ONE CUP (Part 6)

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23

Ian McGregor

Ray Garrett was the sort of bloke I could enjoy getting to know. I remember the night we met up at the pancake house. We were waiting for our meal, and Ray was telling me about a bloke he’d met at his father’s funeral. “So this fellow I didn’t even know comes up to me during the visitation and shakes my hand, tells me his name,” Ray said.  “I’m not real good with names, plus there were probably a couple of hundred people there at least, so of course I forgot it almost immediately.”

I nodded, “Quite natch.”

“He starts telling me about how he once owed my dad money for a wagon load of hay, but he’d just lost his job as a mechanic when the local farm implement dealership went bankrupt, and he didn’t have enough to pay Dad. It was less than a week before Christmas, and he couldn’t even afford to buy presents for his kids. He didn’t tell Dad about that, though. He said he told Dad he’d give him all he had, sixty three dollars, I think it was, and since he was unemployed he would work off the rest by helping out on the farm, if Dad would let him.”

“What’d your old man say?” I asked.

Before Ray could answer, the waitress brought our food. We thanked her and then began the business of spreading the butter and applying generous portions of syrup. Ray took a bite, then said, “Dad agreed—”

“’S’cuse me,” a man with two young boys at his side interrupted. “Aren’t you Ian McGregor? The Tasmanian Devil?”

 “That’s right, mate,” I replied. Americans love it when you call them ‘Mate’.

A few years back, I’d have been jumpy if a bloke came up on me from behind. Not so much now the death threats had stopped.

His name was Steve or Joe or something like that, and he just wanted his boys – each with equally forgettable names – to meet a real live professional baseball player. He looked to his boys and said, “Well, go on! Don’t be shy! Shake his hand! Not every day you get to meet a player like Taz McGregor! Taz is real. He’s down to earth!” the father said. “He eats here just like us ordinary folks, even though he could afford to buy twenty of these restaurants!”

Then, of course I had to shake hands, sign autographs, and pose with each of them individually and collectively for pictures taken on the father’s cell phone. Ray was kind enough to snap one with me between the two boys with their pop standing directly behind me. All the while, I’m wondering why these kids aren’t home in bed at this hour.

“Thanks a lot, Taz! It means a lot to the boys. Say, I’d like to talk to you about an idea I have for a business. It’s a sure thing! Can. Not. Miss! I can get you in on the ground floor for say, four hundred grand, on a—”

I held up my hands, signaled Time Out. “I never talk business over a meal. Ruins the appetite. And my waffles are getting cold.”

“Oh, sure. No worries!” he laughed. “How about we set up an appointment and I’ll explain it all to you then? Is tomorrow morning, say around ten o’clock, good for you?”

“I’m no businessman, mate. All my financial decisions are made by my agent.” I handed him a card. “You’ll need to contact him. It’s out of my hands. Now, if you’ll excuse us . . .”

“Oh. Well, okay, sure.” He turned as if to go, then hesitated. “Say, Taz, if you’ll give me your e-mail address I’ll send the pictures to you!”

“That’d be great!” I replied with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster. “Just send them to my agent. His e-mail’s there on the card, and he’ll forward them to me. Don’t forget, now, I’ll be lookin’ for ‘em! G’day, mates!”

I took a bite of my waffles. Sure enough, they were cold.  I said to Ray, “That’s why I usually ring up room service.”

“But it gets old, living your entire life in a hotel room,” Ray said. “I don’t know about you, but I have to get out and circulate. Easier for me, though. Nobody knows me from Adam.”

I nodded. “I see you managed to eat your meal while it was still hot.” Ray’s plate was two-thirds empty, pushed to the side, and he now was sipping on his milk.

“Hope you don’t mind I didn’t wait for you,” Ray said. “Didn’t mean to be rude. Rather rude than hungry, though.”

“I can respect that,” I said honestly. “Maybe I need to adopt your philosophy. Anyway, you were telling me about your dad.”

Ray twisted his mouth, furrowed his eyebrows. “I was?”

“Yeah. Something about a hay wagon and a bloke at the funeral. . . “

“Right. Yeah . . . So the guy can’t pay Dad, but offers to work it off. Dad was smart enough to know it was that or nothing. So anyway, this fellow tells me just as he was about to leave, my Dad asked him how his family was holding up. The guy smiled and said they were doing just fine. He told me he held it together until he got to his truck, and then he broke down. He just sat there sobbing a couple minutes before he could drive home.”

“Bummer,” I said, for lack of anything more profound. I took another bite of the waffles. Not bad with the blueberry syrup, even when cold.

“I mean, come on, just look at us, Ian,” Ray said with a wave of the hand. “Here we are, two guys with no real marketable skills, living like kings, people jumping through their asses just to get us to acknowledge them, all so they can tell their family and friends they met us. Well, you anyway. And, for what? Because we play a game! Meanwhile, hard-working people are struggling just to pay their bills!”

“Not so loud, mate,” I cautioned, “we don’t want the blokes to catch on! We’d have to get real jobs!”

Ray laughed, and so did I.

“So, anyway, a few nights later, Christmas Eve, this fellow says he hears a racket outside.”

“A racket? What’s that?” I asked.

Ray looked at me quizzically, then caught on I didn’t know what he meant, and said, “A loud noise. A commotion.”

“You Americans and your slang,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever catch on.”

Ray hesitated, sighed and shook his head. “Anyway, he looks out the window and it’s really coming down, huge, wet snowflakes. He sees lights coming up the driveway. He sees this John Deere tractor, pulling two wagons loaded with hay. The tractor stops in front of the barn, and a man with a white beard in a red suit hops out of the cab and disconnects the wagons.”

“Father Christmas!”

Ray gave me another odd look. “Who?”

“You’d know ’im as Santa Claus,” I said, for clarification.

Ray nodded. “Before the farmer can put on his coat and go outside, the guy in the red suit hops back in the tractor cab and drives away without saying a word. When the farmer goes out to the barn, he sees this big sack leaning up against a wagon tire.” Ray stopped talking, closed his eyes and swallowed hard. A solitary tear was running down his cheek. I pretended not to notice as he wiped it away.

After a bit, Ray regained his composure and went on, “There were presents for the kids, who couldn’t wait to tell all their friends at church the next morning that Santa had come while they were still awake! And the reindeer were probably taking a break while Santa used the tractor to deliver the hay.”

I nodded. “Even we take pause for a Seventh Inning Stretch. God Himself put his feet up on the seventh day. I suppose reindeer need their rest, too.”

“You know, the fellow told me the thing he appreciated the most was my dad did allow him to work off the debt. He even insisted Dad let him work off what he owed Santa as well. Dad agreed. He knew you can’t give a man anything that means more to him than his self-respect. That was the real gift.”

“Your old man, he was pretty cool, eh?”

Ray looked down at the table, then lifted his head up, looking me directly in the eye. “I didn’t know it then, but yeah, Ian. My old man was pretty cool. We never did get along, though. I regret that. He rode me pretty hard, or so I thought. Looking back, I think maybe he was just doing his best to make a man out of me. I’m his only surviving son. I’ve got a lot to live up to. Nothing I can ever do on a baseball diamond will begin to compare to what Dad did that Christmas Eve.” Ray sighed. “We done here?”
“Guess so,” I said.

“Thanks for joining me, Ian. It was nice to have some good company.”

“No worries,” I said. “Tell you what, give me your number.” Ray rattled off ten digits, and I punched them in with the rest of my contacts, typed his name. “Okay, got it,” I said, then punched CALL. Ray’s phone rang. “That’s me,” I said. “Now you have my number as well. Anytime you want someone to join you, give me a call or a text.”

24

Ian McGregor

After the meal with Ray Garrett, I went to my hotel room straightaway for a relaxing, hot shower. After toweling off, I put on comfortable pair of shorts and a T-shirt, selected some relaxing music, settled in to the chair and closed my eyes. I do that a lot. It’s not meditation in the technical sense, where you stop thinking altogether. I just allow my thoughts to wander. Listening to Ray Garrett talk about his father got me to thinking about my own life, and my family.

Growing up, I always held on to the dream of playing Australian Rules football professionally, like my older brother, Steve. Steve was more the rugged sort, strong as an ox, and half as smart.

I could hold my own in footy, mind you, but with no offers coming my way, I was more than happy to sign up to play professional baseball in the United States. No worries. It’s a great sport as well, and for any bloke with the good fortune to make it to the major leagues, the eagle shits a big one, come payday.

The team made a big to-do about me being from down under. Whenever the game was on the line and I got up to throw in the bullpen, the hometown fans would start calling, “Coo-eee! Coo-eee!” The media called me the Tasmanian Devil. During home games, when I came in from the bullpen, the scoreboard would show Taz, the cartoon character, growling, moving about like a cyclone, waving his arms and panting. It was a real crowd pleaser. I kind of liked it myself.

On the road, they would boo me. Home or away, it was impossible for the opposing team to ignore my presence once the fans started in. It all contributed to my success.

Like most players, I read just about all the sports articles in which I was mentioned. Some writers said I would be a flash in the pan. Others thought I could walk on water. I don’t know. About the flash in the pan part, that is. I do know I definitely never walked on water.

 I performed pretty well my first season. I had a unique left-handed submarine delivery which served me well. As a closer, I was only expected to come in for an inning, two at the most, near the end of the game. The advantage being those who faced me would only have one opportunity to adjust to my unorthodox style in any given game. Any more, and they would likely figure me out. It might be another couple days, perhaps weeks, before they’d have another chance. It all worked out to make me a lot of money.

It wasn’t only me deserving the credit. No matter the score, whenever I came in to pitch, the rest of the team stepped their game up a notch. Infielders were making circus catches of balls that should have dropped in for Texas League singles. Outfielders were throwing runners out at the plate from the warning track. The team batting average—look this up on the internet if you don’t believe me—went up a full fifty-three points during the time I was in the lineup. So, you see, it wasn’t just me. The same could have happened with anyone else. The only way I can explain it is like this: The team fed off my competitive spirit. When I came in from the bullpen, they thought they couldn’t lose, so they didn’t!

It got kind of strange. Suddenly I was on talk shows, ESPN, TV adverts. I was called in to the office of Dominick Bradley, real estate mogul and the owner of the team, one Saturday morning before a double-header. “Ian, I want to change your uniform number,” he said the moment I walked through the door.

I was about to shrug and say, “Okay,” but he held up a hand, cutting me off.

“We’ll pay you a hundred grand bonus,” he said.

To which I said, “Okay.” Then, as an afterthought, I asked, “What’s my new number?”

From then on, I was wearing 111 – the Australian emergency phone number, like 911 in the states, on my back. I’d never seen a ballplayer with a three-digit number before. It seemed a bit odd, but what the hell, it felt the same on my back and I really didn’t give it any more thought. They even added a bit of flair to my entrance. Whenever the manager made the trip to the mound and waved me in from the bullpen, the scoreboard would light up with a caricature of the manager picking up a phone and punching in 111, followed by a loud ringing. And then a character sporting an outback hat with the brim turned up on one side, would answer the phone, and come stomping out, making a loud, crazed growl as I walked purposefully toward the pitcher’s mound. Yeah, back then, playing baseball was fun. But, all good things, as they say, must end.