Bowman's Spring Training Coverage Ends in Brawl
Editors Unsurprised, Refuse Bail

Hayes Bowman

While the rest of the country froze, drowned, and rusted, I was in sun-washed Peoria, sitting in great seats I could afford, drinking cool beers and laughing at Pat Listach as strikethree.com's goodwill ambassador to the southwest.

Arizona is a worthless shell of a state that might as well be razor-wired in and left to its own devices, but spring training is Bowman's All-Purpose Tonic for Rejuvenation and Spiritual Vigor. In a state where urban planning consists of putting up strip malls on cheap real estate as quickly as possible and waiting for growth to catch up, there are beautiful small stadiums with grass fields where the fans are all happy and the woman next to me will rub suntan lotion on my back. Arizona, the most back-asswards state in the Union, where newspapers debate whether or not to torture drug dealers before putting them to death, offers the most democratic baseball in America, where you can see the superstars for $5 and watch them compete for their roster spots with my friends.

And while I think Arizona should be thrown out of the Union and swapped for Puerto Rico (let's see Buchanan win a straw poll down there), there are few better places to make friends and go drinking. In the suburbs of Phoenix there are strange oases where the strip malls part and there's a restaurant, a fountain, small shops, and dimly lit bars in beautiful old style buildings. That's where I was with some minor-league friends of mine, a AAA once-prospect named, ah, Tom, and a fast-A third baseman named, ah, Tom. No, Jim. We were in a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix one night, a restaurant staffed entirely with the most beautiful women (and men) we had ever seen in this town, where we ate off huge, hot plates.

"How's the career?" I asked. Our table was already thick with yellow Corona bottles that gleamed like fireflies in the candlelight of the dining room.

"I have a career?" Tom said. "News to me. I didn't even make 'Minor League Scouting' this year, and I'm not getting younger."

"Ah," I said, waving my beer around, "baseball management has always been and is still about reputation and harmony. I've seen players who can play the field like they're on wheels, rope doubles around the field at will, and they languish in triple-A if they're lucky, traded from team to team, never given a crack at the Show. Or maybe they make major league minimum as an emergency bench player. And you see relatives of major leaguers given jobs regardless of their talent, fat minor league contracts. Craig Griffey will always have a place in some farm system. Look at Mike Maddux. You and Mike, pitcher's duel. Score'd be what, 140-0 if you were pitching for the Pirates?"

"You supposed to be making him feel better?" Jim said.
"I had four games in the majors, against New York twice, in Colorado, in Milwuakee. And I got shelled. Big surprise I got shelled, it was Coors Field! Getting shelled in Coors Field is like being named Corel's Minor League Player of the Month."

"I used to play hard," Jim said. "But I've decided to give up. I'm going to hit for average, just make contact all the time, never walk, try and steal all the time. I'll be a .350-hitting 80 SB player who plays scrappy defense. Promotion lies in my future." He started to giggle.

"You guys really that depressed?"

"I'm all for confidence," Tom said, "but I read Baseball Weekly. I watch ESPN. Baseball scouting's got everything to do with intangibles and little to do with stats. Last year I pitched five shutouts and ten complete games. Who noticed? Nobody. I read my name in baseball annuals and it says I'm 'too old to be considered a prospect.' Whose fault is that? Is it my fault I'm not a no-control left-handed fireball relief specialist?" He shook his head. "I'd beg to be traded again, but to where? What good would it do me? What if I was in Seattle? I'd strangle Piniella."

"Don't provoke him," I said. "Trust me."

"You should steal more bases," Jim said. "They love speed on the basepaths."

"The highlight of every season is throwing at major leaguers on rehab assignments." Tom grinned into his empty glass. "I once beaned Mackey Sasser three times in a game when he was in the Pirates system. I hated Mackey Sasser."

I waved for more Coronas. "You think beaning major leaguers on rehab might have something to do with your failure to get called up?"

He shrugged. "What do I care?"

"Hey, are you ---------?" someone called from the sportsbar, where NBA Tonight was playing. Tom nodded.

"You suck," the guy called, and stood up above the crowd. White guy, would look pudgy in the business suit he probably wore but in his shirt-and-shorts looked like a rancid half-baked Pillsbury biscuit roll. His friends were all agrin. "I saw you pitch against New York and you couldn't make it past the third. If you had any talent you'd play basketball or be a quarterback, but you couldn't even cut it there. Ha. I can't wait for football season when I can go watch the Cardinals play. I took my wife to that game, you no-talent piece of crap, you got lit up by their Sunday squad. You owe me fifteen bucks for my ticket and ten for parking and..."

I watched as Tom rolled a Corona bottle across his palm, a starfish of label and bottle in hand, as he stood.

"I spent ten bucks on beer and foo-"

Tom gave the Corona his full three-quarter delivery. The guy stopped on the syllable, and nothing seemed to move except for that yellow ninety-mile-an-hour bottle in the smoke tinted air of the restaurant, and then the guy's head disappeared in shards of glass and blood, and then it was just a brawl.

From what we're told, Hayes Bowman drinks too much, and it gets him into trouble. Let him know why you're letting your kids surf unattended at bowman@strikethree.com.