| | | 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 34
... in which our hero contemplates life in France after the murder of Roger Clemens
Any bartender spends most of his time listening to questions. But last night I got to ask one: "Which place would you prefer, Chile or France?"
It's the All-Star break, which, at Lore's, I like to compare to tending bar at Rick's in that movie "Casablanca," because you never know who might happen to walk in.
The other night, it was Roger Clemens. He was on a changeover, trying to get back to Texas for a few days off before the season resumes.
People say Clemens is "legendary." But Clemens is "legendary" to bartenders, because he might be big and surly, but one little sip of beer and he's blubbering and tipsy.
Roger asks for a Lone Star and a deluxe order of Lore's All-Star Nachos with mesquite pork. I tell him everyone wants to know what it was like running into Mike Piazza up in Seattle, and he drops his head and gets misty.
"Did you see that blond hair on the poor guy?" Clemens says, shaking his head with disgust. "He's having all kinds of psychological problems. And it's my fault. Because he thinks I threw that bat at him."
|  | | Clearly, Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza haven't recovered from the bat incident in the 2000 World Series. |
Clemens insists he wasn't throwing the bat at Piazza in last year's World Series.
"Do you think I don't hit what I throw at, Wheeler?" Clemens barks at me.
Then, he suddenly shouts, "Anybody got any baseball bats around here?"
Our manager Stu Getzler has about a dozen special bats in his office with a "Lore's" imprint on them. We use some for our bar-league team. And a few
others we scatter behind the bar in case me or somebody else has to convince an unruly patron to resume talking in a civil tone of voice so the other
patrons can concentrate on the replay.
I hand Clemens six bats, and he wipes his nose and stands and splinters them in half over his knee.
He leads me and Stu Getzler and my homey Puker out into the parking lot, and he asks for volunteers to hold a tumbler on their heads and run as fast as
they can and from about 30 feet he'll knock the tumbler off their heads by throwing a piece of bat.
I figure, OK, Clemens is a bit tipsy -- but it's still him, a Hall of Famer. And I'm still me, Wheeler, and what's the worst that can happen -- I get hit in
the head by a baseball bat thrown by Roger Clemens. If you can think of a better way to start a conversation with somebody, let me know. Besides, my
girlfriend, Janine, claims I have no brains to lose anyway.
Well, Clemens got five out of six, and, apparently, I wasn't unconscious for
too long.
Back inside Lore's, he's trying to lighten the mood, maybe to make it up to me. So we start talking about Tommy Lasorda.
I mention that after the All-Star Game, Stu Getzler ran a poll -- name the highlight, Cal Ripken Jr.'s home run off Chan Ho (as in home-run ball) Park?
Or Lasorda getting clipped by Vlad Guerrero's bat and falling into a backward somersault?
Tommy's wipeout wins hand-down.
|  | | Everyone at Lore's was trying to imitate Tommy's tumble. |
We're all laughing when Stu Getzler gets another of his great promotional ideas. A Tommy Lasorda Contest. Free drinks and all the Lore's Nachos Xtreme you can eat. You stuff some pillows under your shirt and someone throws a bat at you and you fall over backward. The guy who looks the stupidest wins. And we've got the world's perfect bat-thrower right here, Rocket Rog.
Me and Puker are the first to go. Clemens lobs a bat at Puker, and he springs back into a double somersault and lands on three female patrons, knocking drinks all over them. Then I go. I work in a little sideways lean and mess up my hair, and I take out some guy from England who gets angry because he was watching Liverpool against Tierra del Fuego on the satellite.
Finally, everyone agrees Roger has to take his turn. He's only had two sips of beer, but that puts Clemens over the limit and pretty soon he's standing there with a bunch of bolsters shoved under his shirt, looking as fat and puffy and as much like Tommy Lasorda as he can, although he's won several million more major-league games as a pitcher.
When I lob the bat shard at him, Clemens rolls over. Unfortunately, he flips the wrong way and he gets his head stuck under the bar's foot railing. We
hear this sickening snap, and then Clemens is yelling, "I can't move! I can't feel a thing! Help me, Wheeler!"
He's kind of balanced on his head, which is wedged at this weird angle under the bar. You know how that big blond guy looks in "Kiss of the Dragon" when
Jet Li hammers him head-first onto the floor?
Clemens looks like that. Paralyzed.
That's when me and Puker have a quick discussion about which are the best countries that don't have extradition treaties with the U.S. Chile has great
surfing and killer snowboarding. France has not quite as good surfing, but just as good snowboarding.
Me and Puker both agree on the tie-breaker: France has finer-looking babes, and we can go home and get fresh T-shirts and be on the next plane at LAX to
France, where at least they can't extradite us for murdering Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens in about 20 minutes. The dude has a 12-1 record -- you know
they'll come after us.
That's when Clemens gets sick to his stomach, and the spasm kind of rocks him out from where his neck is trapped under the bar rail. And suddenly he can
move again. And take his turn in the starting rotation.
I know all that is good. I've been reminding myself of that all day. But I kind of miss going to France.
Next week: In Chapter 35, Chris Webber asks our hero to be his agent.
 Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
