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

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“Unless you have copies of these,” said the new mayor, “we’re going to put you in jail.”

Some copies did exist, but not all, and every so often there’d be a leak in a water pipe or a sewer, and no one would know what to do because there weren’t any maps of it.

Addiction is in my genes. Like my grandfather, I wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger. And like Grandpa, I didn’t have any remorse.

I rejoined the Woodrow Wilson High School baseball team my senior year. I could bring it, and the rest of the team was a nose-to-the-grindstone bunch of overachievers, but we had no idea we would be state champions at the end of the season.

Getting thrown off the team for hitting Dave Rybczyk didn’t curb my sadistic tendencies. The coaches didn’t know that my teammates and I devised a sick, potentially deadly game. A number of our players bet a dollar for the chance to pull a number out of a hat. The center fielder was position number eight, and the player who picked the number eight out of the hat won the pot. My job was to drill the center fielder of the opposing team with the ball. For me, it wasn’t much different from the dunk tank game you played at the state fair, only in this game I was hitting my target with the ball. We did it twice. Both boys I hit ended up with bad injuries, so we talked it over and decided to stop.