picked up Max bright and early for his start at the Zebulon Middle School baseball field. We arrived on campus just in time to help my teammates drag the infield and put down the foul lines and batter's boxes. Welcome to the big time, Max.

On my way to get my glove from the dugout, I caught a glimpse of the Grand Canyon in all its natural beauty out of the corner of my left eye. A few steps later, I stopped and it hit me. The Grand Canyon is not in Zebulon.

I peeked back over my shoulder at the pitcher's mound and saw a quarry that had been spiked out in front of the pitcher's plate.

I pitched from that same mound when I was in high school, so I knew the thing was at least 25 years old and had been the victim of absolutely no maintenance since 1989 - the last year of the high school. Calling it a mound, in fact, was doing it a favor.

Many years of rainfall had eroded that once 2-feet high pile of clay into a 10-inch high hump spanning the middle of the infield. The guys who pitched in the two games played there the prior Friday night must have been shelled pretty hard judging from the size of that foxhole.

I asked Max what he thought about the crater, and he confirmed my suspicions it "musta been a meteorite." He didn't seem to think it would affect his pitching, but I was worried enough for the both of us anyway.

A combination of several factors, I believe, contributed to Max's mediocre performance in the game. The basement apartment he had to pitch from, for one thing, was a royal pain. Trying to compensate for the imbalance could have been why he was consistently a little high out of the strike zone.

Secondly, I have since measured the dimensions at Max's bullpen and discovered he throws regularly from a distance of nearly 62 feet instead of the regulation 62-feet, 6 inches. Those two extra feet and that crater could have been the difference between the eight walks he issued and the 32 knee-high strikes that might have been.

Also, this was the first time in nearly 50 years Max had faced live batters in a game situation. He had the right to be a little tight.

On top of all that, I'm going to leave out the part about some of my esteemed teammates catching my eye and giving me the finger-across-the-throat slashing sign after Max walked another four guys in a row in the second.

I understood, but I let him pitch another inning.

Although we were beaten soundly, 13-8, by the team from Southern Pines, it was evident Max had a great time. Thanks to my teammates, we were able to make at least a small part of his dream come true.

We had a team picture taken after the game, and I don't think any of us stood any prouder than Max Mangum.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)

I've made a few attempts to contact Max during the next few years. Twice when I called, his sister told me Max was sick and she didn't think it would be a good idea for him to see me.

What? Did she think I was gonna drag him out of his bed to play catch? Come on. Gimme a break here. I was thinking I could probably prop him up and toss a few there in the room, but that's all.

The second time I called, Mrs. Davis asked me very discreetly if I would consider saying a few words about Max if he should pass away due to his current ailment. I flatly refused, because I'm gonna die before anybody else. And that's just the way it is, so what's the need in discussing it any further? Can we change the subject, please?

After not too much thought, I decided if I'm alive, saying something nice about Max was the least I could do for the man who probably could have had the Cy Young Award renamed after him.

I called Mrs. Davis in March 2002 to inquire about Max and to inform her of my change in heart. She was glad, then we went round and round again about how she felt the story might embarrass the family and why I shouldn't have it published. I told her as I always had that I would respect her wishes, but she was missing something if she thought the story would be the least bit embarrassing for Max or for her or for her family.

I told her I would let her read the finished product should I ever finish the product before I would consider trying to get it published.

Mrs. Davis verbally gave me permission to write the story about Max as I saw fit. She also gave me permission to visit her brother, although he was feeling poorly. Somehow she got the message to Max, and he was waiting for me the first day of April.

By now, my little story had come full circle. I stood there in Max's yard with my new (aka borrowed) glove on one hand and a brand-new baseball in the other. As best I could figure, it was exactly 10 years to the day since my first visit there.

Max was resting out in the back yard, so we didn't go to "Shade Stadium." He'd been throwing to one of those nets on a stand with a canvas batter outlined in white against the blue background. I remember Mrs. Davis telling me a few years back that it was a present from the owner of Johnson-Lambe Sporting Goods in Raleigh.

We shook hands and I asked Max, "Do you remember who I am?"

Max looked at me, then through me, then off into the distance beyond me, then quickly back to me. "I know who you are if you are who you say you are," he said, turning his head and looking toward the net, then back at me.

I heard what he said, but I couldn't come up with an honest answer. I just said, "Good. How've you been? I haven't seen you in nearly five years."

"A lot can happen in five years," Max said.

"You're telling me, brother," I said.

That was about all the small talk Max could stand, and I was about to get philosophical when he said, "I been throwin' awhile this mornin', but I'll let you get another look. You still with the Pirates?"

"Max, I'm not with anybody anymore," I confessed, then bragged, "I teach seventh grade and coach a middle school baseball team."

We only threw a few pitches. Max could hardly get the ball to me, and we were only about 40 feet apart. I tried to get a strike by the canvas guy, but he was taking all the way and the ball kinda sailed behind his head anyway. I retrieved the new baseball from the freshly cut grass and gave it to Max.

He talked about the Astros for some reason, then the Phillies. He said he was tired, and I said I had to get home and I'd come back some day soon. Max went in the back door, and I went home.

I had hoped to see Max still throwing the rock at 70 mph. I had hoped somehow Max had stayed frozen in time the way I pictured him for the past decade. I had hoped I had, too.

I was hoping for a better ending, but I think I used them all up at the end of some other chapters. Good. I didn't want this to be the ending anyway.

I pray that I was able to get the point of this story across. Max Mangum is a truly unique individual with much to offer. To stare frustration in the eye every day the way Max does and still push on toward a desired end, against invisible and insurmountable odds, is unbelievable. Unthinkable.

I believe it has somehow been left up to me to help him share his inspiring story with others. I am honored to be the bridge.

I kept walking past the dual mounds to the double plates and got behind the one nearest the foul line. When I turned around, I saw the winner of the Will Geer lookalike contest climbing the mound next to the fence and cheap seats.

"Great," I said, a lot louder than I meant to. "It's gonna take us 10 minutes just to set up so I can chase baseballs."

I looked down at the ground, sort of disgusted and stepped over to the other plate. When I peered again, he was looking down at the ground, sort of disgusted, and moved over to the other mound. I then looked up to that clear Carolina blue sky for help when something or someone softly said, "Be patient."

I had never heard a voice from nowhere like that before, so I got patient - real quick.

The dreamlike series of events that transpired during the next eight to 10 minutes unfolded before my eyes in an eeriness no Hollywood director or producer could ever recreate. I set up behind the plate trying to look and feel as comfortable and "at home" as any left-handed pitcher posing as a catcher could. I held up my old ragged glove at dead center over the plate. I had it raised to where I guessed knee-high ought to be.

With no warm-ups, the old-timer's first pitch to me hit the palm of my hand in excess of 75 mph with only that wafer-thin piece of rawhide to cushion the blow. Except for my glove flying back and hitting me in the nose and upper lip, I didn't have to move an inch to catch it.

"Yeoowww," I thought so loudly everybody in the stadium heard me. Then I thought to myself, "No problem." I slid back a foot or so, believing that he had just got lucky and that moving back a foot or so might help me.

Wrong on both counts.

He fired five more fastballs my way I didn't have to move a muscle to catch. Those wandering eyes of his were now cutting right through me, and his velocity increased with every pitch.

By this time, most of the other eyes at Durham Athletic Park were focused on me and my "wino" buddy. To put it ever so eloquently in baseball jargon, let's just say he was smokin' my sliding shorts.

I wanted out, but I had gone too far to turn back.

I didn't know what to think about this old fogey, and he didn't give me much time to speculate. "They might start jumpin' up or down a little bit, now, I don't rightly know," he warned. His next five or six rounds had to have been in the 80-mph range, and they all had some major movement.

I almost had one of my own.

Each pitch cut the corner of the plate like an X-Acto knife in exactly the same place - about knee-high on anybody. Thanks to his advanced warning and my innate desire to stay alive, I made the slight adjustments to catch his exploding fastballs.

I could hear my own teammates taunting me from the dugout.

"Hey, Allen. Let him borrow your uniform," yelled second baseman Welton Pearce.

"Sign him up," came a direct request from fellow pitcher Kirk Pollard.

"Ain't your arm still bothering you, Allen?" shouted shortstop Roger Woods.

Truth be known, I was thinking the very same things. This old man could bring the rock like I only dreamed and lied about. He was showing me up, and I mean bad.

But I was enjoying every minute of it.

I was worried about having to run down a few wild pitches, and this guy was demonstrating better guidance than a Tomahawk missile. He hurled me about four more smokers - rising fastballs that would have jumped over anybody's late and futile swing.

"Who is this guy?" I asked myself more than once. My opinion had changed drastically in less than 10 minutes.
He looked a little winded by now and said he'd had enough. It could have been me who gave out and said that. Anyway, we left the bullpen by mutual agreement.

As we walked back toward the dugout, I asked him his name twice, but he avoided the question both times by saying, "I was up there in the 90s today. Had to be. Just had to be."

Although I was still in a state of semishock, I had a game to pitch in two minutes and I wasn't anywhere near ready to play ball.

"See ya later," I said as we reached the gate by the dugout, but when I extended my right hand to shake his, the smiling face he'd been wearing since we started throwing turned very serious.

"No. Better not," he said as he took off his glove and offered me his left hand. I didn't have time to question this peculiarity.

I saw him in the stands behind home plate as I took about 10 warm-up pitches before the first batter stepped up. He was still there three batters later when I pulled up lame running to back up a throw to the plate. Insufficient preparation, I'm sure.

Phil Johnson came in and got us out of trouble, and finished the game. After the pain subsided in my torn right calf, I limped through the bleachers a couple of times during the game - which we won 7-3, by the way, no thanks to me - trying to find him. I wanted to find out more about him and his baseball past, but he was gone.

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"Max Mangum, paranoid schizophrenic. Good to see ya," Max introduced himself and smiled as we shook hands.

"Hi, Max. Allen White, yet to be diagnosed correctly. Good to see you, too," I replied. We both leaned back against my truck and I asked: "How ya doin'

Max considered this question for a few seconds and roared, "I'm doin' all right, but they say I'm crazy."

"Aww, that's OK, Max," I responded. "Most of the folks I know are crazy, me included. We just haven't been caught yet."

Max looked away in the distance and sighed. "Well, you wanna go down to the field and throw a little bit?" he asked eagerly.

I thought about it for about half a split nanosecond and said, "Let's go for it."

We piled into my truck and drove a quarter of a mile down the dirt road Max lives on until he directed me to pull over next to a barbed wire fence blocking a path through the woods. We got out and fetched our stuff. Max walked over to the fence and pushed down the waist-high top strand of wire with his glove for me to step across. After I got across, I returned the favor.

"Is this your land, Max?" I inquired due to an acute aversion to buckshot in the backside.

"They say it is, and I got papers. But, now, I really don't know for sure," he retorted.

I wondered if Max's "they" and my "they" were the same folks. My "they" have been getting me in trouble since I was a small boy. "They" were throwing rocks at cars, too. "They" said I could shoot the windows out of this old house.

I felt a little uneasy about it, but I had come too far to turn around. "They" were urging me on.

We had walked a few yards through the tick forest when the underbrush abruptly gave way to a vast, deep green pasture lined with towering trees coming alive with the gently whispering spring breeze. Talk about your field of dreams.

With just a pinch of imagination, one could see the gentle rolling landscape and the imposing oaks and pines slowly change into an immaculate playing field surrounded by thousands of fans all dressed in different shades of green practicing the wave in the upper decks. But we just kept walking.

Who has time to smell the roses?

We stepped back into the woods and crossed over a miniature stream, then over a small stream with a wooden foot bridge. We then passed an enchanting gazebo and came upon an acre of what looked to me like a tree-shrouded bullpen heavily littered with hundreds of old weathered baseballs, a few ragged softballs and some fuzzless tennis balls.

I tried to get into the interview thing a couple of times. I actually whipped out my legal pad and legal pen at one point, but all Max wanted to do was talk baseball and throw baseball. Max didn't appear to be in the posing mood, so I hung my camera on a limb in a budding peach tree. I put the picture and the interview on hold for a while.

What I needed to do was satisfy my curiosity about how well he could really throw the baseball. The looks some people had given me when I told them about "The Phantom" had me doubting myself at times. I knew what had happened that day in Durham, but, without any of my teammates around, it was hard to substantiate.

Max carried his glove in a brown paper Food Lion grocery bag containing several more dried-out baseballs. He noticed I had a brand-new one in my mitt.

"It's good to see one with some white still on it for a change," he chuckled. We stood about 40 feet apart and tossed a couple. Then Max yelled: "I've been out here throwin' at the tire all mornin' waitin' for you, Mr. Pittsburgh Pirate scout, so I'm ready when you are."

The tire he referred to was an old car tire on a rope hanging from a low limb in a massive oak tree. The noon shadow of the tire made a small dark spot on a wooden home plate painted white and nestled in the neatly trimmed grass. I backed up 20 or so feet and squatted down. I barely fought off the urge to think, "deja vu."

Max has a weird windup. It's somewhere between none at all and a stretch, but when he unwinds - look out. His first pitch was letter-high and a tad inside (on a right-handed batter). I didn't say anything, and I noticed Max seemed embarrassed that I had to extend my arm to catch it.

"Just gittin' his attention," Max murmured.

That first pitch seemed slower than I remembered him being able to do the previous October. I started thinking it must have been my overactive imagination running away with me on that fateful day five months ago.

Guess what? I was wrong again.

His next 20 or 30 tosses were right on target and up there in the 70s mph. He stung my glove wherever I stuck it.

"Good pitch, Max," was all I could say. I was simply fascinated. I felt very fortunate to have made the acquaintance of one Gaius Max Mangum. Very fortunate indeed. (I stole that line from "The Elephant Man" because it stated my sentiments exactly.)

For the next 30 minutes, I stayed in the squat position hypnotized by the constant pop, pop, pop of rawhide on rawhide. I took off my glove and there was some more raw hide where my palm used to be.

While we were throwing, I told Max the story I was writing and about the money I may earn from it. I told him I would gladly share the reward with him if the story sold, but he wanted something else.

"I don't really need your money. I need to play some ball," he stated. "I have money for you if you can get me in a game somewhere so I can prove myself." I almost cried before I could get myself into macho gear.

I knew there were people who would take advantage of a situation like this, and some who probably had.

"I'll do something, Max," I said. "We'll come up with something before long." I was volunteering for my teammates, as well. With my glove, I wiped away something on my cheek.

"Stick your glove up inside the tire," Max instructed, helping me out of an awkward situation. I did as I was told and stepped back. Max took aim about 60 feet away and knocked my glove out of the tire, and the shadow of the tire never moved off the plate underneath.

Lying in the grass a few yards behind was my glove with the baseball still in it. What could I say? Nothing.

Max was sure he was throwing the ball 100 mph. "I know it's up there around a hundred. Has to be, just has to be," he lamented. "But I bes' be careful what I say. Last time I told somebody I was throwin' in the hundreds again, they took me to Raleigh and operated on my hand. I couldn't throw for a long time after that."

Because I have two youngsters at home who say it a thousand times a day, I was thinking, "Yeah. Right."

Then he showed me the scars. I guess that's why he's not an avid hand-shaker.

When I overcame my paralyzing dumbfoundedness, we talked a few more minutes and I finally told Max I had to go to work, although I did not want to leave. If he had said, "Wish you'd stay on a while" or "hang around a bit," I'm sure I would have lost my job. I couldn't have called in sick or anything, because there wasn't a telephone out there in the bullpen at "shade stadium."

Before I left, I gave Max one of our Zebulon Pirate uniforms and made him an honorary member. His ear-to-ear grin was all the thanks I needed. I then grabbed four or five shots of Max before he realized what was going on.

When he saw the camera this time, he was unaffected and actually gave me a little smile. A guilty little smile, now that I think about it.

I didn't find a ghost or an phantom or a fallen star, but I feel I found something more. Much more. I found a man who has been training for "The Show" every winter, spring, summer and fall - every single day the weather permits - for the past 45 years.

That, my friends, is perseverance.

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I must have used up all the luck allotted to my life in one shot when I made the first telephone call to begin my quest to track down the "Phantom." The voice I kept hearing inside my head didn't tell me to (even though it would have fit in perfectly right here), but I called Durham Twins manager Bill Smith. I asked him if he had ever seen the man before or knew anything about him.

"Sure. He came to watch one of our practices last spring," Bill said. "Erskine says the old man lives out in the country near him and comes to their practices occasionally." I realized he was talking about league president/Wake Forest Dodgers manager Wayne Erskine.

Click.

I'm not real sure if I said "thanks" or "goodbye," because the next thing I knew I was talking to Mr. Erskine. Ten minutes later, I had the name and telephone number of a man I thought was a nameless, homeless wino plus Erskine's personal summary of the guy. The Wake Forest skipper politely conveyed to me he thought the old fellow was "strange" with a capital "S."

"Well, Wayne, what's so strange about an 80-year-old-man with an 80-mph fastball?" I prodded as facetiously as I could.

"That's not it, Allen," Wayne continued. "He thinks we're a farm team for the Los Angeles Dodgers."

"So?"

"He wants to pitch for us so he can get a tryout with the real Dodgers," Wayne added.

"So?"

"We're just scared he might get hurt and, besides, after every third or fourth pitch he makes, he walks around to the back of the mound and throws his glove in the dirt," Wayne explained.

"So?"

Wayne was getting pretty fed up with me saying that, and he told me so in some words I can't seem to find anywhere on my keyboard. What I couldn't figure out is why the Dodgers, a team that gets beat to death regularly because they have not got pitching, wouldn't give a man who unquestionably throws better than any pitcher in our league a chance?

With his patience worn thin enough to see through, Wayne finally said, "You have the number. Call him yourself and see what you think then." Click.

"Ah, hello?"

Thoughtfully and thoroughly, I jotted down about a hundred questions to ask the old fellow. I had it all figured out. I would drive to his house the next morning to take a quick picture, finish the story that evening and let the U.S. Postal Service do the rest.

With any luck at all, that would have been it - jack, ching, bada bing, game, set, match. But this is me we're talking about here, and luck and me don't frequent the same circles.

I identified myself to the woman on the other end of the line as best I could. I told her my story, then i told her about my story and, finally, told her about having to change my story. Even through the telephone, I could tell she was not the least bit impressed by either.

Three times I answered the big five "W's." Who? What? When? Where? Why?

Finally she begin to show me a little trust when it was hit upon we both attended Baptist churches. Praise the Lord.

My phantom's name is Gaisu "Max" Mangum, and he had just turned 63 a few months before our chance meeting at Durham Athletic Park. I talked to his charming sister, Doris Davis (no relation to "Crash") for nearly an hour on the phone. She told me a lot about Max and his sad, but hopeful, life.

Max was a promising high school baseball pitcher in the 1940s when his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Max didn't recover well from the deep sadness and was institutionalized for a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Davis said all mental illness was treated with shock therapy back then, and Max was zapped regularly for the next 20 years.

From what I gathered by her accounts, he had accumulated and absorbed enough voltage to graduate and earn an AC/DC degree in paranoid schizophrenia.

Several times during our conversation, I started to give up the whole idea and just forget it. She told me Max would let her in his house only once or twice a year to clean it up, and he never cleaned it because he was too busy practicing ball. She said he didn't bathe regularly and used the same excuse.

I thought to myself: "What's wrong with that?" My son and I use the same excuse.

Then Mrs. Davis mentioned her husband, Edwin, was out at Max's place "at this very minute cutting the grass on his practice field."

This was the turning point for me. When she told me Max practiced there all alone, all day every day, I knew I had to see him again. I didn't give a darn about the story anymore. Even greed has a limit.

I had found a man who had a "field of dreams" long before Kevin Costner figured out which end of the bat to hold. I asked Mrs. Davis to arrange a meeting for me to see Max the very next day.

Due to several things going wrong on my end of the deal, it was the first week of April 1992 before I finally got the chance to see Max again.

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To this day, Max still has me pegged as a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He believes there's a worldwide conspiracy to keep him out of the major leagues, and, to him, it actually looks that way. I can see his point.

He showed up at a few local "open" tryouts for major-league teams, but he was either teased away from taking the field with the other guys or he was told he'd surely have been signed if he were only 20 years old.

Max called me on the telephone from his sister's house mid-August 1992. I could tell he was frustrated. He asked me: "What do I have to do?" and "Ain't discrimination against the law?"

Again, I didn't have worthy answers. I tried to get one of the Wake Forest senior teams to pick him up for the next season, but neither did. Of course, there is always hope.

In September, I was making my way to my seat at the final game of the Carolina Mudcats season when I was approached by one of their public-relations representatives. She asked me if I knew an elderly gentleman from Wake Forest who may be a bit senile.

According to her, he told everyone at the Mudcats office he can pitch the Pirates into the World Series in October if he could just get a tryout. She said she thought he was pitiful. But he had mentioned my name as a reference when he had called. That's why she asked me.

I could feel my old heart bending, but it refused to break this time, and, breaking with personal tradition, I actually thought about my response before replying. I thought about the man who had showed me the only difference between him and the Nolan Ryans of the world were the uncontrollable and sometimes unfortunate breaks in life. I thought about the man who had helped me slow down and smell a rose or two during the past couple of years.

"Yes, ma'am. I do know this gentleman. He's a good friend of mine," I answered. "His name is Max Mangum, and the only thing pitiful about him is that he is telling you the truth."

I hadn't seen Max since the tournament, but I found myself thinking about him often. For my Comp 101 class after I started college 20 years behind on a four-year plan, I got a chance to write another short story about him. I called it, "The Story About the Man in the Story." My classmates and my professor loved it, especially when I bragged about the real story being published in a magazine. Also for Psyche 101, I got to write (make up, basically) a case study on Max. I received, oddly enough, a grade of 101. Apparently, I, too, have the gift of bull.

My friend Welton Pearce and I dropped in on Max in May 1993 on our first trip to Wake Forest to play the Dodgers. We had about an hour to kill before the game, so we headed off for "Shade Stadium" and a serious game of catch. We all tossed the ball around for a bit, and Max said, "I'd like to air it now, if I could."

We took turns catching Max, and my second baseman was just as impressed with him as I was. Max had that quality all hard-throwing pitchers have - the ability to make a baseball look like a pea. Talk about watching the ball all the way to your glove. The only other option was to watch it all the way to your face, and you only got to do that once.

After 30 or so pitches to each of us, my hand was swelling up in my glove, but it was Welton who said he'd had enough. Not me.

We bade Max adieu and lit off for the game at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School. If Max had the stuff to make the baseball look like a pea, the guy pitching for the Dodge Boys that day had the unfortunate ability to make the baseball look like a beach ball against a stiff wind.

We both knew that catching Max was the reason both of us were zeroed in and banging the ball against that chain-link fence in center every time we batted. All Welton said on the way home was, "We ought to go see Max before every ballgame."

In October 1993, I turned over Zebulon Pirates operation to third baseman Walt Perry. My classes were getting tougher, and I needed to be studying instead of playing baseball. Or so said my wife.

I thought I could do it all and then some, but I'd been wrong before, and, after all, which is more important - my career or playing some stupid kids' game?

I mean, I had to get my priorities straight. I'm grown up now.

"Please don't make me quit baseball," I pleaded. "I'll stay up and study all night."

Pam informed me, "You already stay up all night studying."

I considered this carefully and said, "I can study during lunch every day." I patted my stomach, indicating I could also lose some weight she was always harping about - I mean, reminding me about.

She smiled and said in native dialect," We both know that ain't gonna happen, don't we?"

"All right," I gave in. "This will be my last year. I'll make this my fare ..."

"Fair enough," Pam inserted. "Don't forget to mow the lawn."

" ... well tour."

I guess it was sometime in September when we played in Wake Forest again. Alone this time except for my camcorder, I went by to see Max after another rout of the pitcherless Dodgers. How utterly ironic.

I stood there playing catch with a man who probably could have redefined major-league pitching during the ’40, ’50s, ’60s, maybe onto the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. At age 65, he threw the ball as well as some of the guys I've seen in the pros.

It's a bitter, bitter irony I have a tough time swallowing.

Max "aired it out" again for about 30 minutes, and my hand was reaching that comfortably numb stage. My legs, however, were cramping up, so I was happy when Max said, "Wanna see my move to first?"

Over the course of the next 15 minutes, Max showed me his move to first, second and third about three times each. It was difficult to judge without a runner, and the distance may have been a foot or two off in either direction, but he could've picked my fat butt off with no problem. His move was silky smooth, deceptive and quick.

"Yo, Max. How 'bout a few minutes of video?" I asked. "It's just for me. I want to ... "

"You gonna show it to them big boys and get me a tryout?" Max interrupted.

I hung my head this time and said, "If it were possible, Max, I would have already done it."

Max absolutely, positively refused to let me record his pickoff moves. He must have a patent on them or something. He did, however, allow me to get about six minutes worth of priceless video of him throwing some heat. And a few minutes of "Shade Stadium," including the gazebo and the tire hanging from the rope. At least now, if someone doesn't believe my story about the "Phantom," I can prove it in color.

Sadly, this was the last time I was to see my friend Max for a while. I didn't play baseball in 1994, and, in the fall of 1995, I became a full-time N.C. State University student.

(For future installments, pick up the Eastern Wake News or subscribe for only $20 a year by calling 269-6101.)