Urban Legends: Killing time
Big-league bullpens are fertile ground for frivolity
MLB.com |
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Travel tip: If you happen to find yourself seated next to a big-league relief pitcher on a cross-country flight, request to be moved. Immediately. Even if it means sitting in a middle seat between that house of a man from Blues Traveler -- pre-stomach-staples -- and crying two-year-old triplets.
Why? Because you have just entered the Time-Killing Zone, and unless you are a fellow reliever, the next five or six hours will be as unsettling as finding yourself glued to the tube watching "Celebrity Boxing." It's entertaining for a while, but then it just starts getting sloppy.
Kind of like a Van Halen concert back when the boys were still boozing. Or most Devil Rays games.
The boys of big-league bullpens, you see, can while away the hours like nobody else in the world, and rarely is it pretty for those in the vicinity. Flying spit, shoe fires and anatomically targeted commentary are not uncommon.
"We've really got it down to a science," says Rich Rodriguez, a well-traveled lefty now with the Rangers. "I've been in the bullpen all my career. This is what I do for a living."
Rodriguez is not talking about backdoor sliders or filthy fastballs here. He's talking about getting something out of nothing, which is basically what relief pitchers do for the first several innings of every ballgame, 162 times a year. They take a large chunk of downtime and turn it into often-uproarious fun.
"You pay attention to the game, but relievers aren't really into it until about the fifth inning," says Seattle's Jeff Nelson. "That's the magical number because the starters are usually getting close to their pitch-count limits."
Let's give the starters six innings. Then let's take into account the average length of a game these days, assuming it's neither a Maddux-vs.-Schilling quickie or the five-hour affair that's become every game in Arlington. That gives the relief pitchers about 2 1/2 hours to kill. And killing of any kind is a nasty business.
Just ask Norm Charlton, one of the original Nasty Boys. You remember them, right? They were the sick puppies who populated Cincinnati's 'pen way back when George Hamilton was relevant.
How sick? Well, here's Norm on one of his favorite exchanges with one of the paying customers:
"Probably the funniest thing that happened was this guy was ragging all over me in San Diego," Charlton recalls. "I was ragging back with him and he was good. ... He had some intelligence and knew about my stats.
"We were going back and forth and the fans sitting in that area were really getting into it. He'd say something and they'd clap. I'd say something and they'd clap for me. But I got the best of him. He was eating a hot dog and had about a bite left and he fired at me. It landed at my feet, I picked it up and ate it.
"He just shook his head and walked away."
A lot of bullpens put the players within earshot of the crowd, and like the bold soul who took on Charlton, some of them like to get a few words in.
"Sometimes you got some good raggers and sometimes you don't, but we always get the last word," Rodriguez says. "We've been doing this all of our lives. Some guy comes to a game two, three, four times a year and tries to rag on somebody; he doesn't know what he's in for."
Nor does his girlfriend or wife.
"It's tough when they bring their date with them. That's no good. And they decide to pop off. Then we have to get the poor girl involved. That's when he usually shuts up."
Better to shut up than throw up. Here's another beauty from Charlton:
"In San Diego the second deck hangs over the bullpen and we looked up and were waving at this kid," he says. "The next thing you know, it felt like someone poured a soda on us. We looked at it and it was dark brown. We looked up and the kid was eating chocolate ice cream and drinking a coke ... he choked on an ice cube and threw up. It went all over us. It was in the fifth inning, so we had to call down for someone to bring us fresh uniform jerseys."
You just never know what might happen down there in the 'pen, but pretty much anything goes. Usually the manager can't see you, so you do what you want. Just don't do it way out in the open.
Doug Jones is out of the game after 148 seasons in the Majors, and he hasn't been in the minor leagues since we were all denying we owned a Bay City Rollers album. But he can think of at least one area in which the bush leagues beat the bigs.
"Up here, they've got a camera on everybody all the time," Jones says. "If you put your finger in your nose, you are bound to be on TV."
But if you put your finger in somebody else's nose, you're a hero to guys like Charlton. That's life in the 'pen.
Mychael Urban covers the Oakland A's for MLB.com and can be reached atmurban@oaklandathletics.com. Jim Street of MLB.com contributed to this column, which was not subject to approval by Major League Baseball or its clubs.
No comments:
Post a Comment