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

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My baseball coach, Gene Pehota, was standing behind me, and he heard what I said, and he kicked me hard in the ass, removed me from the game, and kicked me off the baseball team.

A day or so later, my father and I asked Coach Pehota to let me back on the team.

“I can’t have Bill doing this,” he said to my dad. “As hard as he throws, he could kill somebody. We can’t have him throwing at people. He’s not going to play the rest of the season.”

And so I, one of the best pitchers in Connecticut, had to sit out my junior year of high school. I had to wait for American Legion ball to start during the summer to play ball again.

I like to say I got my temper from my grandpa, James Denehy, a fine Irishman and an alcoholic. He was once the head of public works in Middletown. I never met Grandpa Jim, but his wife, Anne, once told me that when a new mayor was elected, Grandpa was fired. According to Aunt Anne, after getting canned, Grandpa walked a block to the Elks Club, proceeded to get snockered, then headed back to his office in City Hall, where all the maps containing the locations of the sewers and water pipes in Middletown were stacked. Grandpa collected them, put them on the concrete steps of City Hall, and set them ablaze in a public display of spite and malice.