Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [11]
I loved my wife; there was much we had in common. Mary Lou and I enjoyed running, hiking, camping, and long drives to nowhere. Our cultural tastes meshed. We read many of the same books and shared concerns over the same social issues. But despite this compatibility, our relationship started deteriorating in 1980. She continually complained that I did not spend enough time with the family—she was right about that—and we bickered over little things. Communication broke down. We grew apart. I pursued other interests that she found unappealing.
After weeks of nearly nonstop fighting, she threw me out of the house, hired an attorney, and eventually filed for divorce. I represented myself in the proceedings, figuring an agile, USC-trained mind could match any lawyer’s. When a judge granted our divorce in 1982, Mary Lou came away with custody of our three children, Mike, Andy, and Caitlin, our duplex in Belmont, Massachusetts, the house in Bellingham, Washington, our Jeep, the BMW, all of the furniture and the entire $150,000 in our bank account. Oh, and half my final year’s salary from the Expos. But I outfoxed them. I kept the Volkswagen bus and all my rifles.
Precisely the items I would need when the creditors began chasing me.
Amazing how fast money can disappear. In 1979, Montreal signed me to a three-year contract worth $900,000 with 25 percent of it deferred over ten years starting in 1983. So the Expos paid me $225,000 in 1982. Half of that went to my ex-wife. After my divorce, I married Pam Fair, a woman I had met during my separation from Mary Lou. We put $20,000 down on a house in Montreal and invested another $30,000 to fix it up. Estimated taxes swallowed another huge slice of my check. I had expected to receive a refund after factoring in the interest on my mortgage, only to discover the IRS would not allow us to write off any payments we made on a Canadian home.
My savings account showed only $24,000 by September 1, not much when no other money is coming in and your mortgage is $2,400 a month, not to mention the cost of heating. Or the price of food. Or the cost of gasoline. Or clothes. Or toothpaste, soap, floor wax, toilet paper, and all the other incidentals. Now you know why I took drugs. I could not afford cable television.
I freebased cocaine that year. Crack, though no one called it that back then. My first and only time. Not by design, either, but little in my life ever follows a plan. A woman passed me the pipe at a party. She didn’t tell me; I didn’t ask. Just two puffs and I evaporated. My head curved into a big shiny marble, rolled from my shoulders, and landed on a table. I remember looking back at my torso and thinking, Here’s my chance to find out if people appreciate me for my body or my mind. Let’s see which one draws the biggest crowd. Naturally, my head had no trouble communicating, but my body could not attract anyone’s attention unless I talked through my ass.
Something else I’ve had a lot of practice doing.
I never hid my drug use from anyone. An organization that supported the legalization of marijuana once asked me to speak at a widely publicized conference. I showed up, but none of the group’s members appeared. Should have known. Potheads. They had all stayed home to smoke weed.
About now is the time I should express some regret for all the days and nights spent floating in lotus land. No chance. I had a good time gallivanting and enjoyed mind-expanding experiences few people who stay straight their entire lives can fathom. And please don’t tell me that athletes—even those as outside the mainstream as I—have an obligation to behave as role models. I have two words for that: horse and shit.
Writers who cling to the childlike notion that people who play sports for a living qualify as heroes perpetuate the idea that athletes must act as exemplars for society. Team owners endorse that supposition to keep their employees in