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

37 страница из 92

One night in my junior year my father asked me, “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

I responded and he said, “We’re going to the Yankee Silversmith,” which was a fancy Middletown restaurant where the Wesleyan professors liked to eat. We only went to that restaurant on special occasions. I asked him why.

“Because the Boston Red Sox are taking us out to dinner.”

The baseball scouts had been watching me since I was a sophomore. Bots Nekola and Charlie Wagner scouted me for the Boston Red Sox. Harry Hesse of the New York Yankees contacted me, as did Len Zanke of the New York Mets.

Bots, the Sox’ top scout for New England, and Broadway Charlie Wagner, who had once been Ted Williams’s roommate, were the Red Sox scouts who hosted me and my family. Eating at a fancy restaurant in the company of two major league scouts was a little overwhelming for me. One of the first things Charlie Wagner asked me was “Do you like shrimp cocktail?”

“If you’re going to be a big leaguer,” said Wagner, “you gotta have shrimp cocktail.” And he ordered me one. Eating shrimp cocktail was one of the highlights of the visit.