IT IS A WARM AFTERNOON in May, at least by San Francisco standards, and Barry Bonds, the best hitter on the planet, is clubbing batting-practice pitches toward the nether regions of Pacific Bell Park. For my purposes—observation and celebration of the iconic baseball bat boy—it is the perfect confluence of time and place.

Pac Bell Park is where former San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker’s three-year-old son, Darren, became the most famous bat boy since…well, ever. In the seventh inning of the fifth game of last year’s World Series, little Darren got so excited while retrieving a bat that he nearly got flattened at home plate. Giants slugger J.T. Snow pulled the boy from harm’s way just as a teammate came charging across the plate, a save that was revisited endlessly on ESPN Sports Center. Soon after, Major League Baseball implemented an age requirement of 14 for bat boys.

I was that age two decades ago—in fact, 20 years to the day before my visit to Pac Bell—when I enjoyed a stint as an honorary bat boy. It was 1983, and my beloved Chicago White Sox were in last place. Squeezed into an ill-fitting uniform, I spent most of the evening cowering in the corner of Comiskey Park’s home dugout as the Sox lost a close one. But from that night on, the White Sox went 83-39, earning their first playoff appearance in nearly a quarter-century. That experience earned me my first-ever published story in the school newspaper. As a freshman, I wrote about who should be the White Sox’ MVP. I nominated myself.

Admittedly, honorary bat boys tend to be one-game title-holders and nothing more. This I learn while sitting in the home team’s dugout, as veteran bat boy Brandon Evans (he’s 22 years old) explains the finer points of hazing naive “honoraries,” as he calls them. “They’re asked to get things like a left-handed curve ball or the key to the batter’s box. I’ve seen it done to so many guys who come here,” he says.

Evans, who has served as a Giants bat boy for seven years, earns $50 per game and generally puts in a ten- or eleven-hour day. Tonight’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks begins at 7:15 p.m. But Evans has been at the ballpark since 1:30. He has already roamed the clubhouse getting bats and balls autographed, as he often does for assorted golf tournaments, restaurants, and charities connected to the Giants. Occasionally, he is called upon to handle the game balls, too, rubbing away the shine with a concoction known as Mississippi Mud.

Baseball is brimming with such traditions, as well as its fair share of superstitions. So it is that when Evans washes the Giants’ batting helmets before the game, he makes sure to leave one untouched: Outfielder Marvin Benard prefers that his protective cap remain caked with pine tar.

Already this afternoon, Evans has been busy hauling out the catcher’s gear, the towels, the bats. He brought sunflower seeds, bubblegum, and coffee to the dugout area. And he shagged flies during batting practice. “That’s not an assignment. That’s for fun,” says Evans, whose own baseball career peaked as a walk-on for San Francisco’s City College.

Clearly, calling Evans a bat boy is selling him short. He is an errand boy, a stock boy, a manservant, sometimes a valet. On occasion, he has been asked to purchase hamburgers for the whole team before a game, to take a player’s family shopping before a road trip, and to assist a player in getting his cars detailed.

After a game, while the ballplayers rush home, Evans will collect and store the equipment, clean uniforms and hang them neatly in the lockers, and spray and polish the players’ shoes (but not J.T. Snow’s cleats; he prefers them unpolished). By the time Evans heads for home, it might be two hours since the final pitch.

Still, the job has its perks. End-of-season tips from players can be a fine addition to a bat boy’s wallet. More important, Evans, a lifelong Giants fan, is very much part of the team. He wears a major-league uniform, albeit nameless and numberless. He poses for the team photo and stands with the big boys during the national anthem. He even travels with the team once in a while and signs the occasional autograph for fans. “I tell them I’m not a player,” he shrugs, “but they still want it.”

The job has made Evans a bit of a collector himself. He owns a baseball signed by Henry Aaron, a bat signed by Tony Gwynn, a jersey signed by Bonds. Better yet, he is the proud owner of a 2002 National League championship ring. Perhaps even better, there is this: When Barry Bonds clouted his history-making 73rd home run in 2001, guess who was the first person to shake his hand as he crossed home plate?

Speaking of clout, the Sultan of Swat was a bat boy, too, in a manner of speaking. William Bendix, the man who played the title character in The Babe Ruth Story, fetched pine for the Yankees as a child. Indeed, the alumni rolls are rich in achievement. Catcher Mike Piazza was a bat boy for his hometown Phillies before becoming a Dodger and Met star. When MC Hammer was known as Stanley Burrell, he hustled from dugout to field for the Oakland A’s. Even Earl Woods, Tiger’s dad, was a bat boy for a Negro Leagues’ barnstorming team.

Back in 1916—only a few years after the term “bat boy” arrived, replacing “mascot” in baseball lingo—aspiring writer Thomas Wolfe played the role for the minor league Asheville Tourists. In fact, the 15-year-old was lugging equipment on the day Asheville participated in the fastest game in professional baseball history—a 31-minute affair, which is about how long it takes to read a typical Wolfe sentence.

“One reason I have always loved baseball so much,” Wolfe once wrote, “is that it has been not merely ‘the great national game,’ but really a part of the whole weather of our lives, of the thing that is our own, of the whole fabric, the million memories of America.”

On occasion, bat boys are called upon to do nothing less than save the day. When 3-foot, 1-inch Eddie Gaedel famously went to bat for the St. Louis Browns in 1951 (the most famous promotional stunt in big-league annals), he was wearing the only uniform that came close to fitting—the bat boy’s. Two years later, in the movie The Kid From Left Field, the kid who was handed the reins of a major-league team wasn’t from left field at all. He had retrieved the team’s bats before reversing the team’s fortunes. And in the closing moments of The Natural, when Roy Hobbs challenged, “Go pick me out a winner, Bobby,” the bat boy did, indeed, pick out a magical piece of lumber.

Less common is the bat boy who wields the lumber himself. It used to be that when a team was losing badly, frustrated fans would get a kick out of yelling, “Put in the bat boy!” In the 1952 Georgia State League, the manager of the Fitzgerald Pioneers actually did it. With his team down 13-0, bat boy Joe Relford stepped up to the plate as a pinch-hitter. He grounded sharply to third to end the inning, but followed that with an excellent defensive play in the outfield. After the game, fans ran onto the field to congratulate him, stuffing his pockets with money. Sadly, however, both the umpire and the bat boy lost their jobs that day—not because Relford was 12, but because he was the first African-American player in the league.

All things considered, then, one could argue that the faithful bat boy should have his own baseball card. Come to think of it, he does—a 1969 “error card” that has gone down in card-collecting history. The photo shows a youthful-looking fellow wearing rookie Aurelio Rodriguez’s uniform. It happens to be the team’s bat boy.

Evans says his own Topps portrait would be great, but he remains plenty satisfied with a simple day at the old ballpark. “Lots of times, especially when I’m sitting here,” he says, from his prime spot in the dugout, “I’m thinking I can never give this up, and I can never give up loving baseball.”

Not that he sits often. During the game, the bat boy is the busiest fellow on the field. On this night, while the rest of the press-box crew pays attention to base-running blunders and relay throws, I’m watching the real action: Evans darting from the dugout to grab a discarded bat. Evans rushing out to offer a handful of baseballs to an impatient umpire. Evans carefully placing pine tar and a weighted donut in the on-deck circle.

Still, baseball is an unhurried affair, and this contest appears to be proving the point. The game limps into extra frames. Ten innings. Eleven. Twelve. Finally, in the bottom of the thirteenth, San Francisco’s Marquis Grissom drives a game-winning triple off the right-field wall. His teammates rush out of the dugout and gather around third base, slapping backs and trading high-fives. It is a gathering of millionaires and superstars, and Evans is right in the thick of the celebration.

That is, until he breaks away and sprints to the pitcher’s mound. After all, someone has to retrieve the rosin bag.