Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [52]
As morale drooped, I tried to rally the team with a rousing locker room speech. Spent all night writing it, trying to create the right tone. I understood which qualities a manager must exude during such a critical presentation. Compassion. Empathy. But above all, tact.
“We are horse shit,” I announced while striding to the center of the clubhouse. “We are supposed to be an egalitarian group of rebels here to have fun, to play hard and support one another while winning a few games. But we cannot beat the Pelicans. We cannot beat the Legends. Gentlemen, we cannot beat our grandmothers. Most of you sons of bitches are down here stealing money,”—a line Jim Fanning might have proudly uttered—“You guys know who you are. You are not in shape. Get in shape. I keep the key to the pool in my desk. Use it. I swim there every day. Getting my work in, doing my cardio. My body fat is down 30% and I feel great.”
I did everything but tell them about my boxing gloves.
From the back, a voice—I don’t know whose—piped up, “Yeah, you look great but you’re getting your ass kicked out there too.” In the face of such blatant insubordination, Patton would have cut off the balls of the offending soldier and grilled them on a kebab spit. But this man had a point. I promptly brought the meeting to a close.
My soliloquy did make its impact, though. Mitchell Maxwell was powerfully stirred by my eloquence, my command, my overwhelming clarity. He fired me two days later. As several sportswriters soon pointed out, Maxwell’s pink slip made me the first manager eighty-sixed by a SBPA team.
That failed to bother me. I am used to breaking records wherever I play. Besides, even my closest friends realized that hiring me to manage anything stretched the Peter Principle far beyond all sustainable limits. Ed Nottles, a minor-league skipper from the Red Sox organization, took over the club, and Maxwell agreed to retain my services as a pitcher. For a short time we did play better. But the Super Sox finished last in the standings and rarely drew more than 250 people to any of our home games.
Despite the adversity, the season presented its share of memorable moments. Like the night one of our starting pitchers sat at the bar of a Winter Haven nightclub and tied his penis in a knot to entertain the crowd. His performance amazed and amused most of the patrons, but it shocked at least one witness, a journalist who asked me why on earth my teammate would do such a thing.
Dunno, Ollie. Because he can?
A personal highlight occurred during a game against the Port St. Lucie Legends. Bobby Bonds—Barry’s dad and one of the best baseball players from my generation—patrolled right field for the Legends that afternoon. I sat in the bullpen behind him. We chatted until one of my teammates hit a line drive deep over his head. Bobby galloped into the right-field corner, picked up the ball on one bounce, and tossed it. To me. “My arm is shot,” he yelled, “throw that to third.” It did not matter that Bonds worked for the enemy. Instinct took over. I threw the ball on a clothesline back to the infield and just missed nipping the base runner sliding into third. That throw nearly extinguished my own team’s rally, but dang, it turned out to be the best play I made all year.
During the brief time I skippered the Super Sox, we maintained an open door policy regarding tryouts. Anyone ambulatory could audition for the team. It did not matter if you had any prior baseball playing experience, I would look you over. Six or seven amateur players approached us; none of them could cut it. There was one man who tried out that I wanted to add to our roster, but I knew management would not allow it.
Tom slinked into the Chain of Lakes clubhouse dressed in a green short-sleeved T-shirt, frayed black sweatpants, black cap pulled low as his eyelashes, black socks, and black sneakers. Silver