Men with Balls: The Professional Athlete's Handbook

by Drew Magary

  When signing, always be sure to include your jersey number, plus a brief message to the fan in question that incorporates some sort of cliché from your chosen sport (“Dear Mikey, your mother can give me strokes anytime! Love, John Daly”). Your signature should be fluid and distinctive. This will be hard to master, since you are part of the generation raised on computers and have handwriting that resembles an EKG monitor. Check out some of the signatures below for a good guide on how to sign.

  (John Elway)

  (Gilbert Arenas)

  (Barry Bonds)

  (Arnold Palmer)

  (Chris Simms)

  (Johnny Damon)

  One last thing: you can refuse an autograph request if the fan does not have a pen. Even kids. If they can’t be bothered to remember a goddamn Sharpie, fuck ’em.

  Clippable Motivational Slogan!

  Remember: we’re in this business for the fans. Largely because they’re so easy to bleed dry. God, I just fucking hate them so MUCH.

  — MARGE SCHOTT

  HEAR IT FROM A MASCOT!

  I don’t think you understand just how fucking hot it is in here

  by The Phillie Phanatic

  I’m a mascot. Yes, I know you find this inherently funny. I get paid to wear a ridiculous outfit and then go and start pretend fights with umpires. I get why people don’t take me seriously. I get why people find it humorous when a five-year-old comes up and head-butts me in the nuts. Ha ha. Hysterical. If it weren’t happening to me, I’d laugh too. I know you pros don’t think that my job is all that difficult compared to yours.

  But I don’t think you understand just how fucking hot it is in here.

  I’m not kidding. Being inside this outfit is like landing on the surface of Venus. I mean, look at this thing. Fucking look at it. It’s made out of 90 percent Styrofoam and 10 percent regenerated cellulosic fiber. Just screams breathable, doesn’t it? MRI machines are less constrictive than this god-awful piece of shit. I smell like a tackle box when I take it off.

  Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bullshit that baseball players have to wear gray polyester pants in the summer. That doesn’t look like fun. But dude, I work in a fucking coffin. You have a dugout to go to for cooling off. You get a bench to rest on. Shit, you even get free Gatorade. Me? I gotta stay out on the field in the sun the whole goddamn game. And field temperatures in Philly can hit 120 in August. Do I get water? Do I even get ice chips to suck on? No. Sometimes I hallucinate. Just yesterday, I saw Jimmy Rollins turn into a Creamsicle. That shit ain’t right.

  And, on top of that, I have to dance. That’s right. I have to remain in constant, gyrating motion during the course of the entire game. If I stop once, just once, everyone in the crowd boos and throws peanut shells at me. It’s as if they’re shooting at my feet. Oh, and I can’t take my headpiece off either. No, no, we’d hate to ruin the magic for little Johnny out in the stands, watching the game with his father on the one weekend a month Daddy has visitation privileges.

  And God forbid I fart in this thing. Seriously, one time I farted in the first inning of a game of a doubleheader and nearly died of methane poisoning four hours later. This thing is like a fart incubator. Farts can’t leave here. They can’t disperse into the air like a standard fart. Even the most innocuous “Psst! I got a secret!” fart has punishing long-term staying power here. I served in Iraq and was subject to numerous germ warfare drills. And it never got as bad as the shit that goes on in here.

  I can’t even scratch my nuts. Yeah, I see you guys grabbing your junk during the game. Christ, how I’d love to do that. Half the game, my balls are stuck on the roof of my taint. What sweet relief it would be to just pry them off and let them hang back down. But no, if I scratch my balls, suddenly I’m some perv who wants to molest kids. Jesus. None of these people have had to walk around for two hours squeezing their own testicles between their legs with every alternate step. They have no idea what kind of suffering I go through in here. None. I hate them.

  Even if I could scratch my nuts, I can’t. There’s a sixteen-inch layer of padding directly in front of my crotch, and I’m wearing gloves. A little nut scratch does nothing for me. I gotta retract my arm out of the sleeve and then go down into the outfit to hit pay dirt. But then I got my right arm hanging limp on the costume, and then people stare at me like, “What’s wrong with Mr. Phanatic’s arm? Did he have a stroke?”

  There’s more. See this horn? You think that’s where my mouth is, right? Wrong! My eyes see out of it. That’s right, they put the eyehole at the end of a very long tube at the center of my face. Why not just fuse my pupils together and be done with it? I’ve now named all the pores on the bridge of my nose. This one’s named Jim.

  I don’t even know why the Phillies have a mascot. Kids are terrified of me. What kid isn’t going to shit his pants at the sight of a green space alien with blue eyebrows rushing in to give him a hug? I may as well carry a cleaver around with me wherever I go.

  So when you see me dancing out there, just remember: I may not be a pro athlete like you, but I am an athlete. A big, green, sweaty athlete who needs to rub his entire body with prescription Certain Dri prior to each game. Remember that I’m constantly on the verge of pulling a Korey Stringer out there. Be nice to me. Take pity. Pat me on my poofy tail. I need the support. And fresh towels.

  Because sports alone aren’t that interesting: gamblers.

  For the average fan, the problem with being emotionally invested in a team is that emotional investments have no tangible payoff. Yeah, your home team winning a championship is a nice feeling. But let’s face it: you gotta wade through a whole lot of shit just to get to that one moment. It can take years of suffering through any number of pointless regular season games and entire seasons of rebuilding. And, even then, it’s never a guarantee your favorite team will win it all. Especially if that team is the Minnesota Vikings. Fucking Vikings. There’s only one thing that can make the eternal wait somewhat tolerable: the excitement of losing money.

  Why do sports fans gamble? It’s a self-esteem thing. If a fan places a bet on a team and that team wins, he gets to fancy himself a genius. He can even tell people of his little victory and offer gambling advice until he becomes as insufferable as Sarah Jessica Parker, which is what all gamblers do. You, the professional athlete, get to experience the glory of winning games at the highest level of competition. Gambling is a fan’s way of becoming indirectly involved in the outcome of a game, and then experiencing a seedy, bastardized version of that glory. And what better way to try to mimic the thrill of winning a Super Bowl than by placing a $10 wager on it at the MGM Grand sports book, then watching the game in an overcrowded, smoky lounge surrounded by eighty-year-olds who are hoping to die before facing the next month without their lost Medicare stipend? It’s a pretty ingenious line of thinking.

  The other purpose gambling serves is to get fans excited about games they otherwise wouldn’t care about. Remember, the reason for being a sports fan is to distract oneself from having to think, or from having to live life. By gambling on more sports, fans have an excuse to watch more of them, thereby blocking out an even greater portion of the real world. And this is good, because the real world is fucked up.

  Now, most gamblers lose. Big. Most of them accrue a pile of debt that not only bankrupts them but also bankrupts the family members who try to bail them out. But if you think that stops a gambler from being a smug asshole, you’re wrong. Extremely wrong.

  You see, the more a gambler loses in cold hard cash, the more he gains in supposed gambling experience. This is why you’ll hear gamblers say things like, “Four and a half? Pfft. Vegas clearly has no clue how to set the line for this game.” They have no better feel for gambling than you or I. But that lost money allows them to pretend that they do, to pretend they’ve actually learned something to change the outcome the next go-round. And that’s all that matters. Vegas has long thrived on people dumb enough to believe they can outsmart Vegas. And, as long as moron
s roam the Earth, it will continue to do so.

  During your career, you may be approached by bookies and gamblers looking to wrangle useful betting information out of you. You can usually spot one of them from a mile away. Is he wearing a baseball hat pulled way down? Are his fingernails chewed down to disgusting little nubs? Does he have psoriasis? Bingo. That’s a gambler.

  Nothing like Kenny Rogers described, is he?

  Don’t give him any information. You could be violating the most sacred rule of your league, which is to never become involved in gambling on your sport. Everyone else can gamble on your sport, but you cannot. Why? Because you could ruin the integrity of your sport, which would, in turn, ruin the integrity of gambling on your sport. If gamblers knew your sport was fixed, they’d stop watching it, which would hugely impact league revenues. Your league can’t afford to have you gamble on games when they have so much invested in fans who gamble on games. You’d be breaking the circle of trust.

  Many players have given their reputations a black eye by colluding with gamblers. The 1919 Black Sox conspired to rig the World Series and paid a heavy price. They became the most notorious team of all time and even had movies made about them. Hell, no one remembers the 1919 Reds, who actually won the Series. The 1919 Black Sox became true immortals. You don’t want to have that happen, do you? Look at Shoeless Joe Jackson. The guy had no shoes, for fuck’s sake. Nor do you want to end up like Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball both for gambling and for having persistent, terrible BO. It’s best if you avoid the whole gambling scene altogether. You don’t want to know about stuff like parlays and vigorishes anyway. That’s a douchebag’s vocabulary.

  Besides, traditional sports gambling is becoming a thing of the past. Fantasy sports are the real wave of the future.

  A more interactive way to not be active: fantasy sports.

  The beauty of fantasy sports is that they render real sports all but irrelevant. That’s why they’re called “fantasy” leagues. Sure, real leagues like the NFL are cool. But imagine a league called the League of Extraordinary Bearfuckers, with teams like Fred’s Cornholio, Stuart Scott’s Lazy Eye, I Heart Vag, The Eskimo-Raping Shitheels, and John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Beaver. That’s the league fans like me fantasize about. And fantasy leagues help make that fantasy a real fantasy!

  Fantasy leagues superimpose an entirely new game over the game you currently play. Instead of rooting for their home team to win, fans can now root for your kicker to kick a field goal of forty yards or longer, while also hoping that your running back is held to sixty yards or less. Don’t you see how much better that is than just rooting for normal games? By creating an entirely fictional sport dependent upon the arbitrary statistical results of a real sport, fans have an opportunity to become even more divorced from reality. Take me. I rarely answer to the name Drew Magary anymore. My preferred identity is that of HotCarl76, and that’s far more rewarding. HotCarl76 owns a football team. Drew Magary owns three tracksuits and a ColecoVision. He’s also a peachfucker. Who would you rather be?

  Fantasy sports do present one problem for you, the player. And that is that fans have become even more emotionally dependent on your on-field performance. The average fan loves to bitch that he could run your team far better than current management. The problem with fantasy sports is how often they prove that fan wrong. There’s a real danger here. Many fans have mundane lives, but if they can maintain the illusion that they are smarter than the general manager of a professional baseball or football team, that’s enough to sustain their existence. If it turns out they can’t even run a goddamn fantasy squad without it sinking to the bottom of the ocean, what hope is there in life? Disappointment can transform into homicidal tendencies so easily.

  In fact, you’d be surprised at how fantasy leagues help turn fans into even bigger assholes than management. They’ll be far quicker to place blame for any failure squarely on your shoulders. They’ll be more eager to trade or cut you. And they’ll happily bad-mouth you to anyone within fifty feet. Thought Bill Polian was a ballbuster? He’s nothing compared to me. If I see Shaun Alexander in an airport, I’m gonna fucking stab him.

  By performing poorly, you’re messing up the idyllic imaginary life of many fans. You’re killing the fantasy, so to speak. And the psychological ramifications of that can be bloody and horrifying. So, if a fan walks up to you in the parking lot and says, “I need some TDs out of you this week, my man!” you’d best run. Run as far the fuck away as possible. That guy will gut you like a fish if there’s no one else around. And if you’re Daunte Culpepper, who followed up a thirty-nine-TD year in 2004 with just six TDs in 2005, I have to say you deserve it. You worthless bust.

  Deeply Penetrating the Numbers

  –$578,903

  The cumulative lifetime winnings of the average professional handicapper total –$578,903. They are called handicappers because their bookies have handicapped them.

  Chapter 6

  The Best and Worst Part of Athletic Superstardom

  Women

  They love you for you, conditionally! Know your woman!

  For you, the pro athlete, a woman can often be a ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, I mean this as a metaphor, and not in the literal sense. If women actually detonated, there’d be no problem. Provided you aren’t in the area at the time of the blast. But, in reality, dealing with women is the trickiest part of your new life. There’s a delicate balance here. On the one hand, you want to extract as much sweet, delicious poontang from your exalted status as humanly possible. On the other, you want to avoid any long-term consequences resulting from such encounters, including bad relationships, unwanted offspring, low cash flow, surprise bouts of syphilis, etc. If you do it right, you’ll have George Clooney’s life. If you fuck it up, you’ll have Brad Pitt’s life, complete with seventeen undisciplined children and a cyanide pill as your only way out. Which women out there will take the least bucks for your bang? Here are some examples.

  HOOKER. The great thing about hookers is that, unlike normal women, all the costs involved are clearly stated up front. You don’t have to buy a hooker a canary yellow diamond necklace if you get caught screwing around with a different one. You’re paying for sex instead of paying for everything but the sex, and that’s a huge cost savings in the long run. Plus, they’ll do whatever you ask. You don’t have to spend weeks trying to introduce the idea of anal. They’re cool like that.

  The other thing hookers offer is discretion. No hooker who wants to keep her client base is going to go blabbing to the press about all your bizarre sexual proclivities. Do you enjoy bringing random immigrant grocers into your sexual encounters? Best to entrust that sort of thing to a hooker. The only loose lips they have are the ones below the garter belt.

  The problem with making love to a hooker is that it eliminates the joy of acceptance. Speaking personally, there’s no better turn-on than someone legitimately wanting to have sex with me. It engorges the ego and the penis simultaneously. Getting a hooker also means missing out on the thrill of the hunt. It’s never a legitimate score you can brag about. And I find that 98 percent of the joy of sex comes from being able to brag about it the next day.

  Should you wish to procure a hooker for the evening, simply hang out in your team’s hotel lobby. Hookers follow the rules of supply and demand. Hotel lobbies are full of athletes, businessmen, and government officials who are in constant need of coldhearted, anonymous sex. If, for some reason, this fails, consult the back section of your town’s local free progressive newspaper. Find the hooker that best suits your needs, and call the number listed. Ask for “full bodywork.” In hooker lingo, this means intercourse. Yay, intercourse! And always double-check for penii to make sure you didn’t get a she-male by accident. Happens all the time. LaWanda, if you’re out there, I apologize for kneeing you in the groin like that.

  GROUPIE. Groupies fall into any number of subcategories. You’ve got your skanky hos, your Fly Girls, and any number of three-hundred-
pound women hanging outside the arena in outfits the size of a linen coaster. It’s tough distinguishing hookers from groupies. After all, both are whores in a sense. The thing that sets groupies apart from hookers is that groupies will have sex with you for free the night you meet them. That certainly makes them alluring, but they aren’t giving themselves to you just because they like you. Groupies have motives that will remain unclear to you until after you have slept with them. Some will simply want to brag about having sex with you. It’s a way of boosting their superficial self-esteem, while deep down doing the exact opposite. Other groupies will hope that a sexual encounter with you is a first step on the road to a potentially lucrative divorce and / or paternity suit.

  If you’re going to take the plunge with a groupie, I recommend doing it on the road and away from the hotel room in which you currently reside. When you are finished, burn any evidence of your sexual encounter to destroy any leftover seminal residue. And I suggest leaving immediately when you are finished. Most groupies do not pass the Morning Test. In fact, by the morning, your groupie will probably look like a prairie dog that got run over by a semi. It’s like Chili’s: “Get in. Get out. Get on with your life.”

  STRIPPER. Why have sex with a regular woman for free when you can pay to watch a stripper? Strippers and athletes go together like Carnie Wilson and pancake batter. Hell, Pacman Jones sacrificed his entire career because he couldn’t give them up. Smart move. Yes, there’s nothing quite like walking into a strip club and spending $20 every fifteen minutes to have a stripper tell you about her dream of one day working with animals, then staggering out at 3:00 a.m. to go jerk off in a back alley. Strip clubs truly are magical places, where you can mingle with any number of asshole junior analysts from Morgan Stanley while maxing out your credit card on $50 hamburgers and $500 dry humps in the VIP lounge. Shangri-la, I tell you.