Oliver Lee Bateman's Blog, page 2

Most of What I Write is Trash

My presence among the writers of anything is anomalous. I don’t know anybody, don’t care about anything, and have nothing original to say. I arrange words that don’t mean anything in exchange for $$$ I won’t spend. There were maybe a couple moments when I almost broke through1, or could’ve broken through2, but I don’t know what I would’ve broken through to much less what I would’ve done when I got there.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is alway everybody’s question. People start playing this role or that role in their early to mid 20s, and then they grow, literally and figuratively, into them. I never wanted to play a role; I never wanted anything but silence. Role-playing involves a lot of dissembling, “Oh I’m blah blah blah, whatever, et cetera”–wanting to the “king shit of fuck mountain,” to steal a mellifluous phrasing of Bob Odenkirk’s. Eventually you’re wearing these big baggy-ass Dockers khakis and playing golf with the boys or drinking PBR in a 50/25/25 tri-blend t-shirt in some $3000/mo rental in one of the “acceptable” cities while doing your best impression of Steve Buscemi doing his impression of a teenager.

I never thought I’d grow up–never minded the process, I guess, but never thought it would happen–and yet I have in spite of every indication to the contrary and now I’m shrewed/blued/tattooed because on any given day I have no reason to live. Not a reason to die, which is the sort of thing first responders and G.I. Joes and other real American heroes have, but a reason to live, to move forward, to accomplish something. And for what, y'know? So I can tell some tweedy professor that I’m publishing with such-and-such a press or impress some hipster manqué3 by telling him or her that P4K is running an essay of mine?

As for friendships and the resulting conversations, they’re no different than writing: mostly work and mostly trash. “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Yeah, wutevz, Big Aristotle: a friend is just someone who, whether encountered randomly or at an appointed hour, will waste your time. Talking to a person, even if it’s the best talk you’ve ever had, requires such exertion that when you leave–which you’ll have to do, because everyone leaves and everything ends–you’ll never want to do it again. “Great chat bro, hopefully I’ll never see you again, even though I love you like a bro.” “Yeah broseph, it’s been real, it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.”

But back to the writing: what do we write about when we write about writing? In most cases we–meaning me and you–write literary fiction, which is just softcore porn for nerds4. At any rate, we never write nothing because we can never say no. It’s always type type typing away, with nary an idea of great import or export to convey.

I suppose I could write about the horrendous abuse that characterized my childhood and early adolescence. There’s $$$ in them thar hills, even if ain’t much, even if I’m not sure where exactly I stack up on the Publisher’s Pain Scale5. I’m a dudebro, inescapably so, with a voice and a face and a body that fit nowhere in the grand scheme of things. I suppose you might even think I’m interesting–provided that your definition of interesting is different, and much looser, than mine.

“I, I, I,” the cogito, the I’m so cool,“ is what’s best and worst about male writing, especially dudebro writing, and also why we need no more of it. I can’t pitch a piece or an article or a book with any sincerity because WTF, there’s been several thousand years of dudebro work paving the way: Cicero was a dudebro, Jesus too, Melville and Whitman…dudebros all. Plus writing isn’t cumulative the way science is, except for maybe when you’re plagiarizing somebody (quick quiz: can you spot all the phrases I lifted almost wholesale from other, better writers in this short essay? a No-Prize for the winner!). Can writing be said to have gotten any "better” in the past 100 years?6 Nah, writing can only ever be different, not better, and there’s nothing different about what I’d write-on-demand from what, say, Wallace Stegner or Richard Yates or Dan Duchaine or Louis L'Amour or Kevin “The Secrets THEY Don’t Want You to Know” Trudeau have already written.

What I mean by all of the foregoing, which you won’t read because I don’t matter &c., is that there’s no good reason for me. Based on current market conditions, there’s probably no good reason for you, either. Which makes me wonder why people kvetch about “Obama death panels” when it seems like those Futurama suicide booths could go a long ways toward thinning the herd of failed, feckless millenials.

“Abercrombie,” the “Abercrombie professor.” Lots of lawlz there. But ultimately nada, zip, zilch: just another thing that reaffirmed some preconceived notions. Good for me.
I interviewed to be on some reailty show, but nada, zip, zilch came of that, too.
Isn’t that every hipster, in the full and complete sense of this moth-eaten, dog-eared catchall term?
If this stuff were as good as what J.D. Robb, Inc. and Diana Palmer, Inc., wrote, it would sell a heckuva lot better.
Undoubtedly high by white cisgender male standards, and progressively lower as far as other identity categories are concerned. If I have any “complaints” about the abuse I received, it’s that, far from forcing me into a bunch of prepackaged & balkanized categories of self, it made me into a Patrick Bateman-esque empty shell (Bateman!), a veritable humanzee (Oliver!) among the higher primates. The latter doesn’t have as much cash value as the former, since it’s far more difficult to conceptualize and is unlikely to elicit sympathy from anyone. “So an asshole was raised by two assholes to be an even worse asshole,” readers (i.e., those brave souls who read more than 25% of a book they’ve purchased) will say. “Well fuck you, asshole!”
There’s a real Bloom-and-Lasch-y cottage industry built around describing how it’s gotten worse, and while there might be a germ of truth to that because writing demands focus and the future is one of multitasking (at which women admittedly far outshine men, on the aggregate), that work, which I read at an age when I wasn’t prepared to appreciate its deeper implications, now strikes me as a lot of elitist sour grapes.

The Virtual University

The virtual university was located at the corner of real and world. It was in the business of amazing people. It was where the future started today. It was a place without limits as well as a place where you could push your limits. It was different on purpose; it was where everybody counts; it was imagining the impossible. “Live unbranded” read their trademarked logo, which was a $.

The virtual university didn’t have any students or faculty because who needed them. Those boring old mopes and pajama-clad scrotes only got in the way of creating your best self and daring to dream. It didn’t have classes because you needed to learn at your own pace at your own place, a place that let you take charge of the now and supercharge the forever. It did have a 150,000 square foot gym that had cost $100m to build, because education was a vacation to find your vocation. It paid its legendary football coach “Herc” Broadsides almost that much to coach the 85 uncompensated mercenaries who drew capacity crowds of virtual alumni to its 200,000-seat KFC Double Down Athletic Megatorium.

The virtual university had thousands of actual administrators: assistant deans and assistants to the assistant deans and assistant dean’s assistant’s assistants. What they did was anybody’s guess, but it certainly wasn’t nothing. At the very least, they created things like the Strategic Plan for Growth, the Mission Admission Statement, Initiative 2020, and the Dynamic Interdisciplinary Research Brandcast. Each of these ambitious programs was outlined in a PowerPoint presentation so hollow and amorphous that it was faultless, as virtually perfect as the virtual university itself.

The one problem with the virtual university was that it remained tethered, at least in theory, to whatever the university had done before it, all the moribund mortarboard-and-gown Hogwartsing that struck outsiders as being so 1200-and-late. The lingering referent, with its connotations of the three Rs and the illiberal arts, can’t be effaced–not yet anyway; we don’t have the technology. But god, if it could: a university divorced from its old-timey tweed coat and pipe smoking function, floating aloft in the free air, nothing but slogans and strategery and sweetheart deals for the lucky stiffs who work there…

“We don’t dare to dream,” read the Virtual University’s Mission Admission Statement, “we prepare for it.”

Bro.

–Eeyore Bremen

A Wee Walk

The retired man stepped outside of his house on a brisk September morn to take a walk. There was a nice trail through the woods near his home. Sunlight filtered through canopies of green leaves, dappling his path. The man took in a couple lungfuls of that crisp early autumn air, and then he actually said “Ahh!” like someone in a story.

He was prepared to enjoy it. He was prepared to set his mind at ease.

He walked for maybe three minutes and then his bladder began to feel tight. At first it was just a minor thing, something he could try to ignore. Then it was heavy, like a burden. He had recently started having prostate issues, so he had to pee-pee all the time. “Wellllll…” he said out loud, “there’s no one around. I’ll just pee in the woods right quick.” So he peed in the woods right quick, then continued on his way.

But uh oh, only a minute later he discovered that some kind of bug was sucking on the back of his left knee. “Gah!” he hollered, swatting at the sucker and killing it, smearing its bug guts across his hairy skin. “Got ya!”

Then he felt bad, as if he had messed up his karma by killing the bug. Then he inevitably started to think about his own death, and that was a bummer. So he forced his mind off of it.

But then he thought about how he was forcing happiness when he was supposed to be out here taking it in earnestly, communing with Nature, getting his retiree exercise in his shorts and his white sneakers and his ball cap like a dude in an AARP magazine that mysteriously started showing up in the mailbox once you hit a certain age. Maybe a dude in a photo under an article titled, “Heart-healthy tips ‘n’ tricks!” He was not supposed to be forcing it.

The sun rose a tiny bit, and he felt too warm underneath his tucked-in polo shirt. He tried to stick to the shade. He stubbed his toe on a rock and swore. Good, no one was around. Only the trees heard.

His mind strayed to his wife in the nursing home. He forced it back.

Some joggers going in the opposite direction approached and jogged on by, without making eye contact or saying hello, even though the retired man had made eye contact and smiled. His blood boiled; he hated how people nowadays ignored you. Usually they ignored you while yelling at their dogs for pooping on the neighbor’s bushes or something like that. He thought: “This is what civilization has devolved into: a society of people who don’t acknowledge one another, but instead chastise captive animals for being animals.”

He had remembered to put on sunscreen, like some other man in a stock photo for an AARP article about skin-cancer prevention. But man, the sun was really high in the sky now, and the lotiony white gunk was mixing with his sweat. He didn’t have a mirror in his fannypack, but he was sure he probably looked like a freak. Like one of those guys in that Michael Jackson “Thriller” video, a zombie or a ghoul or something like that. It burned a little.

A minute or so later, he had to pee-pee again, so he did that one more time. He remembered when his grandson used to call it “going wee-wee.” He chuckled a little bit at that. Then he tried to remember the last time he had seen his now-teenage grandson, who was at college. He said, “This little piggy went ‘Wee, wee!’ all the way home.” Even though it didn’t really follow what he had been thinking about before.

He got to the part where you can see the brook and the little waterfall but he forgot his cell phone with the built-in camera in it, dang it. He would have to settle for remembering the scene, but dang it, it would have been a cool thing to post on Facebook. His grown daughter had told him to start posting more stuff instead of just links to reviews of books about the Navy. “I want to see stuff from your everyday life, Dad.”

He was nearing the end of his walk when he realized he hadn’t consciously enjoyed any of it because the whole time he had been worried about dumb little stuff. His bladder, his physical discomfort, nagging worries at the back or front of his mind. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – he hadn’t been freed up to think about anything altruistic or philosophical or Dalai Lama-ish like he’d planned.

And now he was tired and sweaty, and he just wanted to go inside and fix a glass of lemonade and sit at the computer and read reviews of books about the Navy, especially from when he was in it. He would try harder to enjoy Nature tomorrow, if it didn’t rain.

As he neared the front steps to his house, he thought: “This walk has been a metaphor for my entire life.” He realized that he had accomplished something by walking in the woods: a deep thought! It was hardly profound, but it would have to do, because he didn’t have much time. But at least when you’re dead you don’t have to pee.

–C. Chapmenz

Rocko-Meats

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Said the truck in front of me.

Rock-O Meats. Rock O’Meats. Rock o’ meats.

Rock-a-bye meat baby.

Letters. The lines and curves form a meaning. My brain forms a meaning.

There is no inherent meaning.

The day I realized that each person has a different perception was the day I stopped writing. Why bother, if your words are only doomed to be misunderstood?

A butcher’s attempt at branding causes me to envision a muscle-bound Irishman, maybe punching at carcasses in a meat locker somewhere, hence the nickname.

“Rock’s the name!” my imaginary pugilist gargles in a brogue. “Rock O’Meats! Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!”

Pow-pow. Ol’ Rock jabs at the sad sack of flesh that used to be a cow, and you hear the tinkle of ice crystals falling on the concrete floor.

“Pow-pow, cow.”

Rock thinks about how some words rhyme. He thinks about how poetry that rhymes is intrinsically inferior to poetry that does not, because your choice of words for the ends of each line is far more limited when it has to fit a pattern.

He thinks: “Why am I here? Among all this meat? Because somebody imagined me into it? I don’t seem to recall ever having had free will.”

I imagine him suddenly performing a balletic prance across the frozen storeroom and exclaiming in surprise, “Mercy me!”, just because I can.

Everybody is the God of somebody.

–C.L. Chapman

His Mysterious Ways

He was an arty kid from a non-arty family. He liked to write, and his family didn’t get it. “What are ya doin’ up thar?” they’d holler up the stairs while watching the football game. What he was doin’ up thar, of course, was writing.

They thought the things he wrote were weird, or morbid, or immoral. He sometimes used bad words and wrote about sex. His stories didn’t have happy endings.

His family all agreed: If they could bring just one book to a desert island, it would be the Bible. It’s the only book anyone needs.

“But the Bible has bad words and sex in it,” he would sometimes dare to point out.

“The Lord has His mysterious ways that our little pea brains will never understand,” they would reply, and they’d leave it at that.

What kept him going was the thought of all the other writers out there – not just the famous ones whose books he read over and over again, but the ones just like him who had yet to be discovered.

He would go to the Barnes & Noble in his hick town and look at the mural above the Starbucks café: Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, all those guys. He imagined himself up there, in some Barnes & Noble of the future, and a kid like him looking up. A never-ending chain.

One day when he decided he was ready, he submitted some stories to contests. He felt nervous but also excited each time he licked shut an envelope flap – finally he was reaching out to his brotherhood, his true kin. He hoped they accepted him.

They did not. He lost every contest he entered. Finally he stopped entering them.

Our little pea brains will never understand.

–C. Chapman

The Li’l Bonnet Chronicles

I write stories. They’re about sisters growing up on the prairie. The sisters wear old-timey things like bonnets and bloomers. The sisters take great pride in these items, scrubbing their bloomers up against the washboard with homemade lye soap, starching their bonnets to a fashionably firm crispness.

When the sisters aren’t tending to their pioneer accessories or engaging in child labor, they mostly just sit around reading the Bible. Sometimes they play a primitive form of Tiddlywinks, called Widdlytinks. Oh, and sometimes they learn important life lessons, like when a beloved barnyard animal or a family member dies or there’s a famine or something like that.

I call these stories – the Li’l Bonnet Chronicles.

I’ve been writing these stories for a long time now. It’s mostly a stress reliever, a form of escape. When yet another guy from one of the online-dating sites doesn’t call to ask me to go on a second date; or the temp agency sends me to another boring, low-paying gig; or my mom calls me up crying and says, “Where are my grandbabies?! I was supposed to have grandbabies by now!” – I think, “Hmm, what are the Li’l Bonnet sisters up to today?”

Depending on the day, the sisters might be catching butterflies with a big net, or having a lazy day fishing down at the creek, or braiding one another’s hair while reciting their favorite psalms. I always wished that I had a sister. Or even just a friend who’s like a sister.

When I turned 40, I decided it was time to take the Li’l Bonnet Chronicles to a writing group. Maybe they would encourage me to find a publisher, and maybe my books would be on bookstore shelves. It would be nice to have something to show for my life.

I won’t lie – turning 40 got to me. Our small-town paper ran a classifieds-type ad on the week of my birthday. It said: “Lordy lordy, look who’s 40,” and it had my baby picture in it. I was so angry and called the paper, demanding to know who had placed the ad. The editor said the paper never reveals their sources.

But the ad turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because next to it was a small blurb about this writing group. They were called ANACHRON. It was short for “anachronistic.” The ad said the group was interested in fiction that took place in “another time.” It sounded like a perfect match for my Li’l Bonnet Chronicles!

I decided to dress in theme for my first visit to the group. I went to the fabric store and bought some gingham fabric. I also bought a pattern for a Little Bo Peep costume, because it was the closest thing they had. I figured I could just leave out the sheep part.

I arrived at the downtown coffee shop festooned in ruffles and flounce, bloomers edged in eyelet lace peeking out from underneath the hem of my petticoat, my hair done in ringlets like a porcelain doll you’d order from QVC, and of course a big ol’ bonnet, starched to crisp perfection.

I even talked in theme. I talked the way I imagined the sisters would talk in the Li’l Bonnet Chronicles. It was sort of a mash-up between Scarlett O’Hara and the Beverly Hillbillies. I walked up to the writing group and spoke in my new made-up accent.

“Well, fiddle-dee-dee! I do declare! A coffee shop in the big city! City-folk everywhere! Mercy me!”

In my nervousness, I hadn’t noticed until just then that everyone else in the group was wearing black leather trenchcoats and mirrored shades. They looked like their names were probably things like Laser and Razor. They carried sleek laptops, whereas I had printed out all of the Li’l Bonnet Chronicles and bound them together scrapbook-style, with themed stickers and everything. Some of the stickers were scratch-and-sniff. They were supposed to smell like hay.

One of the dudes, the leader maybe, lowered his shades and took an exaggerated once-over looksie at me. He laughed a mean little laugh and said: “Excuse me, but I think you’ve got the wrong group.”

“Heh heh, yeah!” one of the other interchangeable dudes chimed in. “I think your sheep went that-a-way!” The group rumbled with smirky, snarky laughter.

Even though I was not supposed to include the Little Bo Peep sheep-herding staff with my costume, I brought it along anyway, because it was sort of cool, like a pimp cane. I slammed it down on the floor indignantly, to punctuate a point I was about to make. “Now now! Isn’t this group interested in stories from ‘another time’? Isn’t that what I read in the paper?”

The maybe-leader lowered his glasses again, just so I could see him roll his eyes. He let out an extended groan. It was unnecessarily long.

He said: “Look at us! We’re into cyber-punk/urban-dystopian fiction. You know, where the world is dark and smoky all the time, with people living in the sewers, and dudes in black leather jackets and mohawks strut around looking all cool, using cool future-slang, and some shadowy entity is in charge of everything and doing a bad job because they only care about themselves, and there’s a lot of impressive future-technology, and there’s some tough-talkin’ future-chick with tattoos who gives the boys a run for their money, and the rebel good guys ride around on motorcycles and save the world?”

He didn’t say “Duh” after all that, but the look on his face told me he was thinking it.

But you know what? I didn’t want to let them run me off. I had been doing that for too long, first with the popular kids who wouldn’t let me sit at their cafeteria table, then with the guys I met on dating sites who said it was “dishonest” of me to use a picture of Zooey Deschanel as my profile pic. (“But I look just like her!” I would try in vain to point out. “See? I have bangs!”)

So I said, “Yeah, that sounds just like my story! Exactly like it!”

The maybe-leader glared at me skeptically and said, “Oh yeah? What’s it called?”

I gulped. “The, um… the, uh… the, ah…” I gulped again.

“Spit it out, Bo Peeps!” said one of the interchangeable dudes who had not otherwise yet spoken, with a snide little snicker. I noticed that, next to his tiny cup of cool-dude espresso, he had also gotten a cake pop.

His snicker emboldened me somehow, and as I said the title, suddenly I hatched a plan.

“My story is called ‘The Li’l Bonnet Chronicles.’”

The dudes all busted out laughing. The maybe-leader jerked his thumb in the direction of the door, as if to say, “Gidouddahere!” all cool like the Fonz.

“Wait!” I threw my hands up as if the situation were very dramatic, as if I really were Little Bo Peep and the cool cyber dudes were about to send one of my lambs off to the slaughter. Maybe, in a sense, they were. “Hear me out!” My Little Bo Peep pimp cane had fallen to the floor in all the commotion, mostly because I had let go of it and that’s just how gravity works.

The at-this-point-probably-leader sighed, as if indulging an annoying younger sibling, and folded his arms across his chest in an “I’m not going to be easily impressed,” Simon Cowell kind of gesture. He nodded, implying that I was to proceed.

I took a deep breath and spoke. “So here’s the deal… There are these sisters. They live on the prairie. They wear bloomers and bonnets. They read the Bible and play Widdlytinks, which is a primitive form of Tiddlywinks. Sometimes they fly kites and go fishing and braid one another’s hair while reciting psalms…”

The dudes all groaned and slumped down low in their seats as if I had given them both homework and indigestion.

I went on, thus implementing my plan. “But they’re living like that because… THEY’RE THE ONLY SURVIVORS OF A NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE.”

The slumped-over dudes were silent. They were hearing me out. That one guy reached for his cake pop.

“They’re on the prairie because it’s the only place that’s not contaminated with… fallout.” I was pretty sure that after a nuclear bomb goes off, there’s fallout. I saw a TV movie about it one time. “The grid, and the uh, ‘Net have been wiped out in the blast. All of a sudden, there’s no technology, so it’s back to things like Bible verses and Widdlytinks, just to have something to do all day.”

Most of the dudes were still reverentially silent, but one of them yawned. “Ho hum,” he said. “Been done before.” He rattled off some cool-dude cyber-punk titles. I forget what.

I stammered and struggled. “But, ah… but, um… but here’s the twist: the sisters DON’T KNOW THERE WAS A NUCLEAR BOMB. It happened before they were born! So for all they know, it’s just regular ol’ prairie times, like in the Little House on the Prairie books they read, which were actually written in the modern times, of course. Their parents ripped out the copyright pages with the years on them! The sisters are quite literally lost in time.”

Another dude who hadn’t otherwise spoken asked the question that was on everyone’s minds because humans are all basically a bunch of pervs. “So, uh… are they the only survivors, or like… is there dudes for them to mate with?”

I shook my head sadly, intentionally breaking his heart just because I could. “There’s just the one family, and the dad’s not some sicko who’s going to you-know-what with his blood-kin just to keep the human race going, so basically they’re the last of humankind. When humanity leaves this planet, the last the Earth will see of us are quiet scenes – sisters fishing or flying a kite. There’s already been a bang, but that didn’t kill us all – in the end, we’ll go out with a whisper instead.”

There was silence, then one of the dudes started that slow clap you always see in movies. The others started slowly clapping, too. Then they were clapping fast and loud and hard. Some of them even stood up. The coffee-shop owner came over and told them to settle down.

The slow-clap starter hollered: “NO! WE WILL NOT SETTLE DOWN! THE HUMAN RACE IS GOING OUT IN A WHISPER, SO WE MUST MAKE ALL THE NOISE WE CAN NOW! CARPE THE DIEM!” And then he ran a few steps and busted on through the plate-glass window, leaving the shape of himself there like the Kool-Aid Man. The others did the same, only, since they were all interchangeable, they didn’t have to create new Kool-Aid Man holes in the window; they could just fit through his, easy-peasy.

I have to say, that wasn’t the reaction I was expecting to get to the Li’l Bonnet Chronicles.

The coffee-shop owner glared at me, guilty by association, as I stood there amid broken glass in my Little Bo Peep costume. He said: “You owe me a new window, missy!” I didn’t fight him on this.

I was able to work some extra shifts through the temp agency and pay him back. The cyber dudes were never heard from again. If you ask me, it wasn’t so much that my story idea was so amazing. I think they were just waiting for a reason to bust through the glass.1

Editor’s note: Christie had originally written a different ending to this piece, which I present here a) for your edification and b) because it’s just as good as the final one, if not better. “I was able to work some extra shifts through the temp agency and pay him back. The cyber dudes were never heard from again, but my guess is they are at the prairie where it’s safe.”

–Christine Todd Chapwhitman

Tim Crews and Bob Ojeda and the Bitter End

“I certainly went through the why am I here? phase. Certainly. That’s a given. I left the country for a while. I had a lot of money in my pocket and I wasn’t gonna come back.” Bob Ojeda, discussing the boating accident that killed his Cleveland Indians teammates Tim Crews and Steve Olin

Crews (LAD 1987-1992, CLE 1993) 11 W - 13 L, 3.44 ERA, 293 Ks, 15 SVs

Ojeda (BOS 1980-1985, NYM 1986-1990, LAD 1991-1992, CLE 1993, NYY 1994), 115 W - 98 L, 3.65 ERA, 1128 Ks, 41 CGs, 16 SHOs

Relief pitcher Steve Olin, who died with 48 saves and a 3.10 ERA to his name, looms large over all of this. Olin, who died in the same boat crash that also killed Tim Crews, was the one who still had something to prove: 1992, his last year, was also his best year, his breakout year. He was a Nice Guy, a Good Kid, One of the Good Ones. If he lives, does Jose “Joe Table” Mesa ever get a chance?

Crews, whose ‘89 Topps card has to be among the most iconic in the series1, was at the wheel and under the influence, so it was almost like in the eyes of the media he didn’t die at all. No, the Sports Illustrated/Sporting News/ESPN coverage, which seemed to be 24/7 at a time when nothing was, focused on deceased passenger Olin and Ojeda: Bobby O, the Mets badboy, the reluctant survivor.2

It was just supposed to be a good time, I guess. Crews, Olin, Ojeda, and Indians strength coach Fernando Montes had gathered at Crews’ lake house for some preseason bonding, which quite understandably entailed some preseason partying. With Montes remaining on shore, the three ballplayers took Crews’ 18-foot boat for a spin around Lake Nellie. During their second lap around the lake, the vehicle smashed into a neighbor’s unlighted wooden pier, killing Olin instantly, inflicting severe brain trauma on Crews, and seriously injuring Ojeda, who attributed his survival to the fact that he was slouching in his seat.

In the curious interstitial period between the cocaine “epidemic” and the steroid “epidemic”–both in quotes because such made-up benighted epochs matter only to the jock-sniffing Skip Baylesses and Jay Mariottis of the world–this was Big Freakin’ News. Death had claimed two youngish baseballers still in their near-primes for the first time in over a decade.3 Ojeda’s eventual comeback wasn’t really a comeback but was still covered like the Big Freakin’ News it was; he pitched a couple more innings for the Indians in '93, even fewer for the Yankees in '94, then retired and left the country for a while.

The 1993 season was one of the best in MLB history, and not just because parity (and the Phillies/Blue Jays) reigned: the game, it seemed, was perfectly balanced between pitchers and hitters for this one spectacular year. It was an ideal campaign to enshrine in EA Sports’ MLBPA Baseball, a game I never tired of playing and thus will never tire of referencing. But the Olin story, which was also the Crews story yet never quite as much, followed Ojeda and the Indians throughout the year. It had to–Ojeda’s mound catharsis was “needed,” if only to complete the Big Freakin’ News Cycle–but it obscured the fact that the Indians were themselves about to become the Next Big Freakin’ Thing. The pieces were there: Paul Sorrento, Kenny Lofton, Carlos Baerga, Joey Belle, Sandy Alomar, Manny Being Manny, Candy Maldonado, Reggie Jefferson. Well, not so much those last two, but the others, yes, you betcha. Yet '93 for them wasn’t about the still-missing pieces–slick-fielding Omar Vizquel would come over from Seattle next year, in a trade for Felix Fermin–as it was about the forever-gone pieces.

1993 was also when I started noticing death, like really noticing.4 Both of my grandfathers would pass a year later. Celebrities I recognized and appreciated were starting to drop like flies: Bill Bixby, Vincent Price, Audrey Hepburn, André the Giant (we hardly knew ye). But Olin and Crews went before their time! They had so much left! There but for the grace of G-d go I! &c. Now 32, I’m older than both of these men were when they shuffled off this mortal coil. They had 27 major league wins and 63 major league saves between. What do I have, pray tell? Well, Oscar Berkman’s harshest critic, I have my health. Glass half full, people, glass half full.5

It’s just this huge close-up of his big welcoming face and perfect moustache, framed by the Dodger blue that’s so synonymous with the era (Orel’s streak, Lasorda’s weight loss endorsements, Kirk Gibson’s Eckersley-felling home run).
Crews’ brother Jim Crews hated how his brother was portrayed as the villain, the enabler: “Just believing a rich ball player out there not paying attention to what he was doing was over the – drunk, just to use the word, which really infuriated me when I rea d it.” (http://espn.go.com/page2/tvlistings/show155_transcript.htm) Ojeda, for his part, also didn’t blame Crews: “I know Crewser. I know he could have done brain surgery, if he was a brain surgeon. Certainly we’re not choir boys…everybody does things, then something bad happens, and we all look for reasons–why did that happen?” (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/26/sports/baseball-ojeda-discusses-the-crash.html)
Yankees catcher Thurman Munson, arguably a Hall of Famer with a .292/.346/.410 slash line, 1500 hits, and an MVP award to his credit, had died in 1979 while attempting to land his Cessna Citation at the Akron-Canton Airport.
Actually, the first death I really, really remember was Mel Blanc in '89, but I was obsessed with Bugs Bunny during that period, especially those episodes when he dressed in drag and seduced his would-be captors.
Or, as G.K. Chesterton put it in his gnomic little essay about Sir Walter Scott: “The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.” What this has to do with Walter Scott I’m still trying to determine, but yeah, cogitate on that, brohams.

Ed Hearn or Jim Lindeman or Nobody

“But where lies the truth of the body?” Jean Baudrillard, “Clone Story”

Hearn (NYM 1986, KCR 1987-1988), .263/.324/.386, 45 H, 4 HR

Lindeman (STL 1986-1989, DET 1990, PHI 1991-1992, HOU 1993, NYM 1994), .244/.289/.391, 165 H, 21 HR

You can be Ed Hearn or Jim Lindeman or nobody.

If you’re Ed Hearn, you get to be on the 1986 World Series champion Mets but you also nearly die of focal segmental golmerulosclerosis (try saying that two times fast). You get to appear in the shitty/classic “Let’s Go Mets” music video, cut during that era when everyone from Vince McMahon to the Monsters of the Midway was cutting shitty/classic music videos, but you also have to undergo two kidney transplants and wear a breathing mask when you go to bed at night. You get to tell your story on the motivational speaking circuit1, but is it a story you want to tell? You’re Ed Hearn: catcher, fourth-round draft pick, yet another one of the thousands of jockstrap monuments to what could have been.

And if you’re Jim Lindeman, you have the honor of being the second best baseball player in Bradley University history after Kirby Puckett, but second best is only one notch above Bryan Rekar or Mike Grace or Bill Tuttle and who the heck are they?2 You’re a first round pick of arguably the best-run franchise of the 1980s, a potential big bat to complement the likes of Jack “The Ripper” Clark, but your only decent season in the big leagues is your second, in ‘87: 8 homers spread across 207 at-bats, plus a World Series appearance against your old Bradley Braves teammate Puckett. You’re always a possible star, like the way Travis Snider or Delmon Young are today, but you’re never an actual one. You’re Jim Lindeman: a family man, a teacher, a coach…and isn’t that enough?

Or maybe you’re nobody, nobody at all, a kid who collected 1989 Topps baseball cards the way your ever-changing classmates collected friends, family, and happiness. You always wanted your parents to love each other and to spend time with you, but they didn’t and what you were left with is these cards. You won five field days in a row, second grade through sixth grade, but your mother won’t even let you outside to play because she’s embarrassed by how awful things are at home. You’re nobody, and it’s not a tragedy because that would imply anybody ever noticed you in the first place.

Who are you?

And ranked among the “top 8% in the world,” apparently.
Well Rekar we know; he was in MLBPA Baseball for the SNES (http://gamesdbase.com/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_SNES//Manual/formated/MLBPA_Baseball_-_1994_-_Electronic_Arts.pdf).

–Oedipus Bandicoot

The Day Ol’ Boozy Boots Became a Rockette

Ol’ Boozy Boots was a hobo who rode the rails, and when he retired from doing that, he started livin’ in the streets near Radio City Music Hall. You know! The one in New York City.

One day the people who ran the Rockettes were having tryouts. Hopeful gals from all across the USA and even from afar had come to town. It was like in “A League of Their Own” when all the chicks were trying out for baseball teams, except this wasn’t baseball, it was the Rockettes like I already told you.

Back in those days, it was many young girls’ dream to be a Rockette. Flashin’ those gams in sync with a row of similar-lookin’ gals flashin’ their gams – “That’s the life for me!” thought many a young farm girl.

Ol’ Boozy Boots never dreamed of becoming a Rockette. Not even when he was sober. (“Just call me Ol’ Boots today!” he joked that one time he wasn’t drunk.) But when you’re drunk, many things happen to you that you never dreamed about.

And so that’s how Ol’ Boozy Boots found himself wandering into the Radio City Music Hall auditorium through a left-open side door on the day of the big tryouts.

The girls were rehearsing, practicing kicking their gams in unison with a row of similar-looking girls, which requires a nigh-Zen-like level of ego sublimation, a nearly monastic squelching of the soul’s cry “I’m a special snowflake!”– a denial of the very quality that had impelled all of them farm gals to leave their farm lives and make a go of it in the Big City.

The pianist was practicing tunes from his rather predictable repertoire, and singing along in his “Don’t quit your day job” voice – “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere!” he squawked.

Back in those days, security wasn’t like it is now, plus everyone was very focused on his or her kicking or squawking. So Ol’ Boozy Boots, who also had a habit of going around with his bootlaces untied, just stumbled right on up the wooden stair ramp leading up to the stage.

In his blurry vision, he saw the line of gals flashing their gams in unison, and he thought: “Hey, I can do that! Looks like fun!” In his wrong and drunken mind, he was as graceful as a gazelle, as dainty as a porcelain teacup, the kind with roses on it that your grandma would put in her “china cabinet.”

Ol’ Boozy Boots stood next to the girl at one end of the row – oh yeah, I just remembered it’s called a chorus line – and he started kickin’ away. He thought: “Hoo boy! If the ol’ boys on the rails, my hobo pals, could see me now – they’d say, ‘Why, Ol’ Boozy Boots has made it! He’s hit the big-time!’”

For seventeen seconds, Ol’ Boozy Boots was a Rockette. He was so happy that he began kicking with ever more gusto.

But remember how I told you he had a bad habit of not tying his boots? Well, one of Ol’ Boozy’s kicks was so spirited that it sent his untied boot flying into the rafters. It bounced off the ceiling, and don’t ask me how, but then it boomeranged into this very nice chandelier that hung over the orchestra pit. The chandelier shattered into a million diamond shards.

The pianist grew alarmed and banged on his piano like this: BONG! DANG DONG! BOOM DANG PLING PLONG! I don’t know why he didn’t remove his hands from the piano. He just didn’t.

The girls all screamed and ran backstage. And there on the stage, standing all alone in one exposed and incriminating dirty sock, was Ol’ Boozy. He shrugged and guffawed and said, “I guess you can just call me Ol’ Boozy Boot now!”, using the singular version of the noun in his name. He kicked off his other boot in a much less dramatic manner, then he did a sort of soft-shoe shuffle off the stage.

“It’s up to you, New York, New York!”

–Champ Mania

The Hooker with a Heart of Gold

I opened up this place called The Hooker with a Heart of Gold. It was a little shack somewhat near a lake. My shed was almost hidden by overgrown reeds – to come into my shop, you had to part them like when you go through a beaded curtain. The effect was very dramatic.

It was a fishing shop – bait ‘n’ such – and one of my services was that I would put a worm on a hook for you. There’s a knack to it, believe it or not. I hook ‘em right between where I imagine their eyes would be. I prefer not to think about them actually having eyes, because if I were to look down and see a tiny pair of worm eyes pleading with me, maybe even crying little worm-tears, I probably couldn’t be a hooker.

So it’s a joke, the name. I figured that would be obvious, since this area is known for being a fishing locale. Like when you go to the beach and there’s some place called the Salty Dog – you don’t go in expecting to literally find a dog that’s salty, then get all pissed and demand reparations when you’re wrong.

As usual, I underestimated the stupidity of humankind.

First came the earnest seekers. I put an ad in the back of the local phone book (remember those?!). I had to pay per line, so I only put the name, the address, and the phone number. These men would come, these alert-looking bumpkin loners. I felt sorry for them; they were so apprehensive, like at any moment someone was going to say “Gotcha!” and pop out with a TV-camera crew.

They came to my shed hoping to find, I don’t know, the perfect female specimen, although my ad wasn’t gender-specific, and in fact, some of the men might have been hoping to find a male hooker there, what do I know? A soul who was good in the sack but would listen for hours about how your mama never really loved you. They came to find the impossible, or the improbable. Or at least the marketing-savvy.

“Can I help you?” I would say, standing behind my wooden counter, reading “the funnies.”
The men would wrinkle up their faces in bewilderment. “Is this… [address of my store]?”
“You’ve come to the right place!”
“Are you…?” Incredulity now, reddening to anger.
“The manager? You got it, buddy! What’ll it be? Feather lures, worms? We’ve got cold beer, too. Have you come for my famous hooking services?”
“This is… a fishing store?”
“The best in all the land!”
(Mumblings about false advertising, fraudulent claims, “bullshit,” etc., all the way out the door. One time: “I ought to kick your punk ass.” I bought a gun after that one.)

Once in a while one of them would play it off, pretend he’d known it all along, maybe buy a case of beer and some random feather lure. One poor schmuck even tried to fake some fisher talk. “They bitin’ much out there today?”

I decided to have some fun with it. I had T-shirts and trucker caps made up. Somehow the hipsters found out (they have their ways, their little ‘zines and their Lonely Planets). They started coming to my store, not to have their worms hooked but to take selfies of themselves in the hats. Sometimes they’d even buy one.

But neither demographic bought enough stuff to make it worth my while to stay out there. It’s not like I was in a high-rent area out there in the reeds, but I have a house and a car and bills and grandkids in the will whom I don’t want to disappoint when I die.

I’d had hopes of my business thriving, of its becoming a beloved local establishment and not just a novelty one. It was a nice dream, but impossible to attain. Like a you-know-what.

–The Shinnin’