Dateline: July 26, 1997
Location: Fenway Park, Boston, MA
Ah, the Red Sox beat us again. Thankfully it's an early game and players shower and leave the Clubhouse pretty quickly. It's a Saturday night in Boston you see, a chance to get out, forget about the loss and live it up a bit. I love these days because players who might normally come in our training room for a post-game treatment aren't really inclined to do so tonight. Everybody making arrangements. I figured I'd just go back to my hotel room and relax my aching body. The Visiting Clubhouse staff in Boston is awesome and always prepare a great post-game spread for us. As I'm cleaning up the Training Room, I can smell that food and can't wait to get at it. Protocol in the Big Leagues is players eat first unless someone who gave it up or took an O-fer upends the spread table first. Staff always eats last, and yes I have been fined many times for jumping the gun. I have heard the nickname "spread killer" more than once in my career. Ha!
As we're leaving Fenway, one of our players (yes, you have to wait for the book on this one) yells to me "Hey Frenchy, what are you doing tonight?" I shrugged my shoulders thinking how nice a night with SpectraVision would be. "Nothing buddy, what's up?" I answer. "Dinner.......tonight.......10:00.......lobby." "Cool, thanks" I reply. (Sponsorship! I love it!) I grin as I know dinner tonight for 4 of us will run upwards of $2,000 - these guys are so good to me.
Getting out of the shower in my hotel room (sorry for the visual) and trying to decide what to wear, we still have to travel to Cleveland for 3 games and I don't want to run out of clean shirts on this trip. Five-star hotel dry cleaning is a bitch. My mind wanders, knowing I'll be drinking tonight, if I should forego the pain meds for tonight. Yes, as you can imagine, 162 game season can be tough on the body and it's only July. No one could even fathom the muscle therapist breaking down. "No pressure, Bill" I say to myself. My thoughts of chemistry are interrupted by a knock on the door. "No way I could be late" I thought. In MLB, if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late. And I have never been late. "Housekeeping" I thought, "a mint on my pillow? a player stopping by for a pre-dinner drink?" As I walk towards the door a female voice in the hallway says "Frenchy, are you there?" A bit shocked I stammer "yeaaah" as I peer through the keyhole. I'm staring face to face with a very attractive 6 foot blonde woman. "What could she want?" I thought. I open the door and she says "Hi Frenchy, I'm Sandy". I must have been frozen in time and given her a bit of the "deer in the headlights" look. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" she asks. "Sure" I say. She is well enhanced, wearing a skin tight black velour jumpsuit. She walks in and sits on my bed. Now at this point, I'm thinking to myself "What if this woman should have a sudden stroke or heart attack, in MY room??" Chance are it won't happen I reason but how could I possibly explain her presence in my hotel room? My mind is sharp and cloudy all at once. "How can I help you?" I ridiculously ask. "Some of your friends thought you might like some company" she coyly responded. Now please understand, I'm a 39 year old family man.
Oh no, there they are again. Those two little bastards sitting on my shoulders who talk to me. You know the ones, that grinning little bastard with the pitchfork on my left shoulder and the smiling one with the angel wings sitting on my right shoulder. Sandy, sitting on my bed, motions for me to sit next to her and makes some idle chat but I can't hear her because the voices in my head are getting louder and louder. Now please understand, Sandy is well equipped and has a crazy rockin' body. The little bastard with the pitchfork tells me how wild this would be and that no one would ever know. "Do her, do her NOW" he yells at me. At this moment, I hear from the figure on my other shoulder "you're a good family man Bill, are you willing to blow up your life for 30 minutes of pleasure....? Maybe 20 minutes?" he asks and I finally think to myself, "OK, realistically only 8 minutes"? Thoughts of my beautiful wife in an apron making me an apple pie, waiting for her man to get home from his roadtrip confuse me. I can see my 8 year old son doing his homework, counting down the days till his daddy comes home. These voices in my head are screaming at me while I still worry about Sandy keeling over off the bed.
It finally occurs to me, Sandy came to me compliments of some of my team mates. Some who truly want me to enjoy myself but others wanting to see if I like women. The bickering in my cerebellum is halted immediately when I come up with a plan. "Here's the deal Sandy" my voice creaking, "I'm going to give you $100 to sit and watch Sports Center with me for 1 hour, then you're going to leave here and tell everyone in the lobby downstairs what a great time you had with me and what a wild man I was" She stared at me quizzically, not knowing if I was serious or not. "Well, ok" she said confused, "can I hit your mini-bar?". "Absolutely" I said "have a Tobelorone too". It was one of the longest hours of my life, watching her breathing patterns, making sure there would be no need for EMS in my hotel room. After the hour,she hugged me and left saying what a good guy I was, "for some reason, I only meet creeps" she said.
I nervously went down to the lobby to meet my teammates, I smirked at them all with the look of the caveman they all hoped that I was. I told tales of madness and debauchery during dinner. "This is fun" I thought to myself.
I implore you....could I possibly have been the George Costanza of MLB?
When checking out of our hotel, paying my incidentals, I realized she had drank $86.70 of booze from my mini-bar. I stuffed the hotel bill in my suit pocket and just laughed to myself.
I JUST PAID $186.70 TO NOT GET LAID.
