verdugo288

We loaded up the gear and headed up the 14 Freeway to play a new team in the 20th District called Little Rock.  They had just opened a new High School.  They were a young team and I expected us to sweep.  We did.  Little Rock had lost a game earlier in the season to Woodland Hills West (El Camino Real) by a score of 35-0!  Yeah, that is not a misprint…..they lost a game 35-0!

They had a new baseball field.  The problem with the field was that it didn’t really have any real dirt.  It was kind of a sand-like substance.  Their infield was kind of like a beach.  Ground balls wouldn’t roll all the way to the infielders.  Guys trying to slide into bases would come up about three feet short.  And watching our guys run the bases that day was like watching slow-motion replays.  This sand-like stuff was slowing our slow guys down!

We took the opener 14-3.  John Rogers picked up the win on the mound with HACK getting the save. 

Yves had three hits…one of them a triple. 

Yvan Moreno doubled. HACK doubled.

Mike Parker tripled, singled and had four RBI.

“B” chipped in a couple of base hits.

But the first game heroics went to BullOxen.  Four for four with a triple, two doubles, a single and two RBI.  He even drew a walk in the fifth inning and guess what he did?  He stole second AND third base! 

In the second game, we gave the ball to Eric Cadena.  It was more of the same as we won 12-3.  Cadena went five innings and picked up the win.

HACK went three for four and doubled. 

Moreno tripled.

Rogers tripled. 

Yves doubled.

Mike Parker, Taige Webster and Larry Kimbell all singled. 

But again, the big story was BullOxen.  He was three for three and drew a walk.  A double, a single, and the longest homerun ever hit by a Verdugo player. 

How far did he hit it?  I’ll get to that in a minute.  Let me put it to you this way…..there was no homerun fence there.  There was another playground way the hell out there in left field.  He hit that ball and we all saw where it landed…plus it rolled like forever.  By the time the left fielder picked the ball up and had it in his hand….BullOxen had already crossed home plate and was making his way towards the dugout.

I made sure we were all in agreement about where that thing landed.  And when the game ended, I walked it off.  I have some pretty long legs.  But I still didn’t want anyone trying to say I was “padding” how far it went.  So I took some very LONG, exaggerated strides as I marched it off when the game(s) had ended.  We figured for everyone of my strides it was the equivalent of ONE yard.  We walked it off.  It took 170 of my long strides to reach the spot where the ball had landed.  Do the math!  That ball traveled at least 510 feet until the laws of gravity pulled it down.  And that was just where it landed!  It probably rolled another 60 or 70 feet to reach the playground!

In all, BullOxen was seven for seven in the double-header.  Hit for the cycle.  A homer, a triple, and three doubles.  Add in the two walks and he reached base nine for nine on the day.  Plus five RBI………

Pretty sick. 

While I expected us to sweep that day and for our hitters to kind of feast off of the young pitching staff at Little Rock….seven for seven is still seven for seven.  Hitting a ball that travels over 500 is still a ball that traveled over 500 feet.  You can’t take that away from him or minimize the day he had.  Kind of like those 20 strikeouts he had earlier in the season for us from the mound!!!  You can’t take that away either. 

I mean….510 feet until it landed!  Dude, that’s how far I hit my SIX IRON!!!!

Also, in the second game of the double-header an all-time Verdugo record was set.  Larry Kimbell…..that’s right….my boy Larry Kimbell threw out THREE guys stealing from behind the plate!  The record may have been broken by Thunder in ’92 or ’93, I’ll be checking the books like a hawk!

Of course, how hard is it to gun a guy down when he’s running through sand!!!  But Kimbell did shoot ’em down that day!

Just like that we were 10-6 and right back in the playoff hunt!!

We went from 8-4 to 8-6 in a hurry.  I don’t want to spend too much time with these two games.  Chatsworth beat us 17-3 and Lancaster took us out 14-6.  It was tough to stomach.  We had only eight guys at the Chatsworth game.  Was it eight or NINE?  We’ll talk about THAT ONE at The Reunion!

In the Chatsworth game (at their yard), the only thing worth talking about is Yvan Moreno’s three-for-three game at the plate and BullOxens two-run homer.  Bull also added a single.  Rounding out our offense was J.R. Workman’s base-hit in the fifth inning.  Or was it J.R. Workman?  We’ll talk about THAT ONE at the Reunion as well!

We actually hit the ball pretty well in the 17-3 loss.  We had four stings, and with any luck could have scored five or six times that day.  But you can’t battle it out with a team like Chatsworth and allow 31 baserunners (in a six-inning game for that matter).  This was the most lopsided loss in our four-year history. 

They were pretty much as I expected them to be.  Loud, popping-off, the whole shot.  Little did they know what was in store for them when we faced them a year later in the playoffs………

The Lancaster game was at Glendale High.  It was 4-4 ballgame going into the seventh inning.  They turned it on and kicked our asses pretty good.  We did show some signs of putting up a fight, though.  They had a mouthy guy playing for them.  I had just brought in BullOxen in relief to try to get the final out of a long inning where they sent 13 guys to the plate and rolled a seven on us.  The bases were loaded. 

BullOxen did EXACTLY what I had hoped he would do.  He FIRED a bullet right into his ribcage!!!  Down on the ground I heard him gasp “you did that on purpose.”

Mike Parker was standing right over him as he rolled around on the ground near the plate and said “YES WE DID!!”

Amazingly, no brawl took place.  And while we gave up a run on the HBP….it was well worth it.  Or so I thought.

Still, I gotta give that kid credit.

The next time he came up in the ninth he smashed an inside-the-park homer off of us.  It was pretty studly what he did.  After he crossed the plate he just stood over by their on-deck circle….flexed his muscles….and screamed at the top of his lungs out towards the field while his teammates mobbed him.

It was okay.  We needed that ass-kicking.  And we never forgot that day either…and we SWEPT their asses in ’92!!! 

And the Lancaster game was an important game for us historically.  It was the LAST TIME we at Verdugo ever got our asses kicked.

I will have photocopies of the scorebooks at The Reunion where you can read up on these two games (if reading about it doesn’t make you vomit like it does me).  I’m laughing as I write this…we WALKED 29 guys in these two games.  To put this in perspective, the 1993 Pitching staff for Verdugo Hills walked only 31 hitters the ENTIRE SEASON!!!!

We only had five hits this game.  Yvan Moreno doubled and singled.  BullOxen doubled.  Mike Parker tripled, and Brett Miller had an infield single. 

But we still weren’t done.  We were (believe it or not) still very alive in the playoff hunt at 8-6.  And we had a couple of big double-headers coming down the pike that I liked our chances in.  Little Rock, and our old buddies from Newhall-Saugus.

Here we were right at about the mid-way point of our second season.  We were 8-4 and rolling along pretty well.  I didn’t know why it happened, but the same thing happened with the ’90 Team.  It was right around this time of the year in ’90 that we started having trouble getting players to show up at games.  Of course, it didn’t help that Chandler and Chili had been pulled from the Roster in ’90….but it was starting to emerge again here in ’91.  I asked myself “How could I start the season with 17 or 18 guys on a Roster and barely be able to field a Team?”  I didn’t have any answers, but I sure spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about it. 

We had done a great job up to this point of the season.  We were in position to make a serious playoff run.  I’ve said this before in an earlier Post that “I’m Old School”…in other words…hand me a schedule at the beginning of each season and I’ll be there.  I don’t care what day, what time, what city…I’ll be there.  Hell, I even managed a game the day I got married!  Maybe that’s why I ended up as a coach (and…getting divorced).  Growing up…all I thought about was the next game.

Maybe things were different for me when I was a kid.   But it’s true….it’s ALL I thought about.  The NEXT game.  I was talking to Hank yesterday and he told me that his mother used to get mad at him when it was a rainy day and he’d beg her to take him to the park.  “They might be there playing” he told her.  I know that feeling, too.  Geez, we had a group of kids I grew up with where RAIN had only one meaning….tackle football!!!  That’s right!!!!

There were about 10 of us.  And the heavier the downpour….the better!  Do you know how cool it is to dive for a pass on a muddy field and slide like 10 yards and THEN catch it!!  I would come home from those games drenched in mud.  My mother wanted to kill me!!  Even if it was sandlot football, with no refs there, to us…it was the frickin’ SUPER BOWL. 

I have a very old and dear friend of mine who I am still in contact with.  He was one of the “Rain-Football” diehards!!  At least once every year my old friend and I relive the opening play of one of those Rain-Football games with our “play-by-play” voices.  “First and ten…..and they’re gonna hand off to Gee up the middle and Gee is STUFFED for an eight yard loss!”  I’ll never forget the way that guy just flat-out picked me up and PLANTED me!   We didn’t try to run the ball the rest of the game!!  What a game!!  Every Rain-Football game was a shootout.  The final score was always something like 113-110.  Whoever had the ball last would always win!!!

So I never learned to understand how our players wanted to do anything other than play a game!  But in time, I learned to adjust to it.  I will go into this in greater detail when I write a Post coming up soon that I have already Titled “He’s a check.”

The reality of the matter was this….we needed stronger commitments from the players and I needed to start communicating better.  By the time ’92 came around I think I finally figured it out.  I knew there wasn’t much I would be able to do to change the players….but if there was something I could do…..in terms of tweeking the schedule or communicating better….anything….I was game for it!  I didn’t want to get into this deal where I was blaming the players and questioning their intestinal fortitude.  The coach should  be more into it than the players.  If anything was going to change….it had to be ME….and I was okay with that.

You see, there was always a game going on in the life of Gee.  And if it was raining so hard when I was a kid that there was thunder and lightning…no problem.  Me and my buddies would bust out a cult Board Game invented in the early seventies called “Strat-O-Matic” Baseball.  What a game!  Three dice.  One white die and two red dice.  The game was based on statistical probabilities.  You would buy the game and get (then) all 24 major league teams!  Each player had a card.  Using a mainframe computer back in the seventies, this company had figured out how to transfer the statistical values of a given player onto a game card based on dice rolls. 

And they had it down!  We replayed an ENTIRE SEASON.  You know how many games that is?  And the final statistics of each player were almost exact to what they had done the previous season.  But what was so great about “Strat” (as we used to call it) was that YOU were the manager.  You pulled the strings.  I was twelve years old and got to make out the lineup card for the ’71 Pirates!  Stargell, Clemente, Sanguillen…all of my heroes.  My buddies and I learned baseball strategy from that board game. Lefty versus righty….when to make late inning changes defensively…two for ones….everything!  They even warned you on a players pitching card when  that pitcher would start to “tire.”  And you’d pay the price if you left him in too long!

Sometimes you play a situation “by the book”…sometimes you go with a “gut feeling”….I learned from “Strat” how exhilarating it can be to be “at the helm” and coaching a Team to victory. 

Yes-sir-ree, there was always a game going on in the life of Gee.  And even at 12, I always dreamed of managing a ballclub.  It seemed like it was kind of my calling.  I knew what to do in the games, how to pull the strings.  The problem was this….in “Strat-O-Matic”, the cards are always at every game.  In real life….people have other things going on.  And I had to figure that side of it out.  I do regret that it took almost two seasons for me to “get it”…..

At least I was open-minded enough to entertain the possibility that the problem was with ME.  But looking back on ’90 and ’91….if I knew then what I knew at the end of our last season in ’93 we would have probably made the playoffs every damn season.  It’s hard for me to say this, but it’s true.

And while the bulk of the neccessary changes to be made were executed by yours truly….I think the players could sense that I was making the effort, and it ultimately strengthened their commitment(s).  I will never forget what Josh Canale said to me in the middle of the ’92 season when we were tearing it up and it was pretty obvious we were going to clinch a playoff spot.  He said “You know what the difference is this year?” 

“What” I asked him.

“The difference is YOU.”

It was true.  I had backed off of the players.  I had made some BIG changes between the ’91 and ’92 season.  I started to believe in them FULLY…and I just let ’em play.  It was an interesting dynamic with me and Verdugo…..the only way it was going to work was this:  less was more.  The less I got involved, the better the Team performed. 

My job was simple the last two seasons.  Get everybody there, play the percentages, believe in ’em, have fun, and let ’em play. 

But none of this happened until ‘Ol Bull and I had a little conversation about how “He’s a check.”  We did have to have a little “come-to-Jesus” meeting.  I had to make some promises to Bull, and Bull had to make some promises to me.  The amazing thing was…we believed each other!   But once we were done with that…Verdugo Hills started to evolve into the  “Strat-O-Matic” kind of Team I had dreamed of one day managing.

John Rogers was always one of my favorite players.  He could play anywhere.  He had a great attitude.  He loved Baseball.  He was a winner.  And most importantly, he was full of shit.  And I mean that in the VERY BEST of ways.  He could sell you. 

No matter WHERE you put him on the field….he just looked  like he knew what he was doing.  It was all in his mannerisms.  He would change ’em up, too.  He would move around like a middle infielder if he was playing shortstop or second base.  He would stand a little more upright.  He would have a little more of a bounce in his step.  If he was playing first or third for us he would move around like he was a power threat.  He’s hold his glove in his right hand  in-between pitches, while at the same time widening his stance a little and have an appearance of “digging in”….kind of like a power-hitting corner infielder would. 

When he was a middle infielder he would cover his mouth with his glove if he was talking to someone else on the field.  When he was a corner infielder he’d just bark it out like a corner guy would.

You could put him anywhere on the field and it would appear as though he had been playing that position his whole life!

And let me tell you something…he was a hell of an outfielder and was a DAMN good catcher!!!!

But Rogers saved his best mannerisms for when he really had the spotlight and could ham it up a little….when he was on the mound!!!

It was priceless to watch. 

Rogers had all of the moves.  Focused on the catcher as he readied himself for the next pitch, he’d still move around the hill with precision.  He got that jersey of his all ready.  He might pull up the sleeve a little on his left arm.  Constantly adjusting the cap.  Backing off of the rubber and licking his fingers, giving the impression that he might be “loading up” the next pitch.  A little right shoulder twitch to make sure all of the moving parts in that shoulder of his were all lined up properly.

When he was in the stretch it was even better.  He’d wrap his right arm behind him as he looked in for the sign in a semi-crouched position.  The ball was still visible to the hitter (I’m sure by design) where Rogers would spin it around in his hand as he shook-off signals.  Sometimes he’d back out of the pitch, step off of the rubber and call the catcher out to “get on the same page.” 

For most pitchers…going through these “motions” actually hurt their results.  Not with Rogers.  He was just letting everyone in the park know this….”I know what I’m doing out here.”

And he actually had pretty damn good stuff. 

Valley “E.T.” ….our opponent on this fine day, was pretty much otherworldly  in their ability to lose games…and this was the perfect landing place for Rogers’ spaceship. 

We punished ’em 13-1.  We mercied them in the sixth inning.  The game ended when HACK came up and BOMBARDED a towering bases-loaded triple.

The line on Rogers?  Six innings.  Five hits.  Two walks.  Six K’s.  ONE earned run.  Verdugo goes to 8-4!!!

HACK had two hits and four RBI.  Turner had two hits and four RBI.  Parker had two hits.  ELMO had two hits.  Rounding it out was Moreno, BullOxen, and Yves with base hits.

Remember, Rogers had ALL of the mannerisms……so when he pitches, he knows he has to HIT like a pitcher does, too.  Rogers was o-2 on the day! 

Yes-sir-ree…..’Ol John Rogers………the greatest mannerisms in the history of Verdugo!!!  And while Rogers had all of the mannerisms…..I think it’s safe to say that when on the field for Verdugo, he had absolutely NO manners whatsoever!!!

And that’s what we all loved about him!!!

Our old buddies from Woodland Hills East rolled into Stengel Field on a Sunday morning for a twin bill.  When I first got our schedule for the ’91 season and I saw we had a double-header at Stengel against them…….I didn’t care if we went 2-20.  I just wanted BOTH of our wins to be against these idiots.  See my earlier Post “One Time in 94 Games” if you don’t know WHY I wanted BOTH of these games…..

But I’ve always said this about double-headers…..”They’re HARD to sweep, and EASY to get swept.”

So “Why” you may ask….if I wanted to win BOTH of these games….would I start BullOxen the day before against Agoura?  Because ‘Ol Bull was going hunting or fishing that day and had told me he wouldn’t be there for this game before the season started!  I think this may have even been Father’s Day……..it was June the 25th.

So we knew Bull wasn’t going to be there.  I still felt we would have “enough” guys there who would “remember” what had happened the previous summer.  We had Hank, Weap, and General there coaching for us.  We had Turner, Sammy, and Rogers on the field for us that day as well.  We were all still TOTALLY pissed about that game.  In fact, I’m STILL pissed about that GD game TODAY!

So here they come in with their RED and White Jerseys.  It didn’t take long for most of us who were on the field that day they beat us a year ago to get sick to our stomach.  We were TRYING to tell the new guys on the Team about what had happened last summer.  For whatever reason…they didn’t really understand.  I guess you “had to be there.” 

They came out and trounced us 9-2 in the opener.  I guess you could say I was “Seeing RED” again……….

We had nine hits in the first game.  Turner…two hits.  Rogers…two hits and two RBI.  Sammy…one hit.  Five of our nine hits were by the three guys who were on the field that day a year ago.  I was proud that they, too, had “remembered.”  But it was a hard sell to the rest of the guys to get ’em to totally step up for this game. Yves, Yvan Moreno, Mike Parker, and Brett Miller all singled in the first game.

But there’s always a silver-lining to any Verdugo defeat.  We beat ’em in the second game 10-0 on a mercy rule and dominated them in ’92 in a BIG game.  By the time we had finished all four seasons in 20th District play…there was only ONE team that had a winning record against us…and it WASN’T Notre Dame.  And it WASN’T Woodland Hills East.  We were still building our program in ’91…..and by the time the building was done and it was time to just kind of go out and PLAY…..nobody touched us.  And I’ll TAKE THAT.

BIG BRECK came out in the second game and had a complete-game shutout victory.  A tight little three-hitter.  Ahh Big Breck!!!

Offensively, we banged out a dozen hits.  And pretty much everyone contributed to the blowout.

John Rogers got us on the board in the first inning with a big RBI-double.  He had two hits on the day. 

Robb Turner picked up another couple of hits in the second game.

Brett Miller had two hits.

ELMO had two hits and an RBI.

Cadena singled twice and drove in three runs!

HACK singled, drew a walk, and had two RBI.

We were actually starting to hit the ball pretty well at this point of the season.  33 hits in the last three games.  While the ’91 Team had GREAT pitching, we also had the lowest Team batting average in Verdugo history at .286.  It wasn’t BAD….but the ’90 Team outhit ’em.  But as I said in an earlier Post…..everybody now knew who we were and adjusted their pitching rotation(s) to make sure we were seeing one of their better guys, if not their BEST guy. 

We didn’t sweep….but we didn’t get swept either. 

We were still AT or very near the top of our Division at 7-4.  Next up on our schedule was “Valley E.T.”………a team we had swept in a double-header towards the end of the ’90 season.

Every game is a BIG game in Legion.  We came into this one 5-3….on a little bit of a roll with a two-game winning streak and were playing another HOME game at Stengel.  Agoura had a decent ball club that year and while I was always worried about every game we played, we had BullOxen going for us. 

Bull already had struck out 33 in 18 innings on the year for us.  He had TWO nine-inning complete game victories and had pretty much defined himself around the League as the guy to watch.  Hell, he struck out 20 in one game….some pitchers don’t even do that in a SEASON!

But the ’91 Team had one thing going for it…we could strike guys out!  The ’91 pitching staff set an all-time record for Verdugo with 158 strikeouts in one season.  Between Bull, Breck and Chili it was downright SICK! 

BullOxen and Brett Miller combined on a one-hitter and we won our third straight 9-3.  Bull struck out 11 in seven innings.  Agoura scored their only run against Bull in the fifth on three walks and a hit batter!  Funny enough….all three outs recorded that inning were K’s!!!  Miller gave up a couple of unearned runs in the ninth but threw very well that day.

Offensively, Yvan Moreno had three hits.  Sammy had two hits and blasted a two-RBI double in the sixth when we broke the game open.  “B” Cowsill had a couple of hits and stole two bases.  Yves, Turner, Parker, and Bull all singled.  Moose got us off to a 2-0 lead with a big two-RBI double in the fourth inning.

Several guys came off of the bench later in the game and contributed as well.  Elmo reached base on an error and stole a base for us.  Cadena came in and drove in a run on a groundout.  Hack came in and was spotted roaming the tundra in right field, spelling Turner, who had singled and scored a couple of runs.

Also….we had a first appearance from one of my catchers on the JV team that year at CV by the name of Larry Kimbell!   That’s right…my boy Larry Kimbell!  Kimbell was given a role for the ’91 Team as “bullpen catcher.”  He knew he wasn’t going to see much time.  And he certainly didn’t help his cause in the ninth inning that day when he had TWO passed balls.  But it was all good.  Everybody seemed to take a liking to Kimbell.  Even BullOxen…who liked him so much that when Kimbell caught him in the bullpen before a game BullOxen would grab a ball…..and throw it as far as he could and say to Kimbell “go get it!”

You gotta love Kimbell!  Kimbell would go “fetch” BullOxen’s “feed”…….and return to his spot in the bullpen.  Then BullOxen would follow-up his first throw to Kimbell with a crow-hop that went even farther.  And Kimbell would go get that one as well.  You gotta Love Kimbell!

Three-in-a-row for Verdugo.  Now all of a sudden we’re 6-3.  And for all of you Verdugo fans out there who remember that gut-wrenching loss we had to Woodland Hills East in 1990 (see previous Post “One Time in 94 Games”)….well, THEY were NEXT on our schedule.  A twin-bill at Stengel!!!!!!!!

Done.  The Bash is going to air LIVE on the WEB!!  And once again….They’ve DONE IT!!!

Ahhhh Verdugo!!!

I’m sure there’s a bunch of our enemies out there reading this shit every day all green-eyed with envy.  Just goes to show that 20 years later…nothing has changed!  Ahhh!

They’re probably out there crying about the fact that this Blog and This Reunion Bash once again is living proof of our dominance over them.  Yes-sir-ree…..they’re all out there CRYING!!!

Well, we at Verdugo…we’re crying, too.  The difference is that OUR TEARS are TEARS OF JOY!!!

Ahhh Verdugo!

And you can add a couple of more names to the miracle.  MORENO and TURNER!!!  They’re IN!!!

Turner is flying in from New Orleans!  Is that as CLUTCH as it gets?!?!?!?!?!

We got Hack flying in….We got Gabe flying in….We got Turner flying in.  If that doesn’t get the TEARS OF JOY flowing nothing will!!!!

Even Lance Evans tried to tell me this week he won’t be there.  Shit………he’ll be there!  He knows what he’s gotta do!  I didn’t buy it.  All I said was “we’ll see you there!”  And you watch…he’s gonna show up!  Somebody doesn’t just pitch for a Team with a broken arm and not show up for a Reunion. He even roped a one-handed base-hit for Verdugo in that game because he had a damn cast on his left arm!  He’ll be there…….. 

I can’t believe how awesome this is……… the way it’s all coming together.  But actually, it doesn’t surprise me a bit!!

Everybody is making HUGE sacrifices for this thing.  And I thank ALL of you for it!!!

Everybody knows Verdugo never fucked around and this Bash is no different!  Once a KING…ALWAYS a KING!!!!  And The KINGS shall soon gather.  

But let me tell you this.  EVERYONE is important to this BASH!!  If you think these guys are just going to magically show up without ONE FINAL PUSH from everybody you’re crazy!!  We gotta keep calling people….keep texting people….whatever it takes.  I’m talkin’ bout five minutes before the damn BASH we should still be calling people up and telling ’em….”hey brother….just a friendly reminder.”  Even if we KNOW they’re gonna be there…keep calling ’em up and doing it Verdugo-style.

Hell, by the time The Bash hits we should just about be sick of each other calling up all the time!  We only get one shot at this!!! Let’s do it!  Verdugo-style!!!

We all have a lot of work to do this week getting ready for this thing.  We’re trying to Broadcast it LIVE on the Web….we got music, microphones, TV Sets, SNK games to coordinate. 

General is in the movie racket these days.  He operates a crane.  He’s talking about bringing in one of those cranes of his INTO the damn place where we’re holding the bash!!  Well, think about it…if we’re bringing a camera crew….then we need one of those camera guys UP in the air.  Crane Time!!!  We’ll see if we can pull it off.

I got the phone number for someone who just might let us get on a Baseball Field at 2:00 AM that night.  If I pull this off…you guys will be playing “Drunken Flip” out there and we plan on filming it. 

Of course….if we make that a reality then we’ll need about a forty-foot LIMO to drive us there.  NO DUI’s that night!  No exceptions!  Verdugo NEVER gets caught for anything….so let’s keep that streak alive 20 years later!!!

VERDUGO!  Bigger than life!!  Ask yourself….what can I do in this final week to make this Bash the most COMMANDING  Bash of All-Time?

That’s right.  TEARS OF JOY!!  That’s all we ever cry at Verdugo…..Tears of Joy!!  And frankly, to all of the bitches out there who tried to stop us all of those years who are reading this shit now….go CRY in your Beer!!  Cuz’ WE OWN YOU!!!

Ahh Verdugo!!!

I was talking to General last night.  It turns out General called in to Verdugo headquarters to tell me he was “going to be a few hours late” for THE BASH.  WTF?  This is VERDUGO here!  Nobody’s late for the Verdugo Bash….especially one of the guys who saw every game we ever played!!!  General could tell I wasn’t too happy with this phone call.  He called me again tonight.  Well…as it turns out…..General and I weren’t even talking about the SAME DATE!!!

I guess there was some confusion.  The Reunion is July 9th!  And the 10th, for that matter.  We had a good laugh about it.  I told him…”here you were within INCHES of being tarred and feathered!”  I liked what Weap had to say about the prospect of someone not showing up at the Verdugo BASH.  He said…..”you shun….you’re done!”

That’s it! 

So what’s all of this talk about “LIVE from La Crescenta?”  Well, there’s some things moving around backstage here at Verdugo that SHOULD enable us to broadcast The Bash LIVE on the Internet!  That’s right!  LIVE on the Internet!!!

Everybody knows we never fucked around at Verdugo and this Bash is no exception!  We are doing everything we can to make The Bash exactly like Verdugo….LARGER THAN LIFE ITSELF!!!!!

Ahhhh Verdugo!!!!!!

What better way to say to THE WORLD “Like a nightmare…WE’RE BACK” than to broadcast this thing LIVE on the Web?

So get out your sunglasses.  Because if we can pull this off it will be further proof that we at Verdugo have ONE MORE MIRACLE in us!!!  Instead of just having the pink slip on everything and everyone that challenged us through the years…I guess you could now say all of those pink slips are officially LAMINATED!!!!

Yeah, buddy…..I’m talkin’ LIVE from La Crescenta!!!!!!!!!  Verdugo…for the WORLD to see……in all of our GLORY!!!!!

Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!