Sport: A Trying Time for Rookies

Making their pitch, hoping to be a hit

In spring, all the hopeful rookies, aging veterans and years run together, usually in the outfield after a few innings of play, alongside a fence covered with advertisements as the game goes on. Sometimes it seems that there is only one person out there running, always the same man, that he runs until he's old and then he runs until he's young again.

It's a cloudless day in Winter Haven, Fla., where everyone has been taken with No. 21, both the age and the uniform of Boston...