So I'm leaving Yankee Stadium after pounding out two columns, and decide to treat myself to a taxi home.

I negotiate a $25 fare with a gypsy-cab driver out on 161st Street, and jump in. We take a right on the Grand Concourse before the guy asks the requisite baseball question.

"So, any trades coming up?"

"There was a big one today."

"Really? Who?"

"Basically, Jermaine Dye went to the A's, and the Royals got Neifi Perez."

"Neifi Perez!" the driver explodes. "I signed Neifi Perez!"

I'm ready to dismiss this claim as the ravings of a man with a few too many miles on him when the guy whips out his official, laminated, Bob Gebhard-signed 1996 National League scout card. The name on it, Julian Gonzalez, sounds vaguely familiar.

Sure enough, my driver was a hard-throwing righthander in the Angels system in the mid-1980s, who was actually called up to the majors in 1985. But while warming up in the bullpen for his big-league debut, he hurt his arm.

"It was a cold, windy day and I had no jacket," he recalls. "Oh well -- what are you gonna do?"

He tried to make it back and even played in Japan for a while before retiring. He became a scout in his home country, the Dominican Republic, and in 1993 happened upon a spindly kid third baseman named Neifi Perez.

"I looked at him and said, 'You're going to play shortstop in the major leagues,' " Gonzalez says, inching us onto the FDR Drive.

Perez did just that in 1996 -- he'd been there ever since.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, moved to New York a few years ago to work with his son, Julian Jr., a 15-year-old shortstop of some promise himself. They live only a few blocks from Yankee Stadium. Julian Sr. figures he'll drive the car to make ends meet until Junior graduates and (hopefully) signs a pro contract.

"Hey, are the Royals coming back to play the Yankees this year?" Gonzalez asks me as he comes to a stop outside my apartment. I check the schedule and see they aren't.

"I gotta see my boy Neifi," he says. "I'll come up and surprise him."

I can see it now: Gonzalez hangs outside the Stadium, motor running, for the chance to ask an unsuspecting Perez if he wants a ride -- then the Royal realizes who it is and the two reunite.

Eight years after putting Perez on the road to the majors, Julian Gonzalez will drive him on the road to the team hotel.

Alan Schwarz is a frequent contributor to ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. E-mail him at als1492@aol.com.