First of all, a few words about last night's game. I thought Vance Wilson was not trying anything sneaky, anything below-average of a typical human being...it's Vance! But I had to go talk to Tim Timmons. I had to, you see. It's part of what I do.
I didn't bet on the hostile atmosphere, though. They wouldn't let me in, so I had to try something else. There is no way to explain the terror I felt when I finally lunged up to the clerk outside the umpires' quarters and began babbling. "Hi there...my name is...ah, Lou Piniella...yes, I have my pitching coach with me and I realize of course that they don't want to see him, but we must talk to the man." She tells me he's not in, but there's someone looking for me.
"No!" I shouted. "Why? We haven't done anything yet!" Then they told me to wait. To sit and wait, for they would let it be known at some point in the nefarious future that I will hear their side.
It came in the fifth. I had a couple of fifths myself by the time that came into existence, but it is just not relevant. Batter interference? Fantastic.
But back to the beginning. We finally got into the dugout around 7, and my pitching coach was immediately on the phone to the bullpen, getting not one, but three pitchers up. "Nate Robertson is pitching," he said. "We need all the help we can get."
I agreed. By this time my hallucinations were down to a tolerable level. The batboy had a vaguely reptillian cast to his features, but I was no longer seeing huge FAN 590 reporters lumbering around the clubhouse in search of fresh blood. The only problem now were the gigantic scoreboards, blocking our view of the ball -- millions of coloured balls running around a very complicated track..."Oh no! There's a big...bird in the sky,...some kind of electric beast...coming straight at us!"
"Shoot it," said my pitching coach.
"Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits."
Well, it turned out to be a fake bird. A fake bird, cursed and created simply by that video screen. Such a video screen has never been seen!
Okay, bottom of the eighth. The crowd is cheering and it looks like Robertson is done. No! I can't be hearing this! It must be the drug. I glanced over at my pitching coach, but he was starting up at the sky, and I could see that his brain had gone off to that campground beyond the sun. Thank Christ he can't hear this J-Force music, I thought.
So I called down to the bullpen and got my big German reliever ready to pitch, just to face this guy. Or at least I thought this was the case until I got to the big grey phone that connected to the Bullpen Suite in the Far Left Field Wing. I made the call and got out to the mound, thinking, "Ah, home at last!"...but the bullpen door hit something, which I recognized at once as a human form: a man of indeterminate pitching ability with the face and form of a Pit Bull. Somehow I knew that I had the right pitcher. I tossed my lineup card on the ground and looked around for what I knew I would see...Kyle Farnsworth...stark naked, standing in the bullpen door with a suspension-for-stupid-behaviour-addled grin on his face.
I sat down on the mound and casually reached into my pocket for the pencil...and when I felt my thumb on the graphite tip I was tempted to jerk the thing out and write his name down on general principles, I desperately needed peace, rest, post-game buffet. The last thing I wanted was a fight to the finish, in my own damned bullpen, against a guy who should be loathing me in Atlanta.
I turned away from the bullpen and went back to the dugout. There was no way to cope with it. I stood up and gathered my luggage. I was important, I felt, to get out of town immediately.
We had two bags of rosin, seventy-five strikeouts from our setup guy, five sheets of high-powered righty vs. lefty matchup statistics, a pint-sized energetic second baseman at the plate and two dozen men expecting a win, but the only thing that worried me was the hustling infielder. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an hustle binge.
He swings. The ball sets off trails behind its magnificent arc. That's it. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Larry Parrish....a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally without confidence. I turned away and reeled off in the general direction of the clubhouse. Here I'd only been in town a few days and we'd already laid the groundwork for a classic tragedy. Just one more game, then farewell to Toronto..."God's Mercy on You Swine!"
