Why pound the Budweiser, you might ask. Why not, I would reply. Where do the question marks go in these frickin' sentences, I ask. How the hell should I know, you reply.When I was about 12 I read a book. It was a book about baseball. My favorite book up til that time was the immortal Catcher with a Glass Arm. The catcher of the title did not have a prosthetic arm made of glass; he had a weak throwing arm. The mean kids back in the day teased him by yelling insults like this at him.
"You have a glass arm!"
Kids can be cruel. Let's hope that today they can be a whole lot crueler. Life is tough. You can get busy dying or you can busy learning how to trash talk. Now go get busy!
The book I read when I was about 12 was called Ball Four and was written by an old Yankee named Jim Bouton while he was playing for the Seattle Pilots. It was good. Real good. It was about baseball but it was also about what ball players do when they're not playing with a ball. What I still remember and what impressed me the most back then are the following:
- Manager Joe Schultz had two favorite words that he used interchangeably, fuckshit and shitfuck. Schultzy also encouraged his players to "pound the Budweiser." I wanted a manager like that. My coach encouraged me to "keep my eye on the ball."
- When they weren't playing baseball, ballplayers spent a lot time beaver shooting, even the legendary Micky Mantle. This was my first exposure to a beaver that didn't have buck teeth and a tail. A few years later I was reaquainted with "wide open beavers," in another favorite book, Breakfast of Champions. Thinking back on it, couldn't Mickey Mantle have pounded his Budweiser into just about any beaver he met? He was Mickey Mantle and it was the 60's with those stewardesses in their hot, little costumes. Why was the Mick wasting his time shooting beavers?
- When baseball players were at a bar enjoying a cocktail and they saw an especially ugly woman, they used to say, "she looks like Joe Torre with tits." The vision of a naked Joe Torre with breasts haunted me for years. Now hopefully, you will be haunted too.
