Archive for December, 2010

“The Saugus 500″………part two

Posted: December 31, 2010 in 1990, Games, Hank
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Now we had a game to play.  Our Team that day was divided into several teams.  Throughout the game all the guys who had driven in the same car to the game kind of hung around each other.  And they kept trying to prove their case as to why they won the race.  Newhall-Saugus had a good team, they ultimately won their Division and reached the playoffs.  They threw their big-gun at us Eric Hiljus.  He was a fourth-round draft pick in 1991 and did pitch for four seasons in the Major Leagues.  He was a big, tall, hard-throwing right-hander.  We lit him up.  He was gone by the fourth inning and we almost mercied them on the ten-run-rule. 

I was thinking I would be a really smart guy and bring a video camera to the game.  You know, use it to show our pitchers some stuff.  After the game I had decided I wasn’t such a smart guy and had pretty much decided “no more cameras” at the games.  

Why?  Well…..let me tell you a little story about Hank.  Hank had a great day at the plate that day.  He was doing so well that when he came up in about the sixth inning he decided to start “mugging” at the camera that we had behind home plate.  Smiling, making different facial expressions.  He even did the thing where he smells his armpits and reacts to the smell.  I didn’t see any of this shit going on.  And because he was so busy posing for the camera crew,  Old Hank didn’t see (or hear) the squeeze sign I gave.  Whoever was on third base came charging down towards home plate and Hank either took a big rip at it or he took the pitch I can’t remember.  Our baserunner was caught in a rundown and did not score or return safely to third.  I think the baserunner was Weapon……

After the rundown, the cameraman had the camera RIGHT ON HANK.  All of a sudden Hank was no longer in the mood to make faces and smell his armpits for the “viewing audience.”   He never looked at the camera the rest of the game.  As I am writing this I am laughing out loud!!!  We all know what a great competitor Hank is, and let me tell you, I tried to act pissed about it when I saw the tape…….but I couldn’t stay pissed.  It may be the funniest video footage I have ever seen.  He didn’t tell us at the game that he missed the squeeze sign because he was mugging for the camera….all of that came out when we went home and watched the tape after the game.  I remember he was at “The Dome” watching the footage.  I tried to act pissed, but when he left I couldn’t stop laughing!!!!!   It was priceless!!

I would like to challenge any of the readers out there who think THEY WON “The Saugus 500” to please leave a comment as to just WHY (or how) you won.  General and I like to think we won it.  Everyone is giving General a hard time about driving up on the sidewalk, but the bottom line is we were the first ones in that parking lot and we were the first ones to cross that line in the dirt.   Everyone was trying to say “General cheated” and all of this other BS.  You know what I say?  I say General did what he had to do to win….VERDUGO STYLE.  So let that be a lesson to you boys who sat at the red light and waited for something to happen while General simply MADE IT HAPPEN.  I am especially looking forward to hearing what Hank has to say.  Not just about the race, but whether or not he took a rip at that pitch or took it when the squeeze sign was on…because I can’t remember, and I can’t find that tape.  But know this, if I do find that tape, I will be putting that footage on this blog!!!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh Verdugo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“The Saugus 500″…part one

Posted: December 26, 2010 in 1990, Behind the Scenes, Frost, Games, General, No Way!
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Out in the City of Saugus, California there is a racetrack.  I think they call it the “Saugus Speedway.”  While we were scheduled to play a baseball game in Saugus that day, the game  we played became a mere footnote to a much more monumental event.  An unplanned event of epic proportions.   An event where there was much more at stake than the outcome of a baseball game.  An event where winning was all that mattered.  An event where everyone DECLARED themselves the be the winner, yet no winner was ever officially DECLARED.  An event that to this day (20 years later) is still surrounded by a cloud of controversy.  An event we appropriately named “The Saugus 500.”

It was 1990, our first season, and we were playing a game that hot summer day against a team called Newhall-Saugus.  We had a ritual before every road game.  All of the players and coaches would meet at the same local park in our neighborhood and I would pass out hand-written directions to all of those who were driving.  That day we had about six cars loaded with players and coaches.  One of the kids named “Frost” showed up driving in his step-dad’s Maserati.  He said, “Don’t worry about the directions everybody,  just follow me.”  Like an idiot…I said “okay.”  He then grabbed ALL of the directions I had written out, stuck them in his pocket, hopped in his car and ripped out of the parking lot, leaving us all behind.   

Thanks to Frost, we now had NO directions to the field and he was about a quarter mile down the road.  Going about 60 in a 35.  “Shit!” I said……”Get in your cars and follow his ass!”

People were diving into their cars.  Scrambling!  All I know is that if we lost him, we didn’t know where the hell the field was.  We were a little late as it was, so we all had no choice but to put the pedal to the metal and catch Frost.  Shit I was pissed.  We left a trail of rubber when we left the parking lot.  General was driving.  A couple of the other cars got a little sideways leaving the parking lot.  We ripped to the freeway and we could barely see a speeding car off in the distance that looked like a dot.  I pointed, squinted my eyes and said to General………….”Frost!!!………..get him!!!!”

General did a brilliant job of closing the gap on Frost and all of the other cars were right behind us.  I realized about five miles down the freeway that this was turning into a frickin’ race!!  Everybody was going about 100 mph.  One car would pull up alongside another…the guys in that car would flip-off the guys in the other car.  People were rolling down their windows and yelling shit at each other, making faces and shit.  One of the guys in one car threw something at one of the other cars.  He missed.  Now everybody was laughing.  I hate going fast!!!…..but everybody was determined to win the race.  It was insane!  I asked myself  “What am I doing here?”

Frost knew it was a race now but had a little advantage…he knew where the field was, and he was driving a Maserati.  He signaled to get off at a couple of off-ramps….we got behind him and signaled to get off as well.  Then at the last second he ripped back onto the freeway.  He ‘s toying with us!!  “Fucker!”………I yelled….. “Catch him General!”  Then all of a sudden General says “I think I know where we are…..the field is gonna be on the next off-ramp.”

We had actually pulled ahead of him, then Frost made a crazy move to take the lead as we got off the freeway but he screwed up and got in the wrong lane.  Some of the cars had followed Frost, and some had followed General.  Now we had six cars all stuck at a RED LIGHT….guys flipping each other off….revving their motors.  The chess game began.  Everybody was boxed in.  Frost was ahead of us, but he was in the left lane and pinned in.   We were in the right lane.  Somebody had to make a move.  We had JUST enough room to make something happen.  I said “Do it Gen”………..laughing all the way General drove right up the curb and onto the sidewalk,  just missing a bus bench by less than a foot and a light pole by the same margin.  We had made a clean right turn and escaped the traffic-jam!  We rolled down our windows and started waving goodbye to all the losers that were stuck at that red light!  We saw their faces…they were pissed!  

One of the players in our car yelled “There it is!”   The field was in sight.  General gunned it and we were the first to enter the parking lot.  Then we looked behind….”Oh Shit…it’s Frost!…here he comes!”  And he was bringing it in that Maserati.  And the cars behind Frost were right on him.  Bad news.  The parking lot was totally DIRT!!!  Every car came flying into that parking lot!!  Dust was flying  everywhere….cars were driving in circles , doing brodies.  It looked like a mushroom cloud.  General brought it to a stop.  I got out and quickly drew a line in the dirt behind us.  All of the cars came to skidding halts.  Half a mile away it probably looked like a fire had started.   

“We won!” I yelled.

“Bullshit” said the guys from one of the other cars.

I pointed to the line I had drawn in the dirt.  Smiling, I said “we crossed the finish line!….we win!!!”

“Bullshit!!” another group of guys said..”we saw you draw that line!”

“Bullshit that line was already there”………I said.

“No way!!!” said some of the guys from another car.

Everybody was yelling at each other at this point.   I yelled “Allright quit fucking around we got a game to play….and me and The General won!  And Frost what the hell are you thinking!?!?!?”

We all started getting our gear out of the cars.  Everybody was silent for about a minute.  Then as we’re all walking towards the field Hank pipes up “That’s bullshit driving up the sidewalk General!”

Now everybody started arguing again.  Everybody was saying that they won now.  We didn’t know how to get onto the field.  Gates were locked.  It was starting to get a little heated.  Each driver of each car was telling everybody else why THEY had won the race.  Hank started saying “we’ve done it….we’ve won the Saugus 500!”  We all got ready to hop the left field fence to get onto the field.  This was no chain link fence. It was solid wood, we couldn’t see what was on the other side. Guys were throwing their bags and equipment over the fence.  We all scaled it pretty fast.  By the time we got over the fence and onto the field there was just one problem:  Our opponents were all sitting in left field with their coaches going through stretching exercises.  Half the shit we had thrown over the fence almost hit one of their players or coaches.

We didn’t care.  We just kept on arguing about who had won “The Saugus 500.”   We didn’t even acknowledge their presence.  We just grabbed our stuff off the ground and walked right through their stretching-session and continued over to our dugout arguing all the way. While I kind of wondered what the boys from Newhall-Saugus were thinking at this point…..the beauty of it was I DIDN’T CARE.

……….to be continued

Father’s Day with Ron Cey

Posted: December 23, 2010 in Behind the Scenes, No Way!, Rags/Trash Talk
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by Gee

1992 was the season we broke through.  We had certainly “served notice” to the rest of the league in ’90 and ’91, but ’92 was the year.  We just flat out pounded the shit out of the ball.  This was a big game for us.  Going in we were charging hard and carving out our name around the league as the new bully in the block.  Here we were on Father’s Day playing against a team that had won the Legion World Series three years earlier.  And I must admit we all took personal pleasure in ruining Ron Cey’s Father’s Day.  Kind of has a nice ring to it, huh?

We were at the field early, guys were getting ready to go through their pre-game “flip” ritual.  The other team arrived and upon their arrival Ron Cey kind of took it upon himself to hop right down onto our field and start distracting my players.  Cey’s son was playing for the other team that day.  We all knew who he was.  But I’m thinking “what’s this guy doing?”  Isn’t he getting enough attention on those 1-800-THE-LAW-2 commercials?  I’m thinking “whatever dude.”  But we DO have a rule at Verdugo.  It’s called “get out of my dugout,”  and Ron Cey is no exception.  And he handed it to me on a silver platter.  I broke the silence by saying “Hey look everybody Steve Garvey’s here!”

Yeah, he didn’t like that.  I knew I had taken the upper hand when he corrected me and told me who he really was.  As if we didn’t know.   I wanted to abruptly tell him to “get outta my dugout” but decided to use a little finesse on this one.  Have a little fun with it.  He started out by telling us about how he had hit home runs against Nolan Ryan.  He said they had “figured out” Ryan.  He said they always knew when Ryan was going to throw a curveball because every time he threw it he would “look down” at the ground when starting his windup.  Sounded like Rocket Science to me.  So I asked him “and I suppose you had all of this inside information on Ryan the time he threw the no-hitter against you boys on Monday Night Baseball?”

Yeah he didn’t like that comment either.  Our guys were no longer in awe of him.  So I continued to interview him about “the big contracts”…and the “bad attitudes of the (then) modern-day players”…and other questions.  I really wasn’t interested in his answers, I was more interested in cutting him off in the middle of his long-winded pontifications and firing another question at him that would always finish with the words “what do you think of that?”

His frustration was growing.  He probably hadn’t been treated that way since being in the Minor Leagues.  I don’t know what the final question was that I asked him (that ended in “what do you think of that?”) but the last answer he gave to me was “I think you’re full of shit!” and he walked away……pissed!  Mission accomplished!  He had officially “gotten out of my dugout” and our players were laughing about it.  Ron Cey and his son were the least of our worries.  We went out on the field and punished them 8-3.  The score was not really indicative of the beating they took.  BullOxen threw a gem even though he was stung by a bee while on the mound.

The other team was grumbling that the playing field was not really level that day because they all had been at the prom last night.  Funny, I was thinking.  You poor babies did a little partying last night?  Well, you just ran up against a team that parties EVERY night…so quit crying about it.   Hell, our guys probably spilled more alcohol last night than you wimps drank.  Once again I was thinking “whatever dude.”

Cey’s kid had an 0-fer (three?) at the plate.  In the fifth or sixth inning we hit another bullet up the middle that Cey tried to dive at.  The ball went through (again) and Cey didn’t get up.  He just lied there on the field face down.  They stopped the game.  Onto the field (again) jumps Ron Cey himself to go check on his kid and make sure he’s okay.  It didn’t take long for a few of our players to yell out “CALL 1-800-THE-LAW-2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I had a hard time keeping a straight face on that one, but I did.  And Cey and his kid didn’t stick around for the outcome of the game.  They went home early.  They probably had some things planned for Father’s Day.  I’m sure he had a great Father’s day.  But I’ll bet you it was a Father’s Day He’ll NEVER forget.

“They burned their bodies”

Posted: December 23, 2010 in 1992, Behind the Scenes, Hank, No Way!, Weapon
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by Colin James

I have finally met with the coach of this baseball team.  This was our second interview and we couldn’t even get past the first question before I was inspired to write.  All I asked him was the following:  “So just what was it about this team that made it so special?”

He said “They did all the little things that you hoped a team would do.  On the field and off the field, too.  They hung around together, they were always picking each other up, they were looking to slide headfirst, they went in hard to break up double-plays, they were looking to dive and make spectacular plays, they talked a lot of shit,  they dogpiled, they burned their bodies, they…..”

“Stop!” I asked in disbelief…….”Did you just say that they burned their bodies?”

A smile lit up his face.  “Yes” he said, “they burned their bodies.”  Now he was laughing.

“What on earth are you talking about?” I asked.

“I can’t remember the exact date it happened,” he said.  “It was either the night after a win that had clinched our first playoff spot or it was after we had made a furious rally to beat Fat Jody in the playoffs”

Before I asked him just who “Fat Jody” was I had to ask “They burned their bodies?”

“Let’s just say we were celebrating that win in typical Verdugo fashion.  I went straight home and started pounding celebratory beers and some of the players showed up.  Maybe except for four or five guys everyone was there.  We were all drinking beer and smoking cigars.  I think it was Hank who started the whole thing.  I walked outside and there he was, standing there with a cigar in his left hand.  He reached that cigar across his chest to his right arm and was burning a mark in his right arm.  If he had pushed that cigar any harder into his arm he would have knocked the quarter-sized cherry off of it.  He was basically branding himself.    He held it there for about 30 seconds.   You could smell the flesh burning.  Smoke was just coming off his arm.  He still has that “gar”-burn mark today.  I think six or seven guys did it.”

“They were so happy with the win that they BRANDED themselves with cigars?” I asked.

“Fucking -A.  That’s exactly what they did.  Hank started doing it and it was kind of contagious.  Next thing you know like six or seven guys were doing it….all trying to outdo the other as to how long they could hold it on there while it burned.  Nobody held it on there longer than The Weapon.  In fact, Weap held it on there SO LONG that about a week later he had to go to the hospital.”

My God man, I thought to myself!  “And what happened to The Weapon?” I asked.

“He branded himself right in that spot where people slit their wrists, you know?  Well, apparently it got infected and a purple line was moving up his arm from the spot where he had branded himself with the gar.  You should let Weap tell you the story at the reunion……..I promise you WON’T stop laughing the way he tells it.”

“Did you also brand yourself that night?” I asked.

“I would have”…..he said………”but I was just too drunk.  But that’s what you gotta love about our program.  We didn’t work hard and play hard.  We played hard and played hard!”

And here I was thinking that this is something one would do IF and ONLY IF they were too drunk.  My God, I thought to myself……..I wish I could have seen this team play!

Were YOU one of the folks who “Burned their bodies?”…………….if so , please comment and tell us what it felt like (if you even remember).  Better yet take a picture of it and send it to us here at the blog and we’ll be happy to show the world your official “Verdugo Gar-Burn”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Summer League Baseball Team Reunion? WTF???

Posted: December 21, 2010 in No Way!
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As I listened to my friend speak on the telephone I couldn’t help but eavesdrop a bit. The fellow he was speaking with was telling my friend about a planned reunion for a summer league baseball team that played 20 years ago. As a freelance writer, I am always on the hunt for a story. But it seemed a bit ridiculous to me. A summer league team planning a reunion get-together?

As an Englishman who moved to the States 25 years ago, I have still never “got” Americans and their passion for baseball. I still have trouble calling that game they play on Sundays “football.” But this conversation my friend had with the coach of this team had piqued my interest. So I began to ask him questions about it all.

Who was the fellow who coached this team? How old were the kids who played on it? Why are they even planning on having a reunion? I mean, it’s a stupid summer-league team isn’t it?

“No it wasn’t” my friend said to me. “It was much more than that. I’ve heard just about every story about that team and you wouldn’t believe some of the shit these guys did. It may be the greatest story NEVER told.”

“Can I speak with your friend about this?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’d probably want to talk about it. He’s still a little pissed off about how it all ended, but if you can get him to start talking about it, he’ll probably never STOP talking about it. Why would you want to talk to him about it?” he asked.

“Well”..I said…”If it is what you say it is, I just may have found another story.”

He laughed and said “And you’ll probably become a millionaire if you dare tell that story.” 

I procured the telephone number of the coach. I called him. I spent at least an hour on the phone with him. It took him a while to open up, but ten minutes into the call I was on the floor in hysterics. He spoke about his players and fellow coaches with a hallowed reverence. I never learned anyone’s FULL name. He had “other” monikers he used for them…such as “General” or “Hank” or “Weapon” or “Wiley Jackson”….when I asked him their REAL names he sounded almost offended that I didn’t know who these people were. I figured I’d find all of this out later. He spoke of the things that happened in the games they played like it had happened YESTERDAY.

I must admit that by the end of the call I was a full-blown FAN. I wanted to know everything about “the four years” as he called it. I asked him if we could produce a blog that could chronicle the history of this group leading up to and also covering the events at the reunion itself.

“Oh yeah” he said. “But you’ll have to pay me……..cause I ain’t paying you nothing.”

There was silence on the phone for about five seconds. It was possibly the longest five seconds I have experienced. Someone had to say something at this point. So I broke the deafening silence with the words “When can we get started?”………

Colin James 12/21/10

From Gee:  This guy Colin is going to write the stuff, send it to me, and I will publish it.  Bear with me while I figure out how to do this wordpress blog.  I’ll figure it out.  Merry Xmas everybody……………