	Baseball provides a way for Bill to think about the kinds of relationships he has with the world around him. He describes how “this world is a mean curve ball thrown by an overly excited, steroid-fueled kid pitcher, who no more cares about the integrity of the game than he does about the Costa Ricans who painstakingly stitch the balls together by hand”.  Bill sets himself up as the batter in this metaphor, receiving the pitch, playing a part of the game even if he is calling out the corrupt nature of it. He physically has to be there in order to hit the ball, but the ball has to be physically constructed by the Costa Rican workers who the middle man, the pitcher, doesn’t care to acknowledge. And as Bill is the custodial worker at the Coliseum and cleans up after baseball games, he is on the same level as the Costa Ricans who stitch the balls because he is working in service to the pitcher. All levels are necessary, but Bill is in an especially vulnerable situation as his labor is devalued twice, where nothing he does seems to matter. Their bodies are being exploited for the sake of the game, but this also begins to reveal the intergenerational struggle Bill has with the younger generation. 
	While Bill, in his metaphor, blames the “overly excited, steroid-fueled kid pitcher” for being ignorant, it is just a small portion of what he thinks about the young adults around him. His problem manifests with Edwin, his girlfriend’s son, but is quickly expanded to encompass all the “youth,” calling them “coddled babies, all of them, with no trace of skin, no toughness left”. He doesn’t pay attention to the environment that these young people are reacting to, especially in Oakland with the problems of gentrification making living there harder for many who don’t know anywhere else, but rather how they present themselves and their bodies. Young people aren’t even afforded the idea that they are full members of society in his discussion of this, where they are ‘babies,’ while somehow suggesting they have regressed, with “no trace of skin […] left”. Also, babies are incapable of holding jobs and working with the ideas of capitalism in the way that Bill must use his body in order to make money and act out this ‘toughness’ that he seems to have. Babies need protecting and nurturing, but instead of blaming the adults who propagate this “coddling,” Bill levels his criticism at the actual young adults themselves, refusing to implicate his generation in producing this environment he hates. 
	This isn’t to say that Bill doesn’t take issue with his peers, though. 
There is no space for Bill in the world, or so he feels, and a part of that comes from his time in Vietnam and in prison. Something changed while he was too busy to notice, and because he is both providing the means through being exploited and receiving the “mean curve ball” or the world, there was a lot at stake in keeping him different than the young adults around him. 
