| | | Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.
Chapter 24
... in which our hero stands between a manger and certain death.
I'm wiping down the bar and cashing out the register at closing time when Kurt Warner stumbles into Lore's trembling like a leaf.
"Wheeler," he says, "I can't get out of my mind what you told me the other night." (see Chapter 23)
"You mean how you hired Jim Tracy, the Dodgers skipper, to strong-arm that actress playing your mom in those soup commercials?"
"How can I read defenses at the line of scrimmage if I'm haunted by images of a suffering old lady, Wheeler? It's going to kill my QB rating. Shred my bonus clauses. I can't live with myself."
"Could you live with yourself if I had the hit called off?" I ask.
"Coach Martz told me that sort of thing was impossible," Kurt says. "And so did Aeneas Williams when I called to welcome him to the team."
"'Impossible' is riding eight-story monster waves on Tahiti without a jet-powered ski to tow you into the break, Kurt," I say. "And that's what it's going to cost you for me to stop a legendary killing machine like Tracy."
Kurt is more over a barrel than if Jevon Kearse got off the line of scrimmage unblocked. So he hands me a check.
|  | | Although he manages one of baseball's glamour teams, Jim Tracy is a master of blending into the background. |
I watch Kurt leave. Putting a smile on a Super Bowl MVP's face is a plus for any bartender. But stopping Jim Tracy isn't going to be as easy as I told Kurt it would be.
Tracy blends in anywhere, so he's impossible to follow or pick out. Picture a guy sitting in the dugout expressionless while his team plays .500 ball and you understand what kind of ruthless maniac is disguised just beneath the surface.
I go to Puker's first because big things require Puker. Puker doesn't know the meaning of the word hesitation. Puker doesn't know the meaning of riding in the right-hand lane. Puker rocks. Especially when he knows the cause is getting us a jet-powered ski to tow into monster breaks. Puker eats a pop tart while we torch the 10 hurtling east across California on his Yamaha.
We arrive in Laughlin, Nev., just as Kevin Malone is coming offstage at Benny's Yuk Hut.
"Did you hear that applause, Wheeler?" he says, putting on a robe and touching up his hair plugs at the makeup table in his dressing room. "My Sonny Bono look-alike act is gangbusters."
"We're not picking bugs out of our teeth after riding half the night so we could hear you lip-sync 'I Got You Babe,' Kevin," I tell him. "We're here for the skinny on Jim Tracy. That's why you were fired, isn't it? You got into a beef with that fan in San Diego, and you went to Tracy and told him to whack the guy, only Tracy wouldn't give you a discount, and Bob Daly backed him."
Suddenly, Malone's looking a little slammed. Like, how could I guess all that?
I could explain that I live on the edge. And from the edge you can see everything. But there's no time for that.
"I need to get to Tracy," I say, "before he kills again. And you're the way in."
Malone begins mumbling even more than usual.
"Nobody can get to Jim Tracy, Wheeler. I've got a family. I've got kids, a whole new life if I can find the right Cher -- if Jim Tracy finds out I told you, I'm a dead man," Malone says.
"There are three people out there in the audience, Kevin, and one of them's Davey Johnson -- how deader can you get?" I say.
Suddenly a stagehand sticks his head into the room and says, "Five minutes to showtime, Mr. Malone. Start with 'Eve of Destruction?' "
"I'm coming," he says. Then, powdering his nose, he turns to me and Puker and goes, "Check the cards, that's all I'm saying."
|  | | Kevin Malone is looking for work, now that he's no longer the Dodgers GM. |
Me and Puker are back in Dodger Stadium the same afternoon. We tell a security guard we're part of the paragliding team that's jumping out of the upper deck before the national anthem, and then Puker demonstrates and we get waved right in.
It's four hours before the Pirates' game and the place is deserted and spooky. We sneak into the manager's office, and Puker quickly pulls out a deck of playing cards from Tracy's desk.
"What are we supposed to make out of these cards," Puker says. "Or maybe he meant the St. Louis Cardinals?"
"Malone meant lineup cards," I say. Puker has fallen on his head at least several dozen times more than me and insists safety helmets were planted on earth by evil aliens from another galaxy.
Lineup cards are all over the place. Dozens of them, pinned to the wall. Goodwin batting eighth and Cora batting first. Kreuter batting fifth and Karros sixth. Every combination.
But there's one lineup card with not a single Dodger on it. Just a list of names with positions. I see the name "Warner" penciled in at shortstop, batting leadoff.
"Who let you two in here?"
Me and Puker look up and see Tracy standing in the doorway. And compared to that, face-planting on a 50-foot wave off the North Shore doesn't seem so scary.
"Interesting lineup you've got here, skip," I say. "Should I say lineup -- or hit list?"
We have surprise on our side, which is an unusual situation for Xtreme athletes like me and Puker to find ourselves in. But we work best on adrenaline, so without thinking we rush Tracy and overpower him, pinning him on the ground.
"You're messing with the wrong man," Tracy says.
"Listen, I know why Kurt Warner hired you," I say, "and I'm here to tell you the job's off. Unless you want me going to the police with this. So from now on, your lineups only include Dodgers, understand? Want me to tell Tommy Lasorda?"
"OK, OK, I understand," Tracy says, after Puker makes sure he knows exactly how badly bent out of shape a bunch of fingers can get. I find Warner's "deposit" check in Tracy's drawer and take it. I figure it's a nice boost in the fight against Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). I make Tracy promise to attend our benefit dinner at the end of the season.
"I'll ... be ... there," he moans.
I figure now we can let him up. But there's one last thing I can't help asking before we go.
"What turned you into such an animal?" I say.
"You try managing Sheffield," he says.
Next week: In Chapter 25, Wheeler helps Charles Barkley get in game-shape, courtesy of Dubya. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
