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

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Homestead wasn’t a town for nineteen- and twenty-year-old baseball players. It’s probably why the Mets picked it. It had an army base and not much else. Manager Solly Hemus, another hard-bitten old-timer, had no curfew. One night a number of my teammates and I decided to drive to Miami and have some fun at the Fontainebleau Hotel.

Tug McGraw, his brother Hank, Kevin Collins, Terry Christianson, and I had a good time drinking and dancing. On the way back, somewhere south of Miami at two o’clock in the morning, we saw a sign for The Marina.

“Hey, let’s check this out,” said Tug. Hank, our driver, headed for the wharf.

From the distance we could see a large, black shark, hanging from a hook. Tug had an idea. We walked to the dock. Tug asked the fishermen on the dock if they wanted the six-foot-long creature. One of the fishermen asked, “Unless you cut it up and eat it, what are you going to do with it?”

Tug, with a gleam in his eye, asked the fisherman if we could have the shark. We had all been drinking, so that probably had some effect on our decision making.