Читать книгу Eavesdroppings - Bob Green - Страница 28

20 No Steroids for the Terriers

Unfortunately, today’s role models in professional baseball sustain their energy at manic levels by ingesting steroids, cocaine, Sudafed, and even Alka-Seltzer. These are called “performance-enhancing drugs.” George Brown finds this disgusting and quite unnecessary.

“I knew some great athletes on the old Galt Terriers baseball club in the 1930s,” George says, “and the only performance-enhancing drug they ingested was called ‘beer,’ and they never ingested it before or during a game, only after, usually on the bus.” This might explain why some of their post-game performances exceeded anything they did on the playing field.

George Brown recounts the time that Dave Johnson, who claimed to be a pitcher, humiliated the team by bombing out in Hamilton. Johnson, who pitched the ball the way he did the dice, ran an illegal gambling den under a grocery store on Dickson Street right across the road from the Galt Police Station. He was so bad in Hamilton that when the Terriers returned to Galt they stopped the bus at Soper Park so that four of the players could throw him into the creek above the dam. They then drove off and left him to soak.

One time in St. Thomas the Terriers’ coach, “Bush” McWhirter, who never used or needed performance-enhancing drugs at any time, got into such a row with the umpire that he was ordered off the field. He kept shouting from the stands, however, until two policemen carried him out of the park. The team, which had lost, picked him up at the courthouse on the way home.

On the bus McWhirter reviewed the game at the top of his lungs, ticking off all the umpire’s bad calls and stolen-base tag-outs. The players, fired up by McWhirter and a case of beer, began to boast about how fast they could run. Before the bus reached Paris they were running the bases in the aisle. At the south end of the Paris main street, by the cenotaph, McWhirter ordered the bus to stop. He declared there would be a race to see who was the fastest man on the team. It was 8:00 p.m. on a hot Saturday, and the street was crowded with pedestrians. Because of the heat the players had stripped down to their shorts. Young George Brown, who was the Terriers’ bat boy, was in constant fear that the whole team was about to be arrested, so he hid in the back of the bus.

“Eight or nine guys piled out,” George said, “and when McWhirter hollered, ‘Go,’ they streaked through the traffic a full block to the Arlington Hotel with the bus in pursuit.” As he recalls, George Heggie won the race. Boyd Shewan was a close second.

I can’t imagine Boyd Shewan running up the Paris main street in his underwear, especially since he became my morally rematrixed drill sergeant principal at Central School in Galt and would lecture the boys against peeing behind the trees in the playground.

Before he married Marjorie Dykeman, George Brown settled down to run a cycle shop and developed into a tempestuous athlete on the ball field and ice rink. His goaltending on the ice might have landed him in the National Hockey League today. George says he brought his temper under control by learning to play the violin. His brother, Dave, a Galt firefighter, was musical, too, and sang so that he caused people to cry. George gave up the violin one night when he smashed it over a friend’s head while watching a Toronto Maple Leafs–Boston Bruins hockey game on television. No telling when he’ll give up beer.

Back in those golden days no one ever got arrested for running down main street in their underwear. Now you can get arrested for carrying a cream pie within l00 yards of the prime minister.