A week from tomorrow, out where the buffalo roam and seldom is heard a discouraging word, the Arizona Diamondbacks' pitchers and catchers report for the opening of Spring Training 2012. Huzzah and Alleluia.
As you must know, I am a Yankees fan-always have been and always will be. But more than that I love the game of baseball (and accept the business which is often off putting) so, by necessity, I respect everyone who plays the game at the professional level no matter how much of a horse's behind they are at any point on or off the field. Even (former) Red Sox players. But sometimes only just barely....
I came across this in our local newspaper, but it's an AP story, "Former Red Sox Pitcher Boyd Says He Used Cocaine." I'm reaching a point here in my advancing antiquity here on this orb that sometimes crap is just crap and this story and the self-pitying whine of a never-was just get my knickers in a knot. Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd had a ten year career as a major-league pitcher where, by his own recollection, he pitched while on cocaine in every baseball stadium in the major leagues, was threatened with rehab (seemingly by one or more of his own teammates) but never went, and was up until four or five in the morning on game days snorting everything but the white median line on the Mass Turnpike, finishing with 78-77 won/lost record and 4.04 earned run average.
By his own calculations, "... if I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames." But he didn't and so he didn't. Instead of looking in the mirror and better seeing the architect for the premature demise of his career, Oil Can sees a victim of, as he puts it, "bigotry" adding in a masterful glimpse of the obvious "... the game carries a lot of bigotry."
I know the feeling. If my mother had married a Kennedy I'd be living in the White House, but she didn't so I'm not. And that's why I have mommy issues. Please, Dennis, if you can't shut up would you please grow up? My favorite piece of the interview is: "If I wasn't outspoken and so-called 'a proud, proud black man' maybe I would have got empathy and sympathy like other ballplayers got that I didn't get; like a Darryl Strawberry or Dwight Gooden, Steve Howe...."
Steve Howe was called many things in his career, but I suspect 'proud, black man' wasn't among them. Yep, one of these things is NOT like the other. Dennis, thanks for reminding all of us that it's never too late to play the race card, no matter how ineptly or inappropriately. You might want to add a chapter in your forthcoming book, "They Call Me Oil Can" on the significance of the difference between colorblind and snowblind. Right after you learn it.
-bill kenny
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