Henry Wiggen weighs in on Manny, A-Rod, false pep and sportswriters and clucks

I wrote it all up for you 1 time a long time ago. I had just gotten into a scrape with a big lug cluck who owned the hotel we was staying in in Aqua Clara at camp because Perry Simpson was holed up at the barracks with the young punks rather than rooming with us at the hotel on account of his color.

This is what I wrote:

“Naturally the writer got hold of what happened, more or less. I think if you was to go by night to the darkest jungle of Africa and paint yourself black and dig a hole and climb in you would no sooner get to the bottom then there would be a writer there asking you how come.”

We’ll, I figure that must be how Manny feels, and A-Rod and all them others with funny names and some without funny names who have been caught up in this drug deal. But really, none of your ballplayers ought to feel that way because even if they dig a hole everybody will always know every little thing they do because all the clucks will want to read about it. The 1 thing they should not be is surprised.

I guess we did manage to hide the pep the trainers give us from them donkey writers and the clucks that read them. The pep was tricky. Red Traphagen called it false pep and said a fellow ought to not depend on it. I think he was 1 half right about that. If you got too much pep too early in the game you might just peter out when the money innings come. Better to wait for the money innings but if you waited 2 long you might be sitting on the bench with a towel wrapped around your shoulders when the pep kicked in.

Well, I do not suppose any of the boys thought pep was cheating. I never did think about it more than 2 times because Red was right as usual about the false pep so I did not ask for it again until nearly time for the flag. When you are in the run for the flag and money is in the pot you will do a lot of things.

But if you are a pitcher and the hitter has pep and you have thrown about 457 pitches that day and you do not have pep or any energy left, for that matter, you are in a jam and when the trainer offers you pep between innings in the clubhouse, you might be tempted.

That is all I got to say about Manny for now except that I do not think Dutch would have been able to stomach them braids, he would have eat him out every day until he had a hair cut. But 1 thing I do not think the clucks who read this thing of yours understand is that the boys do not really give 2 s---ts about what you write or what the clucks think. This is what I wrote about sportswriters in The Southpaw which was the hardest winter I can remember. I wrote 12 chapters and lost 12 pounds and did not get out of the house into the snow a-tall. Anyway, about them donkey sportswriters:

“They are like fans. Red says the only difference between writers and the fans is that the fans have at least got the honesty to pay their own way in the park.”

I have got to stop now and catch the mail.

--Henry “Author” Wiggen, from retirement