I remember one time we were having a
little scrum after practice. It had been raining out and, as often
happened, a bunch of the guys on the team broke out into various
wrestling matches. Why did we do this? Because we were stupid teenageboys. Well this particular rainy afternoon my best friend to this
day, (not yet Dr.) Scott Kennedy, decided he would take on Coach
Hoppel. Scott was a good sized kid. He had played linebacker and
tight end on the football team and he had wrestled for the school as
well. But nobody had ever had the guts to mess with Hoppel. It was
pretty incredible because before anyone really knew what was going on
Scott had both a) done the stupidest thing any of us had ever seen by
taking on The Man and b) amazed us all by getting up in Hoppel's
chest and driving him back-pedaling and seemingly off-balance toward
a large puddle out behind second base. Holy crap! Scott's gonna get
him!
Then, in no more than a nanosecond, JimHoppel bent the laws of physics. I swear to you he was literally
falling backward into the puddle with a 220 lb athlete grabbing hold
of his shirt right up in his chest and driving him downward when all
of a sudden Scott is flying and twisting in the air over Hoppel's body and being
half thrown and half pile driven like a rag doll square onto his back
into the middle of this brown, muddy puddle. It was perhaps the
quickest movement I have ever seen and yet I'm positive I watched it
in slow motion. There was no real explanation to where the torque
came from to wrench Scott over him like that, but WHIP-WHOOSH-SPLAT.
Scott is on his back. But Hoppel isn't done. You see his hand pull up
Scott's shirt, he closes his fist, rips his hand away from Scott's
exposed belly then thrusts his fist into Scott's face, like a
freaking flash, and yells “ODD OR EVEN? ODD OR EVEN????” Then hethrows the belly hairs down onto Scott's astonished and defeated face
and casually walks away as if nothing has happened. I'm telling you,
I'd never seen anything like it before nor since.
That story was actually a bit of a
tangent. I just got to remembering it because Jim Hoppel was the
reason I was able to play on a couple of all-star teams that traveled
on behalf of the Oregon Baseball Academy (OBA) back in those days. Am I about to brag
that I was kind of at one time technically (did I mention “kind
of”?) an all-star? Noooooooooooo. This story isn't about the fact
that on this particular trip I batted .500 including 2 home runs and
a third shot off the very top of the fence. It's not about the fact
that more than half my hits were for extra bases and that, oh by the
way, this was actually the best pitching I probably ever faced in my life. I'm actually pretty sure that a one-day-to-become
MVP of the National League played for the team that beat us in the
championship game...a guy named Jimmy Rollins.
None of that is what this story is
about. This story is about what happens when unprepared people take 4
complete stranger teenage boys into their home without forethought.
You see, at the time these OBA teams
would keep these trips inexpensive by a) driving most of the players
across multiple states in a 15 passenger van and b) having us crash
with host families instead of hotels. So after a very long, cramped
drive from Portland to Salt Lake City with a bunch of sweaty, randy,
dirt-bag, 17 year old baseball kids we were doled out to a group of
awaiting hosts.
Our host family had a decent sized
house so instead of bunking with one other guy I was put in a house
with 3 of my teammates. One of the guys was a friend and classmate of
mine named Jeff Brunold. He was the only other kid from my high
school on the team. Jeff was an amazing hitter, but had his senior
season cut short because of a self-inflicted broken finger. He had
slammed his helmet down (with his finger still in it) after a second
baseman had made an amazing diving catch against him.
There was also a self-confident, baby-faced kid from a private school
in Portland named Ash (it's unbelievable I just found this guy on the internets!) and a tall, goofy redneck from Hermiston
named Eric (I actually can't remember his name but Eric will do). We
were all picked up by a couple in their early 50s in their minivan.
The drive to their house was quiet.
We arrived at their house as it was
getting dark outside. When we walked in and started down the hallway
it wasn't too difficult to put the pieces together...we were in SLC,
there are pictures of about 8 kids on the wall...this is a Mormon
family. Well...I wasn't a drinker so this probably wasn't going to
affect me a whole helluva lot. STOMP! What the?...STOMP STOMP! Hands
flying around. Hands. Awkward silence. What the?... “Boys, this is
Lucas. He's our 10 year old. He's deaf so what we do is stomp on the
ground to get his attention. He feels the vibrations...it's a way of
hearing us.” Whoa! Okay. We're not in Kansas anymore.
So, stomping aside, this household was
freaking weird. It just felt strange being there. The dad was a
little too old. The mom was a little to submissive. The cute daughter
had a picture on the wall, but we never saw her (trust me...we were
looking). The reason this family hosted us was because their son who
was our age was on the host team scheduled to play against us in the
tournament. I have never seen a kid less interested in playing
baseball. In fact, he never once spoke to us while were there. Not
once. He kind of looked like Napoleon Dynamite and it felt as though
his dad had forced him to play ball and he felt like we, as
ballplayers, were somehow competing for his dad's affection. Does
that sound weird? It was.
The only thing I remember about this
kid is that he brought his girlfriend over and watched TV with her a
lot. I remember the mom telling us he was “courting her” which
was a phrase I didn't know and didn't bother to investigate. I just
figured that nerdy boys in SLC 'court' nerdy girls while the rest of
us “go out” with them. Whatever.
So that first night it was about 9:00
when we had all our stuff put in the bonus room where we slept. That
was when the parents came in and told us it was time to go to bed (and by "bed" I mean the floor and a shoddy sofa) and
they would see us in the morning. What?!?!?! I'm 17 years old, I have
two baseball games tomorrow, I'm crashing with three other guys, I've
been cooped up in a 15 passenger van all day, I'm in a strange town
and you're telling me it's 9pm so it's time to go to bed? They
disappeared. We hung out for about 10 minutes before deciding we were
hungry. All four of us tip-toed our way into the kitchen to
investigate. Nothing. What? Nothing. If you've never been a teenage
boy maybe you don't know what it's like to be in a constant state of
starvation. Where is the food? We went to sleep (a couple hours
later) hungry...empty...
The next morning it was cold cereal and
off to the field. When we returned in the evening we were expecting
dinner, but I don't think they were expecting to feed us. I'm pretty
sure they scraped together some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
We didn't have much to do since our “host brother” was literally
hiding from us (I pictured him cowering under his covers occasionally poking his beady little eyes out to make sure we weren't standing there taunting him with our baseball gear reminding him how inept he was at the game his father loved). We still hadn't seen the cute sister featured on the
wall in the hallway. At one point I poked my nose into the garage
(hoping for a fridge with something...anything...in it PLEASE FEED ME!) and found it
was packed from wall to wall with electric wheelchairs and wheelchair
parts. To me it was like a junkyard for all the mutant toys created by the psychopathic neighbor kid in Toy Story.
After dinner (or, as we called it,
snack time) we asked if there was a store we could go to (BECAUSE WE WERE STARVING!). They told
us we could walk down to the local grocer...it was about a mile away.
And so we walked. Well...actually this Suburban full of girls pulled
into a driveway about a half mile from the house and we asked them to
drive us. They were cute and we were idiots so they quickly dropped
us off at the store then high-tailed it out of there. Thanks ladies, I don't blame you.
I remember specifically that Jeff and I
bought some food and we started telling the 20-something cute female
checker that we were stuck in the host-house-from-hell. They were
keeping us alive on a minimal diet and they all stayed locked away in
their rooms during the few hours they were awake. She said something
like “awwww...I wish I had room to have you crash at my apartment.”
Missed opportunities...
So the next day they promised us a
feast. And, for the one time, a feast we had. They barbecued hot
dogs (pretty sure they were the Bar-S dogs made from chicken, pork
and turkey parts [what in the world are gibblets?]). I was able to eat at least two and maybe three
dogs along with all the fixings. A couple other host families and
teammates were there, so we figured they were just putting on a show
to make it appear they were indeed nourishing us. And something
amazing happened at the bbq. The girl on the wall came out of her
room. She ate with us. I don't remember her speaking. But she was
there. She had a sweet face and shiny smooth hair. And when she was
finished eating she dissipated...vanished into thin air never to be
seen by any of the four of us again. To this day I question her actual existence. It's entirely possible that in my state of prolonged malnourishment and teenage hormones I simply imagined that there was a cute girl in the house. If you ever bump into Brunold or Ash or even (probably not named) Eric, ask him.
Well, all of us had been complaining to
the coach about the living situation. I'm sure we embellished, but it
really was a crappy host family. We may as well have been staying in
a cheap motel. We complained about the lack of food. About the lack
of interest anyone in the family took in showing us anything. We
rightly complained about the stupid kid who was supposed to be
showing us around but instead was “courting” (whatever that
meant). To be frank, I was a little worried my body might end up buried in that wheelchair graveyard.
So they gave us a new home! No kidding.
We finished our last game on like day 4 and our coach let us know
that our bags were at the field and a new family was going to take us
in. Like a stray dog through an open door I was giddy, wagging my
tail and looking for somewhere to pee. So this lady picks us up in
her mini-van. She had two little kids (I really can't say how
old...maybe 4 and 6?) so we're packed in there pretty tight. I didn't
really think much of it when she a) got lost on the way to her house
and b) came to a stop at a green light. I should have. Oh...and I don't recall saying goodbye to or thanking or even seeing the other host family again. It was a clean divorce...we let them keep the kids.
We did eventually get to her house. She
introduced us to her husband. She let us know they were the one
non-Mormon family in Salt Lake. And then she said the most beautiful
thing anyone has ever said to me. She said, “here in this freezer
we stocked up so you can feel free to have anything in here any time
you want. We just stocked up at Costco.” Is this heaven? “No, it's Utah.”
Next morning we head up for breakfast.
15. I think they had Eggos for us. As many as we wanted. It was
awesome. Butter, syrup, mmmmmore please! Wait...15 what? Oh right. 15 as in 15 empty beer cans upside down in
the kitchen sink. Wow. Well, maybe that accounts for the stopping at
green lights and whatnot. But who cares? They're nice and there's
food and their house downstairs is perfect for us and I just used all three forms of the homonym "thare" in one run on sentence! They had a Nintendo downstairs and a TV. The kids liked playing
with us. We were allowed to walk around the neighborhood. All the world was right.
One night we put an old shoe on top of
a rock wall and threw dirt clods at it until it was knocked off (I
made the final blow). One night we went on a walk and found a
construction site...climbed into a big backhoe, found the key and
tried (unsuccessfully) to fire it up. One night we walked by a sign
outside a music shop that read “BEAT THE RUSH, REPAIR YOUR HORN
TODAY.” About two seconds later it read “BEAT THE RUSH, REPAIR
YOUR HORNY TOAD.” Word play high jinks!
Over the course of a few days the other
guys had hit if off pretty well with the dad. At this point he was pretty clearly an
alcoholic. Every morning there were X-teen empty beers in the
sink...this was a nightly ritual. We were downstairs when the
drinking happened so we didn't really know the routine, but the
evidence was clear. So the other guys were asking him to buy us beer.
We had some money our parents had given us for the trip...we just
needed a buyer. He wasn't opposed, but his wife was. So the deal was
dead. I really didn't care because I didn't drink. You may or may not
believe this, but my first sip of alcohol was when I was married and
nearly 22.
So the last night came around and, no
shizz, this guy comes through with a half-rack of cheap beer. Eric
grabs one. Ash grabs one. Jeff grabs one. Eric goes for number two.
Door opens. The mom comes in. The poop hits the fan. She looks at us
like we're the devil and yells something. She then marches straight
upstairs and we start hearing an argument. It's not good. “How
could you?” “Contributing to the delinquency of...” “Supposed to
be supervising them!” “What about our kids?” “I'm taking the
kids and leaving!” What? Yes. That's what happened.
Rustle-rustle-rustle. Plead, plead, plead. Door slam. Car engine.
Doppler effect (vroooo-ooo-oooommmmm). No more mom. Dad comes
downstairs, points at all of us and says “You little sh*ts! You had
to ruin it for all of us, didn't you?” Door slams. Car engine.
Doppler effect. We're all alone.
We were all pretty shaken up. I didn't
feel guilty because, as I said, I didn't even want the beer. The
other guys kept drinking as they contemplated the consequences of what
had just happened. We had just broken up a marriage. I did the only
thing I could think to do. I went upstairs and microwaved one of
those amazing frozen, single-serving, deep-dish pizzas they used to
sell by the barrel at Costco and licked the silver cardboard lining
clean.
The next morning the dad had come to
his senses. He was sober. He was sorry. He apologized to us and told
us this had been bubbling under the surface for a long time. He would
drop us off at the field with our stuff because it was the last day
and we were headed home after the game. We found out at the field
from the mom's sister that this was the first time anything like this
had ever happened between the two of them. She had never taken the
kids and left...ever. To this day I wonder what ever became of them,
but I don't really remember anything about them other than that
amazing pizza and I don't think they make those things anymore.
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