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Prologue
I got the money today, $5,000 up front. Ever since the day that Coach Leahy walked up to me in the cafeteria, while Ryan Kern was calling me bitch tits and shoving pudding down my pants, and asked me to be the DH for the team, my life has changed.
That first game I was so nervous i nearly peed myself in the dugout, I kept grabbing my ass to measure exactly how fat the skin tight uniform made me look.
My buddy Chad was on the team but he didn't play much. He was a pitcher and we were on the same team in Little League, he was dominant as a 12 year old, but here we were 3 years later and the fickleness that is a young lads arm had betrayed him. Now at 15 years of age and barely any taller or bigger than he was back then, the overpowering stuff that had blown away the glass wearing math geeks and portly girls in Little League was barely enough to earn him the last spot in our bullpen, that and his dad was a coach, that shit always helps.
"Chad", I asked, "Do I look fat in this uniform"?
"Ricky my friend, You could have autism and 1 leg, and all that uniform does is make you a chick magnet. Trust me, since I joined the team i've had my pick of the D list", Chad was, as noted, a relief pitcher.
I scanned the bleachers and there they were. Krista, Tara, Elizabeth, Jeannete, the bonafide A-List. Man, what I wouldn't give to get with 1 of them. I scanned further and found the D-List in the wheelchair accessible section of the field. Poor Chad, poor me.
I didn't play at all that first game, Coach wanted me to get into game shape, which apparently involved me waddling around the track for an hour or 2 everyday after school. That first night I would jump up and run to the edge of the dugout to greet anyone and everyone after every play, "Bill! Good hustle on that ground out!" High five. I was trying like hell to break a sweat and make it seem as if I had actually done something during the game. At the end of the night, as I mimicked a squirrel foresting nuts in his cheek with my big league chew, spitting in the manliest way I knew, and constantly readjusting my cap and squinting as if to intimate that i was thinking very deep baseball thoughts, I drove home with Chad and his dad, a little unsure of if I wanted to proceed as a pine jockey for the rest of the season.
"Coach has big plans for you kid", Chads dad said in the middle of the drive, breaking a good 5 minute silence. I just nodded, not believing him. This was the same guy who once told his son he had a Koufax like arm.
The weeks passed and the season was winding down. We weren't very good but that didn't help get me in the game. One thing I noticed in my last year of little league, when we went to a special post season tournament that featured all-star teams from various leagues from around the area, was that the best of the best did not look anything like us. They were supposedly our age, but they appeared to be about two feet taller and capable of hitting the ball a good 300 feet deeper than anyone in our league. That's what this like. We had 1 decent hitter, who was good for a Home Run every now and then, but I doubt he could of even made the lineup for most of the teams we played against.
My social life hadn't improved that much either. I was still spending my classes writing down wrestling cards that I would actually play out with my figures when I got home. Although the mildly retarded chubby girl from Mrs. Lazaries "special" class had taken a keen interest in me, I think Chad had talked me up to her.
Then it happened. Our 3rd to last game of the season as we got off the bus in Lawrencetown to play the mighty Lasers, Coach stopped me and told me i was starting in left field. He smiled as he gave me the news and then paused.
"What's that smell"?
"I think i'm having diarrhea", I exclaimed as I pushed past him and headed for the porta potty.
After a good 20 minutes spent getting rid of my agitation and worry, I emerged from the John prepared to not make an idiot of myself. I hadn't played a game in 3 years and my nerves were always my worst hindrance. The summer before I had missed 14 straight swings in a slow pitch softball game. How does that happen you might ask? Well I swung and missed on the first pitch, thought about it for a second too long, and then it all snowballed. By the time i missed the 4th pitch I was already gone. Sweat, fear, the feeling that a thousand eyes were fixed upon me, all laughing maniacally at my misfortune, all crept into my brain and kept me from connecting. The softball at this point looked like it was the size of an acorn and there was nothing I could do to make contact. On the 15th pitch i finally tapped out meekly to the first basemen, yay!
Well here I was, on the road, playing at the home of the mighty Lasers, one of the best teams in the state, in front of about 400 people, which was roughly 10 times our best crowd back at home.
I was hitting 7th, just ahead of the 5'1 2nd basemen who liked to eat his own boogers and just behind the SS who was was hitting about .094, but could run like the wind, probably on account of being chased by the cops since he was 7. It was a pretty good correlation to my social standing.
After a boring top of the first I took the field. Luckily nobody hit anything my way, if they had I may have peed myself.
My first at bat came with 2 out and a man on first in the bottom of the 2nd inning. The Lawrenceton pitcher was about 6'3, lanky and threw what appeared to be 200 mph. He also had a mean curve that had most players on our team crunching up in fear like they had just witnessed a man get his cock run over by a volvo when it was halfway to the plate, but upon it's arrival would be right over the heart of the plate for a strike.
For some reason I didn't fear the curve, and after a horrid first swing miss, I geared up for that curve.
It left his arm...it was headed right for me...."don't worry dude, it's gonna break, right over the middle of the plate, and when it does you swing with all your might and"....BOOM!.....the fucker had plunked me right in the head.
That's when it happened. I fell to the ground. I looked up at the sky in a daze, that blue, blue sky. I smelt hot dogs and grass. I smelled lime and dirt. The odor of bubble gum wafted above my prone body, it was like I was 8 again, on my first day of T-Ball practice. A new and unrecognizable smell had entered the mix as well, it was sweet and fresh, like a field of spring flowers (I would later pinpoint this intoxicating smell as the lovely scent of teenage girls).
Something happened in my brain at that very moment that I cannot describe to you, I can only sum it up by conveying that at that moment, I had no fear.
When i was in 1st grade, a bunch of 6th graders were picking on Becky Timmins, she was a cute little girl, but wore the fugliest giant rimmed glasses that looked as if they had been stolen from a 60 year old Jewish accountant. They would mock her relentlessly with catcalls of "four eyes", "dork", and "splotchy" (she also had an unfortunate skin condition). But Becks was cool with me. Whenever we played Star Wars at recess she was always willing to be Leia, while the other girls gathered with their dolls and played hopscotch, Becks was right there with us guys reenacting our favorite scenese from the greatest film ever, Dave Wright as Lando, John Martin as Luke, Phil Byce as Han, Me as Chewy, and good old Becks as Leia.
So when it finally became too much for her, and she slunk off behind the school to cry, I lost it. I grabbed a wiffle ball bat and commenced beat down. I swung like a madman, Ryan Kern took one in the head, Ed DiSilva got a swift crack in the face, I was on fire. And then someone got the bat away from me and I had seven 6th graders beating the ever living shit out of me. Didn't matter though, when you're that age you tend to fear very little, you're brain has yet to develop that survival instinct, to know it's better not to go 7 on 1 with guys twice your size, even if you have a wiffle ball bat in your hand.
And for better and worse, as I would come to find out as the rest of my life played out, as I lay on the ground at that very moment, my head throbbing, my senses overwhelming me, A regression took place. That part of my brain that fears things, that causes worry, that had been holding me back for the past 3 years, was gone.
I got up slowly but fast enough that I was on my feet before my coaches could reach me, and I ran like a bull who had just had a branding iron shoved up his ass. I ran at that lanky, wiry armed faggot of a pitcher with all my might. He backpeddled for a step or two and then i tackled his scrawny ass. I never got to throw a punch, thank heavens, as I probably would have been suspended from league play the next season. By the time I was on him their entire infield was on me. Alot of pushing and shoving but nothing disastrous. I was ejected of course, but when I went up to Ryan Kern and told him not to take any crap from these assholes, he looked at me not with the eyes of a man who wanted to shove pudding down my pants, but with the eyes of a man who respected me. Kern was one of those guys, tall and stocky, strong as an ox, a born bully. But baseball wise he just didn't have it. If he made contact he could hit it over the fence with no problem, problem was that he very rarely made contact. Well today he connected, 3 times. We lost 14-10 but we never gave up and we never backed down. I'd like to think I had a hand in that.
The next 2 days I was the talk of the school, the hot chicks weren't about to leave their panties on my night stand but at least they were talking to me, and boy did I revel in it. At that age, getting a hot chick to have a conversation with you can make you feel like a super model just gave you your first blow job, I was on cloud nine. I was so engulfed in this newfound modest popularity that I didn't think about bad things, that part of my brain didn't snap back on, I was pleasantly aloof.
The next game came and I spent the hours after school talking and bullshitting with my teammates instead of sitting alone and thinking about ways I could fuck up. I went 4-4, the ball looked like a grapefruit.
Next game I went 2-2 with 2 walks and a sac fly. I had gone 6-6 on the season with 5 RBI's, pro rate that over a full season, I was headed for the Hall Of Fame.
Over the summer I spent day after day on the field with my teammates, practicing, fucking around, having a good time. Each weekend however was spent at parties, I was introduced to vodka that summer, ooofah. I was also introduced to Lori Bell (yeah, I know). She was the cutest thing you ever laid eyes on, went to school in the next town over, tiny girl with big ol juggs. She may have been 16 but she didn't act like it. She made me a man that summer, in almost every way imaginable, probably set the bar way too high, as I would spend the next 5 years being totally disgruntled if titty and butt sex weren't a regular part of a girls sexual repertoire.
But i'm getting off track here. That next season I hit .432 with a .560 on base percentage and 12 Home Runs. I was the toast of the town, all 12 blocks of it. And the best part is, I didn't have to work at it, I just had to not think about, and I never thought about the fact that I never thought about it, it worked out perfectly, I was dumb to the whole thing.
The only thing I worked on was speed. I didn't run alot, but I would try to spend a few hours per week just running from first to second. Jose Canseco was just coming into his own in MLB and I got this idea in my head that I could become the first 50-50 guy in Baseball history. I could get butt sex all night long if I was a 50-50 guy.
The next 2 years I just tore it up more and more, in every way. Summers were spent partying and getting laid, I started up with the weed one night during a party at Kyle Forton's house. Weed, Vodka and Pussy, I was king of the world.
As my senior season (I refer to my high school years as seasons, as they became little more than preparation for a big league career, schooling pretty much faded out of the picture early in my Junior year when I realized that I was getting C's for papers I didn't even turn in) started I became more and more aware of scouts. During practices I would notice these white haired, big bellied, cigar smoking old timers taking notes as they watched us play. I was either on the MLB radar or was being prepped for kidnapping by a ring of pedophiles.
Our second game of the season that final year was at home, and as I headed for the dugout following batting practice, my coach took me aside and pointed out to me a tall, thin man wearing a derby hat and a dark red windbreak.
"Ya see that guy over"? Coach asked me, pointing to the fellow in question.
"Yeah"
"He's the assistant to the East Coast head of Scouting for the Phillies".
"No shit!", I exclaimed as a smile crept across my face.
I went out and nailed a first pitch fastball a good 400 feet to dead center, a mile clear of the fence, and then raced around the bases as if i was trying to leg out an infield the park home run, my eyes on Mr. Scout Man the whole time. As I stepped on home plate and headed for dugout I locked eyes with him, took off my helmet to reveal an old school Phillies cap underneath, and started to point at the logo above the brim with nearly as much eagerness as I showed the first time I had a naked woman alone. I wasn't allowed to talk to him, nor him me, but I think he got the point.
I proceed to mash my way through the season, I belted 20 Home Runs in just 30 games. I hit .501. I was getting better.
June 1st I was sitting in science class, my high school experience a mere 2 days away from coming to a conclusion but I didn't care about that. I had spent the prior evening getting high as a motherfucker with my best bud John, talking about all the shit I was gonna do with my life. The MLB Amateur draft was the next day you see. I was sure I was gonna get picked, how could I not? I was a lifetime .478 hitter with power and speed, I knew i was gonna drafted. I knew I was gonna play Major League Baseball, can you believe that shit? I talked about the house i was gonna build, the chicks I was gonna bang, the drugs I was gonna do.
"If I make, say $2 Million a year, I'll never have to worry about being out of weed, how awesome is that?"
Anyway, I perked to the sound of the bell ringing and rushed for the parking lot and Johns shitty Chevy Blazer. We drove home where I proceeded to bust through the door and yell out for mom, asking her if anyone had called yet, for today was the day of the draft. No reply. I looked around at an empty apartment, what the fuck was going on. I looked at the answering machine, a blinking "2" in bright red, i braced myself. I clicked on "messages" and John and I waited, neither of us taking a breath.
"Ricky, this is mom, i'm working late tonight, Doreen has a urinary tract infection so i'm covering for her, theres a frozen pizza in the freezer."
"End of message".....
"Message number 2.............Ricky, this is Earl Cunningham with the Philadelphia Phillies. Ricky, we thought you'd like to know that we've drafted you. Our number here is *-***-****, I'll try you again in a few hours if we don't here from you, but we'd like to set up a meeting and introduce you to the Phillie family.
I could of tongue kissed John right then and there. My nipples were protruding bizarrely. No amount of good times, alcohol, drugs or pussy that I had indulged in the previous 3 years even came close to matching the overwhelming joy I was feeling at that very moment.
I had a phone call to make. I called up the number Earl had left for me.
"Earl, it's Ricky Joseph"
"Say again?"
"Ricky Joseph"
"Ok, hold on here....number 28. Hey Ricky, thanks for getting back to us so soon".
"28 what"? I asked.
"28th round", came the reply.
"28th round"? I thought to myself. Doing the quick math in my head.....800 players were picked before me? What in the blue hell was going on here.
"28th round Earl"? I asked solemnly.
"Thats right son", he replied. He continued, "Listen son, do you have an agent, cause we'd like to get a contract ironed out as soon as possible so we can send ya on you're way down to florida for the rest of the summer."
I was shocked. I had spent the entire night before thinking of how i was gonna spend the nifty little bonus I would get from being a top 10 pick. And now here I was a 28th round draft pick getting ready to be shipped off to Florida to play in fuckin rookie league. Hadn't they seen the way no curve ball could get by me? How I was never fooled by the off speed shit? How the high fastballs became 420 foot bombs when thrown my way?
"Earl", I said, "Don't send me to Florida, put me on the bench, get me some swings against Major League pitchers, I'm ready now Earl, I'm not saying I'm Mickey Mantle, but I know damn well I can give you more than Braulio friggin Castillo".
He laughed as if he had heard that line a thousand times over his career in the front office.
"Tell ya what kid, come and meet with us, let's get you signed, then we'll see where go from there".
As I hung up the phone, it hit me. I was going to rookie ball. Even if I tore it up every night, every day, every game, it would still probably be 2 years before I got a sniff of Major League action.
"I've got to make them see", I said to John. "The Phillies need me, oh they think Wes Chamberlain is the shit, but if it isn't a fastball down the heart of the plate, he can't hit it, he's the emperors new clothes, I'm the motherfuckin Emperor".
I was incensed. This team was a rebuilding, they were almost there, 1992 was gonna be a breakout year for the Phillies, IF, they had me out there.
"Put me between Kruk and Daulton", I said to noone in particular, even though John was standing right in front of me, "And we will kill any staff that goes up against us".
I spent that night with John, his girlfriend Amy and my half hearted steady Janey. Janey and I were as serious as I had ever been with a chick but as was becoming my usual way with women, it was more about the sexual limits, or lack thereof, that attracted me to her. We spent the night getting wasted, screwing and dreaming. I think Janey got offended that my daydreams about my future life didn't involve her because I never got to play the game of StepSister that I had so been looking forward to.
A week later I had my meeting with the team. We went to their offices and worked out a contract. I got a whopping $5,000 bonus and deal that guaranteed me $50,000 a year for 3 years, no matter what happened. The rest was standard Minor League contract crap. I wasn't exactly gonna be spending 10 grand a night for Swedish hookers anytime soon.
I spent the rest of the morning exchanging quick greetings with some of the higher ups, Ed Wade, Del Unser, Lee Thomas. It was fun, but I was still upset.
"I can outplay Wes Chamberlain in every single area of this game", I thought to myself each time they would talk about the rookie league and my development, and how the chain of ascension worked.
After the meeting they gathered me and about 12 other draftees who were there that day signing their contracts, in a van and took us down to Veterans Stadium for a tour of the place. It was rank. It smelled like piss and concrete, the turf was worse than the parking lots I had played wiffle ball on as a kid. And I loved it. People called it sterile, they called all those cookie cutter 70's stadiums sterile. Well I don't know what Riverfront and Three Rivers were like, but this place was not sterile, oh it may have been the crackhouse of Major League Parks, but a crackhouse can have ambiance too. I look at it like this, lets say you're born and raised in a 1 room shack with no toilet, hardly any running water, and it's filled with a family full of drunk uncles and 10 brothers and sisters, to an outsider it may seem like a shithole, but if you grow up there, it develops a certain charm for no other reason than because it's yours. It's where you had your first Christmas, it's where you laughed and cried and whose door you opened up when you were 6 and saw your first bike on the dirt lawn outside.
This may have been a hellhole of a stadium, but it was my hellhole of a stadium. Fuck Yankee stadium, fuck those fancy new parks everyone is raving about. There wasn't a place in the world i'd rather play than Veterans Stadium, shitty turf and piss odor and all.
They let us go on the field and shag fly balls, a simple little workout, and I was in heaven. I couldn't stop going on and on about how I was gonna love playing here, talking as if I was penciled in to bat cleanup in tonight's game vs the Braves.
They started ushering us off when the big guys came out for practice. Kruk and Daulton sauntered onto the field in shorts and T-shirts with mouths full of chew, looking as if they had spent the previous evening in some Bangkokian den of Iniquity. I loved it.
"This the new crop", I heard a voice boom as we stood near the 3rd base dugout.
It was Mitch Williams, who had a beard that appeared have been spray painted on by a blind epileptic.
"Yeah, just showin em around", Del Unser boomed back.
"Well shit, set em up in the cage and i'll throw em some", Williams boomed back as he stretched his arms to each side in a manner that suggested that if he began to flap them he might actually take flight, a yawn escaping his stubbled face.
That brain trigger that had gone away some four years earlier was still in full effect, and it thankfully reared it's ugly head as I, with no thought whatsoever, shouted out to Mitch, "Warm up, $500 says I can take your first pitch over the center field wall."
All of the sudden I had every eye on the field fixed upon me. Some laughs, some hoots, some jawjacking, an air of playful tenseness crept in.
"Ill give $1500 ta put a heater in his nutsack", Kruk yelled down to Williams who was standing behind home plate.
Williams walked over to me slowly, chewing what could have been a granola bar filled with methanphetamines as easily as strawberry filling, and smirked.
"Get in the cage", he said.
"If you don't warm up first, I wont just clear the wall, I'll put it in the seats", I said with a smile.
Charlie Hayes nearly doubled over with laughter. Daulton began to egg Mitch on. Kruk wondered aloud if my rookie contract would cover the cost of a funeral.
"Come on, lets clear the field", Ed Wade, a short little fem of a man who looked as out of place here as Waylon Jennings at a DMX concert, said as a he took my arm and tried to lead me away.
"Now, now, let's see what this kids got", Jim Fregosi, recently hired Manager of the team said as he walked over to us, cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth.
"Get a helmet, you're gonna need it", Williams proclaimed as he walked towards the mounding, butterflying his arms along the way.
"You heard the man. Helmets and bats are right down there", Fregosi continued as he pointed into the dugout, inhaling deeply, shaking his head and walking towards the outfield.
"This isn't a baseball team we're assembling, it's the cast for Animal House 2 for the love of Pete", I could here Wade mutter as walked towards the stands to take a seat. I didn't like that guy.
I got a helmet, dark red with the beautifully scripted P on top. God damn was this awesome.
I found a bat that met my liking, 34oz, smooth as a babies bottom, I turned around and looked to the field, players jostling about in a mild tempo workout, Williams motioning for me to get up to the plate after warmup pitch he delivered.
"$500, that the deal?" He asked as I approached home plate.
"Yup."
"Well aright then, let's go."
I took a few practice swings before getting into the box. All the players scattered thruought the field had stopped what they were doing to watch us. Calls of "Take his head off", "Blow him away", and "don't hurt him too bad", filled the air.
I stepped in, took my exaggerated Tony Phillips stance to the amusement of a great many, especially Kruker, before straightening up and settling in.
My eyes were dead set on Williams, I knew he was gonna throw me a curve, literally. I was being hustled. Gear up to hit the heater and end up swinging a good 2 hours before the ball even gets there.
And he went into his up, and the ball left his hand. And I sat on it. And 5 feet before it hit the plate it started to break, heading out over homeplate right at my knees. And I launched it. It sailed so high that there should of had a stewardess getting fucked on it. Clank. It finally landed on a seat in the second row of seats in dead center field.
Brief utterances of "Holy shit" and "God damn", escaped certain, unknown lips at the moment I connected, but after that all was silent for a good 15 seconds.
"Beer and Steaks on the rookie." The silence was finally broken by Daulton, who was standing behind me.
"It don't matter what ya throw, if I know what it is." I said stupidly, without thinking.
"Oh yeah?", Williams slightly growled as he walked cockily towards homeplate.
"Next pitch is gonna be a 98mph fastball. Double or Nothing?"
I paused for a moment. "Sure."
Williams put his glove up and a ball came flying from behind me. He took it in his hand and smashed into his glove as he turned around and paced back to the mound.
Again I settled in, I knew what was coming.
Glove to chest, windup, arm out, ball is on it's way.......I turned slightly....THUD. Right in the back I took it. 98 motherfuckin miles per hour. I felt like Mike Tyson had just punched me square in the liver.
"Take it out of my check", I said as I walked back over to where the other rookies were gathered.
As big a moment as it had been, it ended just as quick. Ed Wade jumped from his seat and began to wrangle the rooks away as soon as I had to started to walk back over.
"Hey kid, what position you play?" Daulton asked me as I made my way to the tunnel.
"Left Field."
"Yeah? Won't be long then." Apparently Dutch had about the same amount of faith in the lauded Chamberlain as I did.
That night I broke out moms credit card and ordered 5 cases of Budweiser to be delivered to Phillies clubhouse, with a little note that read,
"Next year, you guys buy.
Signed,
Ricky Joseph, Left Fielder, 1992 Philadelphia Phillies."
I spent the next week spending my days in the cages and my nights in the bars. I was the toast of my little town. Everyone wanted to hang out with me, the guys wanted to say they knew me and the women wanted to say they KNEW me. It was great.
Oh yeah, I got my money today. I used it to pay off some of Moms debts. It wont be long before I can pay em all off. I might just buy the car dealership that's been hassling her and put her in charge, just for shits and giggles. No, it won't be long now.
I got the money today, $5,000 up front. Ever since the day that Coach Leahy walked up to me in the cafeteria, while Ryan Kern was calling me bitch tits and shoving pudding down my pants, and asked me to be the DH for the team, my life has changed.
That first game I was so nervous i nearly peed myself in the dugout, I kept grabbing my ass to measure exactly how fat the skin tight uniform made me look.
My buddy Chad was on the team but he didn't play much. He was a pitcher and we were on the same team in Little League, he was dominant as a 12 year old, but here we were 3 years later and the fickleness that is a young lads arm had betrayed him. Now at 15 years of age and barely any taller or bigger than he was back then, the overpowering stuff that had blown away the glass wearing math geeks and portly girls in Little League was barely enough to earn him the last spot in our bullpen, that and his dad was a coach, that shit always helps.
"Chad", I asked, "Do I look fat in this uniform"?
"Ricky my friend, You could have autism and 1 leg, and all that uniform does is make you a chick magnet. Trust me, since I joined the team i've had my pick of the D list", Chad was, as noted, a relief pitcher.
I scanned the bleachers and there they were. Krista, Tara, Elizabeth, Jeannete, the bonafide A-List. Man, what I wouldn't give to get with 1 of them. I scanned further and found the D-List in the wheelchair accessible section of the field. Poor Chad, poor me.
I didn't play at all that first game, Coach wanted me to get into game shape, which apparently involved me waddling around the track for an hour or 2 everyday after school. That first night I would jump up and run to the edge of the dugout to greet anyone and everyone after every play, "Bill! Good hustle on that ground out!" High five. I was trying like hell to break a sweat and make it seem as if I had actually done something during the game. At the end of the night, as I mimicked a squirrel foresting nuts in his cheek with my big league chew, spitting in the manliest way I knew, and constantly readjusting my cap and squinting as if to intimate that i was thinking very deep baseball thoughts, I drove home with Chad and his dad, a little unsure of if I wanted to proceed as a pine jockey for the rest of the season.
"Coach has big plans for you kid", Chads dad said in the middle of the drive, breaking a good 5 minute silence. I just nodded, not believing him. This was the same guy who once told his son he had a Koufax like arm.
The weeks passed and the season was winding down. We weren't very good but that didn't help get me in the game. One thing I noticed in my last year of little league, when we went to a special post season tournament that featured all-star teams from various leagues from around the area, was that the best of the best did not look anything like us. They were supposedly our age, but they appeared to be about two feet taller and capable of hitting the ball a good 300 feet deeper than anyone in our league. That's what this like. We had 1 decent hitter, who was good for a Home Run every now and then, but I doubt he could of even made the lineup for most of the teams we played against.
My social life hadn't improved that much either. I was still spending my classes writing down wrestling cards that I would actually play out with my figures when I got home. Although the mildly retarded chubby girl from Mrs. Lazaries "special" class had taken a keen interest in me, I think Chad had talked me up to her.
Then it happened. Our 3rd to last game of the season as we got off the bus in Lawrencetown to play the mighty Lasers, Coach stopped me and told me i was starting in left field. He smiled as he gave me the news and then paused.
"What's that smell"?
"I think i'm having diarrhea", I exclaimed as I pushed past him and headed for the porta potty.
After a good 20 minutes spent getting rid of my agitation and worry, I emerged from the John prepared to not make an idiot of myself. I hadn't played a game in 3 years and my nerves were always my worst hindrance. The summer before I had missed 14 straight swings in a slow pitch softball game. How does that happen you might ask? Well I swung and missed on the first pitch, thought about it for a second too long, and then it all snowballed. By the time i missed the 4th pitch I was already gone. Sweat, fear, the feeling that a thousand eyes were fixed upon me, all laughing maniacally at my misfortune, all crept into my brain and kept me from connecting. The softball at this point looked like it was the size of an acorn and there was nothing I could do to make contact. On the 15th pitch i finally tapped out meekly to the first basemen, yay!
Well here I was, on the road, playing at the home of the mighty Lasers, one of the best teams in the state, in front of about 400 people, which was roughly 10 times our best crowd back at home.
I was hitting 7th, just ahead of the 5'1 2nd basemen who liked to eat his own boogers and just behind the SS who was was hitting about .094, but could run like the wind, probably on account of being chased by the cops since he was 7. It was a pretty good correlation to my social standing.
After a boring top of the first I took the field. Luckily nobody hit anything my way, if they had I may have peed myself.
My first at bat came with 2 out and a man on first in the bottom of the 2nd inning. The Lawrenceton pitcher was about 6'3, lanky and threw what appeared to be 200 mph. He also had a mean curve that had most players on our team crunching up in fear like they had just witnessed a man get his cock run over by a volvo when it was halfway to the plate, but upon it's arrival would be right over the heart of the plate for a strike.
For some reason I didn't fear the curve, and after a horrid first swing miss, I geared up for that curve.
It left his arm...it was headed right for me...."don't worry dude, it's gonna break, right over the middle of the plate, and when it does you swing with all your might and"....BOOM!.....the fucker had plunked me right in the head.
That's when it happened. I fell to the ground. I looked up at the sky in a daze, that blue, blue sky. I smelt hot dogs and grass. I smelled lime and dirt. The odor of bubble gum wafted above my prone body, it was like I was 8 again, on my first day of T-Ball practice. A new and unrecognizable smell had entered the mix as well, it was sweet and fresh, like a field of spring flowers (I would later pinpoint this intoxicating smell as the lovely scent of teenage girls).
Something happened in my brain at that very moment that I cannot describe to you, I can only sum it up by conveying that at that moment, I had no fear.
When i was in 1st grade, a bunch of 6th graders were picking on Becky Timmins, she was a cute little girl, but wore the fugliest giant rimmed glasses that looked as if they had been stolen from a 60 year old Jewish accountant. They would mock her relentlessly with catcalls of "four eyes", "dork", and "splotchy" (she also had an unfortunate skin condition). But Becks was cool with me. Whenever we played Star Wars at recess she was always willing to be Leia, while the other girls gathered with their dolls and played hopscotch, Becks was right there with us guys reenacting our favorite scenese from the greatest film ever, Dave Wright as Lando, John Martin as Luke, Phil Byce as Han, Me as Chewy, and good old Becks as Leia.
So when it finally became too much for her, and she slunk off behind the school to cry, I lost it. I grabbed a wiffle ball bat and commenced beat down. I swung like a madman, Ryan Kern took one in the head, Ed DiSilva got a swift crack in the face, I was on fire. And then someone got the bat away from me and I had seven 6th graders beating the ever living shit out of me. Didn't matter though, when you're that age you tend to fear very little, you're brain has yet to develop that survival instinct, to know it's better not to go 7 on 1 with guys twice your size, even if you have a wiffle ball bat in your hand.
And for better and worse, as I would come to find out as the rest of my life played out, as I lay on the ground at that very moment, my head throbbing, my senses overwhelming me, A regression took place. That part of my brain that fears things, that causes worry, that had been holding me back for the past 3 years, was gone.
I got up slowly but fast enough that I was on my feet before my coaches could reach me, and I ran like a bull who had just had a branding iron shoved up his ass. I ran at that lanky, wiry armed faggot of a pitcher with all my might. He backpeddled for a step or two and then i tackled his scrawny ass. I never got to throw a punch, thank heavens, as I probably would have been suspended from league play the next season. By the time I was on him their entire infield was on me. Alot of pushing and shoving but nothing disastrous. I was ejected of course, but when I went up to Ryan Kern and told him not to take any crap from these assholes, he looked at me not with the eyes of a man who wanted to shove pudding down my pants, but with the eyes of a man who respected me. Kern was one of those guys, tall and stocky, strong as an ox, a born bully. But baseball wise he just didn't have it. If he made contact he could hit it over the fence with no problem, problem was that he very rarely made contact. Well today he connected, 3 times. We lost 14-10 but we never gave up and we never backed down. I'd like to think I had a hand in that.
The next 2 days I was the talk of the school, the hot chicks weren't about to leave their panties on my night stand but at least they were talking to me, and boy did I revel in it. At that age, getting a hot chick to have a conversation with you can make you feel like a super model just gave you your first blow job, I was on cloud nine. I was so engulfed in this newfound modest popularity that I didn't think about bad things, that part of my brain didn't snap back on, I was pleasantly aloof.
The next game came and I spent the hours after school talking and bullshitting with my teammates instead of sitting alone and thinking about ways I could fuck up. I went 4-4, the ball looked like a grapefruit.
Next game I went 2-2 with 2 walks and a sac fly. I had gone 6-6 on the season with 5 RBI's, pro rate that over a full season, I was headed for the Hall Of Fame.
Over the summer I spent day after day on the field with my teammates, practicing, fucking around, having a good time. Each weekend however was spent at parties, I was introduced to vodka that summer, ooofah. I was also introduced to Lori Bell (yeah, I know). She was the cutest thing you ever laid eyes on, went to school in the next town over, tiny girl with big ol juggs. She may have been 16 but she didn't act like it. She made me a man that summer, in almost every way imaginable, probably set the bar way too high, as I would spend the next 5 years being totally disgruntled if titty and butt sex weren't a regular part of a girls sexual repertoire.
But i'm getting off track here. That next season I hit .432 with a .560 on base percentage and 12 Home Runs. I was the toast of the town, all 12 blocks of it. And the best part is, I didn't have to work at it, I just had to not think about, and I never thought about the fact that I never thought about it, it worked out perfectly, I was dumb to the whole thing.
The only thing I worked on was speed. I didn't run alot, but I would try to spend a few hours per week just running from first to second. Jose Canseco was just coming into his own in MLB and I got this idea in my head that I could become the first 50-50 guy in Baseball history. I could get butt sex all night long if I was a 50-50 guy.
The next 2 years I just tore it up more and more, in every way. Summers were spent partying and getting laid, I started up with the weed one night during a party at Kyle Forton's house. Weed, Vodka and Pussy, I was king of the world.
As my senior season (I refer to my high school years as seasons, as they became little more than preparation for a big league career, schooling pretty much faded out of the picture early in my Junior year when I realized that I was getting C's for papers I didn't even turn in) started I became more and more aware of scouts. During practices I would notice these white haired, big bellied, cigar smoking old timers taking notes as they watched us play. I was either on the MLB radar or was being prepped for kidnapping by a ring of pedophiles.
Our second game of the season that final year was at home, and as I headed for the dugout following batting practice, my coach took me aside and pointed out to me a tall, thin man wearing a derby hat and a dark red windbreak.
"Ya see that guy over"? Coach asked me, pointing to the fellow in question.
"Yeah"
"He's the assistant to the East Coast head of Scouting for the Phillies".
"No shit!", I exclaimed as a smile crept across my face.
I went out and nailed a first pitch fastball a good 400 feet to dead center, a mile clear of the fence, and then raced around the bases as if i was trying to leg out an infield the park home run, my eyes on Mr. Scout Man the whole time. As I stepped on home plate and headed for dugout I locked eyes with him, took off my helmet to reveal an old school Phillies cap underneath, and started to point at the logo above the brim with nearly as much eagerness as I showed the first time I had a naked woman alone. I wasn't allowed to talk to him, nor him me, but I think he got the point.
I proceed to mash my way through the season, I belted 20 Home Runs in just 30 games. I hit .501. I was getting better.
June 1st I was sitting in science class, my high school experience a mere 2 days away from coming to a conclusion but I didn't care about that. I had spent the prior evening getting high as a motherfucker with my best bud John, talking about all the shit I was gonna do with my life. The MLB Amateur draft was the next day you see. I was sure I was gonna get picked, how could I not? I was a lifetime .478 hitter with power and speed, I knew i was gonna drafted. I knew I was gonna play Major League Baseball, can you believe that shit? I talked about the house i was gonna build, the chicks I was gonna bang, the drugs I was gonna do.
"If I make, say $2 Million a year, I'll never have to worry about being out of weed, how awesome is that?"
Anyway, I perked to the sound of the bell ringing and rushed for the parking lot and Johns shitty Chevy Blazer. We drove home where I proceeded to bust through the door and yell out for mom, asking her if anyone had called yet, for today was the day of the draft. No reply. I looked around at an empty apartment, what the fuck was going on. I looked at the answering machine, a blinking "2" in bright red, i braced myself. I clicked on "messages" and John and I waited, neither of us taking a breath.
"Ricky, this is mom, i'm working late tonight, Doreen has a urinary tract infection so i'm covering for her, theres a frozen pizza in the freezer."
"End of message".....
"Message number 2.............Ricky, this is Earl Cunningham with the Philadelphia Phillies. Ricky, we thought you'd like to know that we've drafted you. Our number here is *-***-****, I'll try you again in a few hours if we don't here from you, but we'd like to set up a meeting and introduce you to the Phillie family.
I could of tongue kissed John right then and there. My nipples were protruding bizarrely. No amount of good times, alcohol, drugs or pussy that I had indulged in the previous 3 years even came close to matching the overwhelming joy I was feeling at that very moment.
I had a phone call to make. I called up the number Earl had left for me.
"Earl, it's Ricky Joseph"
"Say again?"
"Ricky Joseph"
"Ok, hold on here....number 28. Hey Ricky, thanks for getting back to us so soon".
"28 what"? I asked.
"28th round", came the reply.
"28th round"? I thought to myself. Doing the quick math in my head.....800 players were picked before me? What in the blue hell was going on here.
"28th round Earl"? I asked solemnly.
"Thats right son", he replied. He continued, "Listen son, do you have an agent, cause we'd like to get a contract ironed out as soon as possible so we can send ya on you're way down to florida for the rest of the summer."
I was shocked. I had spent the entire night before thinking of how i was gonna spend the nifty little bonus I would get from being a top 10 pick. And now here I was a 28th round draft pick getting ready to be shipped off to Florida to play in fuckin rookie league. Hadn't they seen the way no curve ball could get by me? How I was never fooled by the off speed shit? How the high fastballs became 420 foot bombs when thrown my way?
"Earl", I said, "Don't send me to Florida, put me on the bench, get me some swings against Major League pitchers, I'm ready now Earl, I'm not saying I'm Mickey Mantle, but I know damn well I can give you more than Braulio friggin Castillo".
He laughed as if he had heard that line a thousand times over his career in the front office.
"Tell ya what kid, come and meet with us, let's get you signed, then we'll see where go from there".
As I hung up the phone, it hit me. I was going to rookie ball. Even if I tore it up every night, every day, every game, it would still probably be 2 years before I got a sniff of Major League action.
"I've got to make them see", I said to John. "The Phillies need me, oh they think Wes Chamberlain is the shit, but if it isn't a fastball down the heart of the plate, he can't hit it, he's the emperors new clothes, I'm the motherfuckin Emperor".
I was incensed. This team was a rebuilding, they were almost there, 1992 was gonna be a breakout year for the Phillies, IF, they had me out there.
"Put me between Kruk and Daulton", I said to noone in particular, even though John was standing right in front of me, "And we will kill any staff that goes up against us".
I spent that night with John, his girlfriend Amy and my half hearted steady Janey. Janey and I were as serious as I had ever been with a chick but as was becoming my usual way with women, it was more about the sexual limits, or lack thereof, that attracted me to her. We spent the night getting wasted, screwing and dreaming. I think Janey got offended that my daydreams about my future life didn't involve her because I never got to play the game of StepSister that I had so been looking forward to.
A week later I had my meeting with the team. We went to their offices and worked out a contract. I got a whopping $5,000 bonus and deal that guaranteed me $50,000 a year for 3 years, no matter what happened. The rest was standard Minor League contract crap. I wasn't exactly gonna be spending 10 grand a night for Swedish hookers anytime soon.
I spent the rest of the morning exchanging quick greetings with some of the higher ups, Ed Wade, Del Unser, Lee Thomas. It was fun, but I was still upset.
"I can outplay Wes Chamberlain in every single area of this game", I thought to myself each time they would talk about the rookie league and my development, and how the chain of ascension worked.
After the meeting they gathered me and about 12 other draftees who were there that day signing their contracts, in a van and took us down to Veterans Stadium for a tour of the place. It was rank. It smelled like piss and concrete, the turf was worse than the parking lots I had played wiffle ball on as a kid. And I loved it. People called it sterile, they called all those cookie cutter 70's stadiums sterile. Well I don't know what Riverfront and Three Rivers were like, but this place was not sterile, oh it may have been the crackhouse of Major League Parks, but a crackhouse can have ambiance too. I look at it like this, lets say you're born and raised in a 1 room shack with no toilet, hardly any running water, and it's filled with a family full of drunk uncles and 10 brothers and sisters, to an outsider it may seem like a shithole, but if you grow up there, it develops a certain charm for no other reason than because it's yours. It's where you had your first Christmas, it's where you laughed and cried and whose door you opened up when you were 6 and saw your first bike on the dirt lawn outside.
This may have been a hellhole of a stadium, but it was my hellhole of a stadium. Fuck Yankee stadium, fuck those fancy new parks everyone is raving about. There wasn't a place in the world i'd rather play than Veterans Stadium, shitty turf and piss odor and all.
They let us go on the field and shag fly balls, a simple little workout, and I was in heaven. I couldn't stop going on and on about how I was gonna love playing here, talking as if I was penciled in to bat cleanup in tonight's game vs the Braves.
They started ushering us off when the big guys came out for practice. Kruk and Daulton sauntered onto the field in shorts and T-shirts with mouths full of chew, looking as if they had spent the previous evening in some Bangkokian den of Iniquity. I loved it.
"This the new crop", I heard a voice boom as we stood near the 3rd base dugout.
It was Mitch Williams, who had a beard that appeared have been spray painted on by a blind epileptic.
"Yeah, just showin em around", Del Unser boomed back.
"Well shit, set em up in the cage and i'll throw em some", Williams boomed back as he stretched his arms to each side in a manner that suggested that if he began to flap them he might actually take flight, a yawn escaping his stubbled face.
That brain trigger that had gone away some four years earlier was still in full effect, and it thankfully reared it's ugly head as I, with no thought whatsoever, shouted out to Mitch, "Warm up, $500 says I can take your first pitch over the center field wall."
All of the sudden I had every eye on the field fixed upon me. Some laughs, some hoots, some jawjacking, an air of playful tenseness crept in.
"Ill give $1500 ta put a heater in his nutsack", Kruk yelled down to Williams who was standing behind home plate.
Williams walked over to me slowly, chewing what could have been a granola bar filled with methanphetamines as easily as strawberry filling, and smirked.
"Get in the cage", he said.
"If you don't warm up first, I wont just clear the wall, I'll put it in the seats", I said with a smile.
Charlie Hayes nearly doubled over with laughter. Daulton began to egg Mitch on. Kruk wondered aloud if my rookie contract would cover the cost of a funeral.
"Come on, lets clear the field", Ed Wade, a short little fem of a man who looked as out of place here as Waylon Jennings at a DMX concert, said as a he took my arm and tried to lead me away.
"Now, now, let's see what this kids got", Jim Fregosi, recently hired Manager of the team said as he walked over to us, cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth.
"Get a helmet, you're gonna need it", Williams proclaimed as he walked towards the mounding, butterflying his arms along the way.
"You heard the man. Helmets and bats are right down there", Fregosi continued as he pointed into the dugout, inhaling deeply, shaking his head and walking towards the outfield.
"This isn't a baseball team we're assembling, it's the cast for Animal House 2 for the love of Pete", I could here Wade mutter as walked towards the stands to take a seat. I didn't like that guy.
I got a helmet, dark red with the beautifully scripted P on top. God damn was this awesome.
I found a bat that met my liking, 34oz, smooth as a babies bottom, I turned around and looked to the field, players jostling about in a mild tempo workout, Williams motioning for me to get up to the plate after warmup pitch he delivered.
"$500, that the deal?" He asked as I approached home plate.
"Yup."
"Well aright then, let's go."
I took a few practice swings before getting into the box. All the players scattered thruought the field had stopped what they were doing to watch us. Calls of "Take his head off", "Blow him away", and "don't hurt him too bad", filled the air.
I stepped in, took my exaggerated Tony Phillips stance to the amusement of a great many, especially Kruker, before straightening up and settling in.
My eyes were dead set on Williams, I knew he was gonna throw me a curve, literally. I was being hustled. Gear up to hit the heater and end up swinging a good 2 hours before the ball even gets there.
And he went into his up, and the ball left his hand. And I sat on it. And 5 feet before it hit the plate it started to break, heading out over homeplate right at my knees. And I launched it. It sailed so high that there should of had a stewardess getting fucked on it. Clank. It finally landed on a seat in the second row of seats in dead center field.
Brief utterances of "Holy shit" and "God damn", escaped certain, unknown lips at the moment I connected, but after that all was silent for a good 15 seconds.
"Beer and Steaks on the rookie." The silence was finally broken by Daulton, who was standing behind me.
"It don't matter what ya throw, if I know what it is." I said stupidly, without thinking.
"Oh yeah?", Williams slightly growled as he walked cockily towards homeplate.
"Next pitch is gonna be a 98mph fastball. Double or Nothing?"
I paused for a moment. "Sure."
Williams put his glove up and a ball came flying from behind me. He took it in his hand and smashed into his glove as he turned around and paced back to the mound.
Again I settled in, I knew what was coming.
Glove to chest, windup, arm out, ball is on it's way.......I turned slightly....THUD. Right in the back I took it. 98 motherfuckin miles per hour. I felt like Mike Tyson had just punched me square in the liver.
"Take it out of my check", I said as I walked back over to where the other rookies were gathered.
As big a moment as it had been, it ended just as quick. Ed Wade jumped from his seat and began to wrangle the rooks away as soon as I had to started to walk back over.
"Hey kid, what position you play?" Daulton asked me as I made my way to the tunnel.
"Left Field."
"Yeah? Won't be long then." Apparently Dutch had about the same amount of faith in the lauded Chamberlain as I did.
That night I broke out moms credit card and ordered 5 cases of Budweiser to be delivered to Phillies clubhouse, with a little note that read,
"Next year, you guys buy.
Signed,
Ricky Joseph, Left Fielder, 1992 Philadelphia Phillies."
I spent the next week spending my days in the cages and my nights in the bars. I was the toast of my little town. Everyone wanted to hang out with me, the guys wanted to say they knew me and the women wanted to say they KNEW me. It was great.
Oh yeah, I got my money today. I used it to pay off some of Moms debts. It wont be long before I can pay em all off. I might just buy the car dealership that's been hassling her and put her in charge, just for shits and giggles. No, it won't be long now.
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