McRae in the meantime was unburdening his heart to Robbie. The latter was his closest friend and adviser. They had been teammates in the early days on the old Orioles of Baltimore, when that famous team had been burning up the League. Both of them knew baseball from beginning to end. Together they had worked out most of the inside stuff, such as the delayed steal, the hit and run, and other clever bits of strategy that had now become the common property of all up-to-date major-league teams.