Welcome back, blog faithful. I’m going to switch it up a little this week. Instead of ending this installment with a good story that didn’t make the final edit of my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” I’m going to lead off with it. This story is just too rich to leave for last, and it dates back to 1988.
The Sauget Wizards, of course, are a major ongoing theme in the book, because I played for them for so many years, but 1988 was a classic year filled with some of the best “characters” I ever played with, all on the team at the same time. One of those characters was Ray Schott.
Ray didn’t play for us, although he was heavily involved in just about every game that year. He was our batboy. As such, we adopted him as one of the guys and we were all really fond of Ray. 1988 was 29 years ago, so I’m assuming Ray was around 11 or 12 at the time. Just yesterday, when thinking about the “Sorry, Ray” story I’m about to tell, I reconnected with Ray on Facebook. One look at his page, after all these decades, instantly confirmed it was the same Ray Schott, nearly 30 years later.
As you might imagine, baseball fields, dugouts, and clubhouses are all places where the English language contains an above average amount of salty words. OK, far above average. Sailors may cuss as much, but probably not more. When I wrote about my youthful years as a batboy, for my dad’s Triple-A minor league teams, I recounted how a number of the Denver Bears said goodbye to me at the end of the summer with a warning. They said, “Remember, saying ‘Pass the f*****g salt’ isn’t going to go over very well with your mom. So, try to unlearn everything you picked up this summer.”
I managed to avoid cussing at the dinner table, but I failed at unlearning what is just normal talk before, during, or after any ballgame. Just about every guy I ever played with was the same way. The conversations were pretty “colorful” if you know what I mean. To the point where it gets whitewashed in our ears as if we never even said that stuff, and we were certainly never shocked to hear it. Yes, drag racers can be pretty much the same.
1988 was the first season we had a full-time batboy and by our first game or two we were all realizing that Ray’s young ears were absorbing a lot of stuff he was probably hadn’t been exposed to very much, at that age. We tried mightily to clean up our verbal acts, but it was impossible. We couldn’t unlearn all those years of talking like that.
So, we figured we’d get some sort of special dispensation if we just apologized every time we cussed. And we did that, all summer long. If we came back to the dugout blurting out a string of expletives, those bad words had to immediately be followed by, “Sorry, Ray.” If we did that, we figured it was OK. If any of us took a called third strike and walked back to the dugout upset, it would likely come out as, “Well #### me! That ###### struck me out with that piece of #### pitch? No ####ing way. Sorry, Ray.”
And it wasn’t just angry outbursts. General conversation was very much peppered with a basic set of six to eight classic curse words. A simple question like, “Who’s up this inning?” could realistically end up having two or three words you can’t say on the radio in it, by the time it was spoken.
Ray surely “grew up a lot” that summer, but in a bigger picture view of it I think it actually was a good thing for all of us. Having to add the “Sorry, Ray” to the end of any profanity-laced sentence diffused it immediately. We’d all crack up when the “Sorry, Ray” followed the string of curse words.
And, we won the league championship that year, capping it off by celebrating on the field before pouring champagne on each other’s heads in Sauget. Ray was obviously a good-luck charm!
After connecting on Facebook yesterday, I alerted Ray that this story would be in today’s blog. So, one more time for the sake of great memories, I’ll say it again. Sorry, Ray!
And, I’m sorry this story didn’t make it in the book. A lot of great (hilarious) stories ended up on the editing room floor, but now “Sorry, Ray” gets to see the light of day and be shared with the world.
Back to the present day, or at least recent days, I did venture southeast to Charlotte over the weekend, to attend the NHRA Mello Yello Carolina Nationals there on Saturday. As always, it was great to spend time with my racing family, including Team Wilkerson, my PR colleagues, and the new friends I’m making by getting to so many of these races in the second half of the season. It’s always good, and the PR group in the media center are a bunch of people who always make me smile and laugh. That’s good for the soul.
One of the highlights of the weekend was being able to pick up an actual copy of Drag Illustrated magazine and open it to page 42. I’d seen the PDF version of the Q&A story they’d done with me, but holding it in my hands was a totally different deal, in a really good way. It was weird, because I obviously knew it existed, and I’d already read it as a PDF, but then seeing in print, in such a highly respected and well produced magazine, took it to a completely new level. To the point where I immediately sat down and read it all over again (and maybe a time or two more, to be honest.)
Brandon Mudd did a great job with it, and the magazine staff also did a wonderful job with the layout. I’m honored to be in the publication, and thankful for their interest in “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts.” And, yeah, this might be a good time to click on the images to enlarge them. If you’re a big drag racing fan, it might also be a good time to think about subscribing. They cover it all, and do it very well.
A few moments after I had the joy of reading this story, I walked down the interior hallway within the magnificent tower behind the zMAX Dragway starting line, and the last door I passed was the one for the P.A. announcer’s booth. The pro categories had just wrapped up, so I hung out for a second to say hello to Alan Reinhart, who I’ve seemed to unluckily miss at the last few races. I’d be near him when his mic was live, or he’d be near the Wilk pit while I was somewhere else. On Saturday, I made sure that didn’t happen.
We had a nice chat, and talked about what we can do in St. Louis to get the word out to more fans, regarding the book. After all, I’m a St. Louis boy, with a dad who was a former Cardinal, and a mom who was a KMOX radio personality, and I went to school in the area from Kindergarten all the way to my college degree. There ought to be plenty to talk about. We’re planning on doing all we can at Gateway when the tour gets there at the end of next week.
And, when I was talking with Alan I discovered (much to my horror) that I’d never sent him the book. I thought I had, truly, but apparently I hadn’t or I shipped it to a wrong address. My plan was to send signed copies to a list of people who had been critical in its publication and promotion, but somehow Alan never got his.
He said, “Can I buy it?” and I said, “Not a chance. I won’t allow that.” Then he said, “Well, you know, whenever you get a chance…” He was leaving to go do some other things announcers do, so I said, “I’ll go get one right now. Where should I leave it?” He pointed to a laptop in the booth and said, “That’s my computer.” 15 minutes later, a signed copy was sitting next to his laptop.
And the reason it was only 15 minutes later was because Tim and Krista were gracious enough to let me hop on the golf cart to take the book back to the tower. zMAX Dragway is huge, in every measure of the term, and one of those measures, for us, was how far the Team Wilk pit area was from the tower and the staging lanes. Well beyond the end of the grandstand, and probably 250-300 feet beyond the scoreboards. That’s a long hike. I don’t work for the team anymore, obviously, so I’m sensitive about grabbing things or taking the golf cart without asking, and at a place like Charlotte the crew needs the golf cart just to get to the line and back. Now, I’m happy to erase that embarrassing mistake of not getting a book to Alan back when it first came out.
Once in St. Louis next week, I also plan on having my annual Farotto’s dinner with niece Kim and her hubby Chris (if he’s in town) on Friday night.
I then plan to spend some time driving around the area in a more in-depth way than I usually have time for when I’m there for the race. When I was on the tour all those years, I’d generally be lucky to even get out to the old neighborhood on Monday before my flight. This time, I’ve built in some extra time on Friday before I go the track on Saturday. I don’t think I can “see it all” but I’ll give it my best shot.
And, here’s some big news for the St. Louis race. If you’ve read the book, you certainly would recognize the name Stan “The Count” Osterbur. Stan was my roomie on road trips for a couple of years at SIUE, and one of my best friends on those college teams. He also then spent much of the 1978 summer as my roomie in the professional ranks, as a member of the Paintsville Hilanders in the Appalachian League. How big a part does he play in the book? Well, of the 39 photos in the back, he’s in three of them. That’s an enormous percentage for anyone other than the author himself.
With all that as the back story, Stan will be coming with me to the track on Saturday. It will be his first NHRA experience, and we’ll do all we can to make it an unforgettable one. I’d be surprised if he didn’t get more than a few autograph requests once book owners learn he’s there. I love the fact that in the past few years I’ve been able to introduce former Paintsville teammate Vince “The Bronze Fox” Bienek to NHRA, out in Sonoma, and now “The Count” will get to feel the power and inhale the nitro, in St. Louis. Don’t be scared, Roomie. You’ll be fine!
Had I been going to all the races in the second half of the season, I’d be getting ready to head to the airport again because Reading is this weekend, in Pennsylvania. But, for budgetary and marriage reasons, I’m not going. It’s an expensive race to get to, in terms of air travel and hotel costs, and frankly my wife Barbara has been absolutely swamped and consumed by her job for many months now. Unlike the stunt we mutually pulled off last week, where we did one of our patented “ships passing in the night” routines as she returned home just as I was leaving and then vice-versa a couple of days later, I want to be home this weekend. That’s more important than selling a few books.
So I’ll leave you with two standard requests…
A) If you perused this blog installment and liked what you saw, please “Like” it by clicking the button at the top. The more “Likes” the merrier.
B) If you’re still thinking, “I really gotta get Wilber’s book one of these days” it’s a good time to do that. Fall is in the air, winter won’t be far behind, and a fun book will be a good companion as you sit by the fireplace and sip on hot tea. Or a cold beer. Or a glass of anything, for that matter. Could be a good Christmas present, too!
You can get it right here, of course:
Thanks everyone, and best of luck to all my racing colleagues in Reading this weekend. I’ll be watching!
Bob Wilber, at your service and still saying “Sorry, Ray.”