What the heck is it with ballplayers and their fascination with being a ventriloquist, taxidermist and government surplus. When I came across this … I couldn’t believe it.
A long time ago, in the back of comic books (I think), there was a little gadget that was the size of a penny that a guy put under his tongue and it was advertised that it would instantly let the user throw your voice anywhere. One of our geniuses got one of these things. He thought he’d play tricks in the dugout one night while sitting near the head coach and his assistant. The only problem was every time he’d open his mouth the only thing that came out was a real sick phillizzzsist…phillzzzsssssss. At first our skipper thought the bullpen phone was buzzing. So a …”what da you want? …” ahhhh , I don’t know…what do you want”…”I didn’t call you, you called me!!!”. It was kind –a funny, but after the fifth time an ugly mood settled in … seeing how we were loosing and badly. Our skipper was a big guy – came in rug sizes … 9 X 12 … and had a temper. He almost pulled the bullpen coach right through the wires. We later found out what our joker had, only after a short trip to a local emergency room when the thing lodged in his windpipe. ( I wonder how dat happen??)
Another guy we had that same year took up taxidermy – stuffing animals. It seemed like every other day we got a run down on how and what he was stuffing. So, one the guys in a sarcastic way challenged him to bring in some of his stuff and show us. Which he did. Bright and early one morning he carried in a squirrel – right past security, and put it a room that we used for meetings and private phone calls. That same morning I came in with our head coach and our conversation was of a sensitive nature so we finished in this small meeting room. After we finished he ask me to leave and close the door so he could have some privacy. Well folks… he sat down, reached into the desk draw that had the phone, and without paying too much attention … grabbed hold of good ole squeaky the squirrel …and what followed was a …WHOOOOAAAAA!
From the other side of the glass windows of that office it looked like our skipper was having a real knock-down and dragged-out fight with his bullpen jacket. After things got back to normal – if we could call it that, good ole squeaky looked like he had got the better of our skipper. Too bad too – cause the squirrel looked like he was blasted out of snow blower.
Another guy brought a surplus Navy weather balloon to the stadium. when he found it exhausting trying to inflate the thing, he used one of the ground keeper’s utility buggies. The only problem was the exhaust pipe got too hot to hold on to … and this inflated behemoth lumbered across the outfield under a gust of wind right in the direction of a grounds crew.
( what were the odds ) For some strange unforeseen reason – the grounds crew had shovels, spades, sprinkler heads, rakes and other stuff with sharp things. Well, it wasn’t long before…KERPOWWW. The weather balloon was full of some sort of grayish white powder. The thing that cracked our guys up was, the balloon popped while pressing some of the crew against the billboard fence – leaving little gingerbread like outlines. The only thing that saved those involved was that a couple of sponsors
thought it was a pretty cleaver advertising