Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [12]
When you become a professional athlete you do not sacrifice your right to live your life as you choose, no matter how flawed that existence might be. No one assigns you a smaller quota for making mistakes than the rest of the human race. Nor do you agree to live up to anyone’s expectations except your own. Just don’t hurt anyone other than yourself while you’re doing it.
Let me add one more thought on jock heroism. Many admirable people populate the sports world. How many of them are any braver than the average person? On September 11, 2001, when those planes crashed through the twin towers, two men running from their office noticed a fellow worker in a wheelchair who could not negotiate an escape. They risked their lives taking turns carrying her down more than fifty flights of stairs. I challenge anyone to name one thing an athlete has ever done on the field in any sport to compare to that selfless act. Or come even close.
All right, I’ll give you one. Jackie Robinson breaking the color line. That’s about it. Attributing heroism to men and women who are simply doing their jobs in return for money and glory cheapens the word. For example, during the 2003 baseball season one prominent sportswriter gushed in his column over the valor the Montreal Expos displayed by remaining in the pennant race despite the handicap of playing one-fourth of their home games in Puerto Rico. He claimed that the Expos “may be the most courageous team of 2003.”
Don’t know about you, but I wanted to dust off the Purple Hearts after reading that piece. I mean, what feats did the Expos perform in Puerto Rico that remotely qualified as courageous? Run around the local beaches without wearing sunscreen?
As for role models, check out your mirror tomorrow morning. If you do not find one looking back, all the heroes in the world cannot help you.
Competition in the QSL proved so light, I didn’t hesitate to get high during games. My friend Carl Lumerick smuggled ganja resin disguised as coffee into Canada from Jamaica every fall and kept me supplied. No one should mistake Carl as a mere drug dealer. He was an artisan, a Dutch master among purveyors of pot. Carl spent his winters on sun-soaked beaches rolling that brown cannabis gum into ovals. He would painstakingly etch thin lines into each morsel until they resembled coffee beans. After packing his stash in Blue Mountain coffee bags, Carl walked through customs every September without attracting any notice.
Lumerick’s compact marijuana beans contained five times the potency of standard pot. One toke and you stared at the TV screen for three hours. Except there was no TV screen. The drug enhanced my visual acuity. I smoked some before a doubleheader in Sorrel and went seven for eight with three home runs. Every pitch thrown to me, no matter how fast, arrived at home plate with the force of a leaf gently tumbling through the air. I could count the seams on the ball, actually watch the horsehide turn from dark to light as it completed each of its revolutions. I only had to catch the ball on the end of my bat and serve it.
I experienced no sense of urgency playing the outfield that day. One batter smacked a deep fly in my direction, but instead of soaring past me, the ball hovered and spoke. Take your time, Bill, it said, I’ll wait until you get under me. Caught that one behind my back.
In the second game, I took the mound and threw a two-hitter. Every pitch behaved as I instructed it to. I would throw a fastball and follow with a change exactly 9.32456 miles per hour slower, the pot gave me that much precision. My catcher and I decided to eschew conventional pitching strategy in favor of a no-plan plan. Hitters could not think with me because of the simple fact that I had ceased thinking. I threw one batter sixteen straight slow curves. He finally struck out looking for the sinker that never arrived.
With Carl’s amazing electric