Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [58]
“No, Bobby, cognac isn’t for me. The last time I drank that stuff, Pam found me slumped over the backyard fence naked at five in the morning. Neighbors say I danced under the moon for hours before passing out. Gave me a hangover that lasted the rest of the summer.”
“You don’t know how to drink it right. Just hold on and I’ll show you.”
He went inside for a moment and emerged carrying a bottle of Courvoisier, a pitcher of ice-cold spring water, and two shot glasses on a tray.
“Here’s the trick,” he said. “You drink some ice water first, sip your cognac, and chase it with two more shots of ice water. The water dilutes the alcohol in your system so you don’t get too high, and it also keeps you hydrated so you won’t wake up with a hangover.”
“We do this bottle, I won’t wake up at all.”
“Try it.”
While we drank, Bobby talked about his family, recalling how they used to fish together on this very waterway. One day his father and sister motored out to the middle of the St. Lawrence, where she hooked a forty-pound muskie minutes after dropping her line into the water. A muskie is a monster freshwater fish with the jaws of a crocodile and the torso of a snake. After Mr. Hull and his daughter struggled to reel her catch into the boat, the fish refused to die. That muskie flopped from stem to stern snapping at both of them.
Mr. Hull grabbed a ball peen hammer from his tool box and started pounding the fish. The muskie squirmed and rolled every time Mr. Hull brought down his weapon. Bobby’s father could only land one blow out of every three; the others cracked through the boat bottom. He finally killed the fish, but the craft filled with seawater and they just made it to shore without sinking.
That muskie stretched out so long, Bobby’s sister could not hold the fish by its tail without its head scraping the ground unless she stood on a stool. Turned out to be a world-class catch. Most people would have mounted such a prize on their wall. Bobby told me his father paid the local butcher to slice the fish into steaks, which the Hulls feasted on for weeks. What you have to realize is that no one eats muskie. The fish tastes like pure grade pig iron and comes with bones the size of an NFL linebacker’s forearms. That story revealed much about why Bobby grew up to be such a tough competitor.
He was a bruiser on the softball field, a man who still liked to make hard contact in what is essentially a noncontact sport. Bobby was an excellent defensive catcher even though his knees had gone gimpy after years of abuse on the ice. His reflexes remained sharp, and few could match his hand-eye coordination—he could catch any ball you put near him.
Bobby proved particularly adept at blocking the plate. He was tall and chiseled, solid as one of those muskie bones. In baseball, everyone wants to go home. Thing is, Bobby didn’t want you going home. At least not in one piece. When the Golden Jet planted himself in front of the plate with the throw coming in and a runner bearing down, those last ninety feet from third to home became the Bataan death march.
During a game we played in Saskatchewan, one opposing player tried sneaking in headfirst under Bobby on a close play. Hull came down on him with so much force, we ended up using the poor bastard’s flattened skull as home plate for the rest of the game. Another time a runner tried to bowl over Bobby with two men out in the ninth and our team only one run ahead. The runner collided with Bobby at home plate. For a moment I could