Marley was a baseball man and I let him make those decisions. But what's the fun of owning a big league team if you're not allowed to meddle? We're talking about personnel decisions here. Who to hire and who to fire, who to keep and who to cut, who to draft and who to pass up. Players and prospects, coaches, scouts, managers.

I overruled him a few times over the years.

Marley and I had been partners once. I handled the money end and he handled the baseball end. I respected his judgement and went along with his decisions. Most of the time.

He'd been dead seven years when I saw his ghost.

It was Christmastime, and we were wrapping up some baseball meetings in Chicago, working off an agenda full of problems the baseball men weren't likely to solve on their own. Labor relations, fan alienation and falling attendance, expansion and league alignment and playoff structure, TV dough, small market vs. big market, skyboxes and new stadiums and domes, licensing and merchandising, and all our other money concerns.

We have committees to chew over these problems, and I was chair of the TV Committee.

My star pitcher Shane London was shooting off his mouth again, saying that he couldn't wait for his freedom and no matter how his arbitration turned out he'd never play for the Central City Champs again. Not so long as John Courtland owned the team. He referred to me as a Scrooge, a tightwad.

I was with the TV Committee that entire afternoon, and when we adjourned for the day my thoughts were on superstations, cable deals, pay per view, revenue sharing. I stepped into a hallway and had a microphone thrust in my face by Dennis Hominy, an aggressive TV reporter who'd come all the way from Central City just to ask me about Shane London. What did I think, what was my response?

Dennis Hominy is a handsome kid who majored in Grooming and Hair Styles, and he looks down on me not so much because he's taller than me but because I don't know as much about baseball as he does: 1) I'm old, 2) I'm rich, and 3) I'm an owner.

His goal was to get me to call Shane London some names. I side-stepped him, gave him so much nothing. When I call Shane London names it's to his face and not in the media. The only time I'll ever call him names is during contract negotiations.

Dennis Hominy makes me feel better about my son, Mike. I may not go along with Save the Whales and Save the Rain Forest and we aren't at all close to each other, but I'm forever grateful that he isn't a TV reporter.

Mike wasn't at the meetings. He was back in Central City with his family. But he would have been in Chicago if I'd told him to come. He is not a baseball man, but I think he'll probably make a good owner. If it should come to that. He's 29 years old, the same age as Shane London, and he's been with the club for two years.

After freeing myself from Dennis Hominy's persistent questions I took a cab to my hotel. I was staying at the O'Hare Cumberland. My GM was staying at the same place, and so was Skip Lu, my son's best friend. The three of us met for dinner that night, but didn't talk that much about Shane London. There wasn't really much to say.

He had just won the Cy Young award that fall, and we had paid him 2.5 million dollars for his season's effort. Pretty good money for a 6 foot 8 inch choke artist.

Dennis had pulled his microphone-in-the-face stunt with the GM, and the GM didn't like the cocky young reporter any more than I did.

Skip didn't like him either. Dennis Hominy had never stuck a microphone in Skip's face. He doesn't think Skip is that important. But Skip's an up and coming baseball man, my Assistant Director of Minor League Operations, and making a reputation for himself.

It was a quick dinner because the other two had plans of their own for the evening. Skip was going to a basketball game, and the GM was going to hang out with some baseball men. I told them I was taking a morning flight back to Central City and was going to turn in early.

When I saw Marley's ghost they weren't in the hotel. They were out, they were gone, and there was no one for me to get hold of.