Читать книгу Rage. The Legend of "Baseball Bill" Denehy онлайн

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Tom was the perfect addition to King Arthur’s court; he was Sir Lancelot. I, on the other hand, was Robin Hood, a fun-loving, practical-joking scoundrel with unlimited potential and a deep-seated mean streak.

With my career over in my mid-twenties, I had to figure out how I would live the rest of my life, and that hasn’t been easy. I suffer from the disease of addiction. I have a wicked temper, and I was born with a self-destructive streak, which would ensure that my life after baseball followed the arc of my baseball career, with promising beginnings followed by crushing disappointments and failures. In each attempt to do well, I would come tantalizingly close to a roaring success, only to find myself empty-handed. My hot temper and insistence on never settling for less than being the best would contribute greatly to those failures. I weep to look back on it. Many have no idea how hard it is for me to stand before the world and share any of this.

Then, five years ago, at age sixty, I began to lose my eyesight, and now, because of the steroids I took as a player, I am blind. I realize that throughout my whole life I never had a Plan B, which means a rewarding career outside of baseball. I’ve had to struggle to gain similar satisfaction and still make the good money I was accustomed to making in baseball.