The Conman

by Mike Murphey

  Most disconcerting, though, everywhere he went over the course of the entire twenty minutes, Parker—nicknamed The Cobra—seemed to be stalking him. Conor conducted himself professionally in every phase of shoving and squeezing and shouting. At every turn, though, Parker loomed.

  “I don’t know,” he told Kate after the game. “I must have done something to make him mad.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah, it matters. I’ve never even met him. Maybe he’s a friend of someone who doesn’t like me. What bugs me is everyone says he’s a good guy. I don’t mind pissing off jerks, but a good guy . . .”

  Conor brooded over the issue all night. He arrived early at the Kingdome the next day and watched for the big man to come from the visitors’ clubhouse and begin his stretching routine.

  “Um . . . Dave?”

  Parker glanced up from his sprawl on the Kingdome turf, a pre-set scowl reserved for fans or media disturbing his preparation fixed on his face.

  “I’m Conor Nash. We haven’t met . . . I just want to clear the air here. Have I done something, somewhere, sometime, to upset you?”

  Parker appeared genuinely puzzled. “Why would you think that?”

  “Well, yesterday, during the fight, you seemed to be . . . sort of . . . following me around.”

  Parker smiled. “Well, I was.”

  “Okay . . . so what did I do to—”

  “Nothin’, man, you didn’t do anything. I just had to make sure you were okay. You haven’t pitched yet, and I can’t afford to let you to get hurt.”

  Other conflicts marked the 1990 season, including bullpen wars between the Mariners and Rangers. The initial skirmishes involved little craft or guile. Lighting firecrackers by delayed fuse under the opposing team’s bullpen bench. Or a well-tossed stink bomb.

  When a television news crew interviewed members of the Rangers bullpen following one of these assaults, the enemy pitcher said the Mariners displayed no real creativity or imagination.

  That didn’t sit right with the Conman. So, he organized a bobsled race. The Mariners bullpen pitchers practiced under the stands. Then, between the second and third innings of a Rangers game, they took a long metal bench and placed it between the bullpen mound and home plate.

  They lined up, carefully stepped over the bench in unison, and sat facing the grandstand. On Conor’s order, they hunched forward and began to jiggle slightly.

  “Okay,” called Conor, who occupied the anchor position, “right turn on three.”

  As one, they leaned violently left, maintaining the jiggle. “Now, left turn.” They jerked right.

  Conor took them through a couple more turns before they relaxed, raised their arms high in victory, and dismounted to cheers. “Let’s see ’em top that,” Conor said as they exchanged high fives.

  The next day, between the second and third innings, the Rangers hauled their bench to the corresponding spot at their side of the field and sat facing the foul line. Initially, they leaned side to side in unison, then crossed left legs over right legs. Next, right over left. Finally, each pitcher removed his hat and placed it on the head of the player to his left, the last player jumping up and carrying his hat to the other end of the bench, placing it on the first guy’s head as everyone slid down one spot.

  The crowd went crazy.

  “Why are they cheering?” one of Conor’s mates demanded. “That’s our crowd, cheering the other team.”

  “Shit,” Conor said, “you have to admit, they were pretty good. Let me think about this. We’ll get ’em when we go to Arlington.”

  “Okay, here it is,” Conor told his bullpen mates a month later following the first of a three-game series at the Rangers new stadium. He held a tube like caulk comes in at hardware stores. The tube said, “Liquid Concrete.”

  “We hide here and wait until everyone’s gone. I mean everyone. Then, we go to squeeze this stuff into the lock on the bullpen gate.”

  The architects of new stadiums locate bullpens behind outfield fences in left and right fields. The padded gates are part of the wall, swinging into the bullpen so people can enter and exit. In Arlington, the locking mechanism that secured the bullpen when the stadium wasn’t in use during a game or practice was built into the gate.

  The Mariners pitchers waited until the grounds crew left for the night, creeping along in the shadows of the warning track as they made their way to the home bullpen. Conor squeezed as much of the liquid concrete as he could into the keyhole. They carefully toweled away the excess and fled into the night.

  “Won’t they figure it out when they try and unlock it tomorrow morning?” one of the pitchers asked Conor.

  “I don’t think they lock it during homestands,” Conor said. “If we’re lucky, they won’t find out anything until the starter goes to warm up. There’ll be enough people in the stands to see it.”

  The bullpen crew maintained a wary eye. They expected a flurry of activity as grounds crewmen fought the frozen and inoperable locking mechanism. Nothing seemed amiss, though, as everyone calmly went about their pre-game routines.

  “They probably got here early, and we missed it,” someone suggested.

  “Crap,” Conor said, and then brightened. “Maybe not. Maybe no one’s been there yet.”

  The time arrived for the Rangers’ starting pitcher to begin his warm-up routine. Nothing. No one headed to the bullpen. Conor’s heart sank. Okay, they figured out they can’t get in, and they won’t give us the satisfaction. Their guy is throwing somewhere else.

  As the Rangers completed infield practice, Conor approached one of their coaches.

  “Hey, Rusty,” Conor said, “your starter’s so good, he doesn’t need to warm up today?”

  “Oh, hi, Conman. No. When we designed the stadium, we had a bullpen mound installed under the stands by the home clubhouse. Some starters prefer to get ready there.”

  “Okay, guys,” Conor told his bullpen mates, “this is either going to be a bust or really good.”

  Typically, neither relief corps occupied the bullpen during the first few innings, because it offered such a lousy view of the game. Expecting their starter to go at least four or five innings, they watched from the dugout during the early frames. So, both bullpens remained unoccupied for the second inning when Buhner nailed the Rangers’ starter with a shot off his thigh.

  As trainers rushed to the mound, Conor saw a flurry of activity in the Rangers dugout. A catcher, wearing full gear, began a long sprint toward the pen. Two pitchers followed him.

  At first, all eyes fixed on the injured pitcher, so no one noticed the catcher’s struggle at the bullpen gate. As the starter limped toward his dugout, the catcher’s efforts became more frantic. Fans began to notice.

  Initially, the laughter sounded polite and scattered.

  When the Rangers manager and pitching coach rose to the top dugout steps, the catcher turned and held his arms wide as a signal of futility. The second base umpire jogged out to ascertain the problem. The manager raised his arms in a question mark. The umpire arrived and pointed at the top of the fence. One pitcher interlaced his fingers and made a cup of his hands.

  Conor checked the camera wells. Every television camera in the stadium pointed at the bullpen gate. Announcers at their stations high behind home plate shook with laughter.

  The catcher tossed his mask and glove and shoes over the fence. Then, with a helpful boost from the pitcher, grabbed the top of the fence and swung one leg up and over before disappearing on the other side. One of the pitchers followed suit.

  The home plate umpire barked. The Ranger’s manager yelled, and a pitcher ran from the dugout to begin his warm-up on the field mound.

  Between the third and fourth innings, the grounds crew tried drills and chisels to no avail.

  At the beginning of the fifth inning, they dashed to the bullpen, carrying two stepladders. They leaned one against the outfield wall and tossed the other over the fence.

  The remaining Rangers
relievers trotted across the outfield. Before they scaled the fence, though, they paused, faced the Mariners bench, and performed a deep bow. Then they turned and repeated the gesture, displaying their butts.

  “If the game wasn’t being televised,” Rangers pitcher Jeff Reardon advised Conor the next day, “we would have shown you the full moon.”

  “Everybody be alert, because they’ll try something,” Conor advised his mates the afternoon of the opener of the Rangers series in Seattle.

  “I talked with security. They’ll keep guys posted to make sure they don’t do anything late at night. Keep your eyes open, anyway.”

  The Rangers couldn’t retaliate in kind, Conor knew, because Kingdome bullpens were situated for all to see along each foul line. No locks, no gates, just a metal bench, a double mound toward the outfield fence and a pair of home plates back toward the dugouts. A big Igloo water jug sat at one end of the bench, and a canvass bag of bullpen baseballs rested on the Kingdome artificial turf at the opposite end.

  Bullpen catchers who warmed relievers as the game continued had their backs to the batters, leaving them susceptible to sharply hit foul balls. Bullpen pitchers always performed protection duty, standing behind the catcher to deflect anything hit their way.

  Conor drew sentry duty as the M’s first reliever was told to get ready at the bottom of the sixth.

  When Conor finally learned the details of the Rangers’ reprisal, he recalled The Shawshank Redemption’s climactic scene in which Andy Dufresne crawls through two hundred yards of sewer pipe, gagging and retching before he spills into a river to find a cleansing rain and freedom.

  That’s how Conor reconstructed Jeff Reardon’s ordeal as he snuck through the bowels of the Kingdome and picked his way under the stands towards a metal wall beyond which lay the Mariners bullpen. At first, he walked over the detritus that had leaked down over the long course of a season. As he neared the wall, though, he ducked, squatted, then crawled as the stands lowered above him. Finally, he was reduced to slithering along among the petrified hotdog remains, popcorn kernels, sticky slather of spilled beer and pop to one of the small openings below the unsuspecting Mariners bullpen bench. He took first one, and then a second can of lighter fluid, aiming the narrow stream of liquid out the hole and patiently soaking the canvas bag of baseballs. Then waiting, waiting, waiting for the moment when the first reliever stood, and the catcher joined him. Running the last stream of lighter fluid along the ground and under the stands where he flicked the lighter, watched the line of flame flash toward the ball bag.

  Standing at his sentry post behind the catcher, Conor heard a whoooomp and immediately felt a burst of heat as the ball bag ignited into a tower of flame. He turned and saw a column of fire almost five feet high, the bag totally involved. Panicked pitchers fled the bench.

  The third base umpire called time out, and turning to confront a conflagration, began waving for the smattering of fans to flee.

  Bullpen coach Bob Didier rallied the relievers, urging them to keep their wits and fight the fire. One brave soul used a spare shin guard and knocked the ball bag away from the crowd. The pitchers set up a Dixie Cup brigade, filling cups from their Igloo water jug, passing them pitcher to pitcher, the last man flinging three ounces of water at the blaze.

  In that moment, Conor knew the Rangers had won. Television footage, beamed coast to coast on the next day’s news broadcasts, showed Mariners pitchers passing pointy paper cones in a useless attempt to quench the inferno.

  “Get out of the way,” Conor screamed as he grabbed the Igloo jug and extinguished the fire.

  The video ran everywhere. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst occurred when Latham called two innings later for someone to start warming up and an enterprising reporter captured the additional sound bite. “We can’t,” yelled one of the pitchers. “We don’t have any balls.”

  The memory I treasure most about 1990, though, had nothing to do with games or fights or fires.

  Early that September we checked into our rooms for our final series against the Red Sox. A mix-up occurred when our traveling secretary distributed keys, because I stood alone in the penthouse of one of Boston’s finest hotels.

  The penthouse!

  I opened curtains to a view of Fenway Park filling the foreground and the bustling blue expanse of Boston Harbor beyond. I recalled parting a set of curtains seventeen years earlier to find bars obstructing an alley view on the windows of the Bonneville Hotel in Idaho Falls. The Conman had come a long way from Idaho and Goodrum Martin. I only indulged my self-satisfaction for a moment, though, because I heard my father’s voice.

  “Don’t get too full of yourself. Be mindful that just because you’re here doesn’t mean the work stops.”

  Always understand, getting to the penthouse is easier than staying there.

  thirty-seven

  When A.J. showed me the bonus schedule I pointed to the $20,000 payout at sixty-five appearances and told him Seattle would draw the line there. I saw that sort of thing a lot when I was a players’ rep. And sure enough, I made exactly sixty-four appearances during the 1990 season. Still, I collected almost $100,000 worth of cha-chings. I posted a 2.89 earned run average.

  Every bullpen pitcher had a great season that year. We became a cohesive group, everyone totally buying into team goals. Our thing was not allowing inherited runners to score. Scratch and bite and claw not to allow those runs. Today, I’ve got your back. Tomorrow, you’ve got mine.

  Game appearances, though, aren’t the only things putting miles on a pitcher’s arm. A.J. knew that. He kept track every time I warmed up but didn’t get into the game. He said I did that sixty times. See, relievers can be decoys. If an opposing manager is considering a pinch hitter for a given situation, his decision becomes more complicated if both a righty and a lefty are getting ready. During a lot of the season, I was the only lefthander out there.

  And every pitch thrown in preparation took its toll.

  For fourteen years, I’d indulged in cortisone. First, only a couple of injections a season. Then, creeping to five or six or more as the years passed. My back nagged me during Spring Training of 1990, so I took an injection. Six weeks later, another. By the second half, they shot me up every two weeks.

  Don’t get me wrong, Rita. Nobody ordered me to do it. This was a silent understanding. You know you need it. We know you need it. We know you can’t refuse and still do your job. My trainer in West Haven, Walt Horn, had warned me years earlier. “You can’t keep taking these injections. Cortisone doesn’t dissipate from the body. You’ll pay for it when you get older.”

  Back then, though, we were indestructible. That getting older thing drifted on the far, far horizon. More to the point, cortisone worked. My pain eased and 1990 became the pinnacle of my professional life.

  Conor considered the champagne bottle, brought it halfway to his lips, then lowered it, feeling a tinge of disgust and regret.

  And if I could, I’d freeze it all right there. Finish my champagne, get the fuck off this mountain, end Conman’s story in October of 1990. Back when real life was mostly just a footnote to the main drama taking place on a pitching mound at center stage. When wife, family and friends existed within the narrow context of their relationship to the Conman’s world of professional baseball. They all seemed happy as members of a supporting cast, each proud of the piece they owned of the Conman’s success.

  I can’t do that, though, can I? Because only a few weeks later, the real world came pounding at our door.

  Fall, 1987

  “No, I can’t go to Alaska. I’ve got work . . .”

  “Hey, come on, Brad, nobody’s that busy,” Conor said. “I’ll pay your way . . .”

  “Connie, I can afford to go. It’s just . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Just what?”

  “Look, I’ve got a shot at being a judge, and I want that. I . . . I hate to put it this way, but Baze parties too hard. And you two together? I can’t get
caught in it.”

  “Yeah, Baze is a drinker,” Conor said. “And some of his buddies smoke. I don’t do any of that stuff, though. I enjoy spending time with him. Just because you’re there, doesn’t mean you have to be as wild as they are.”

  “Connie,” Brad said, “you’ve got a significant career going. I’m not sure you see the whole picture. You should be careful, too.”

  Every other off-season or so, Conor flew to Alaska and spent a week with Basil.

  Before the Japan gig, Basil paid Conor’s way. Money never seemed to be an issue for him.

  The first time Conor visited, Basil lived in an RV. Next time, Basil had bought himself a luxury trailer and an acre of land. Eventually, he owned a custom-built home situated on twenty acres. He also acquired a full array of toys. A Harley, snowmobiles, quad runners. And the parties were legendary. Conor didn’t know how many women lived in Palmer, Alaska. The best-looking ones, though, showed up at Basil’s house every weekend. Like the baseball culture of the seventies and eighties, weed and coke were plentiful on this frontier. Conor adopted the same approach when visiting Basil that he took with partying by some of his teammates during the coke and grass era of baseball. He enjoyed the spectacle. He didn’t indulge.

  Palmer, Alaska

  “I tried,” Conor told Basil. “Brad won’t come. He’s nervous about something.”

  “It’s the coke,” Basil said.

  Baze soaked in his hot tub, trying to sweat off the previous night’s hangover. Conor sat against a wall with debris of the previous evening’s binge scattered all around them. From some recess of the house came a woman’s voice. “Baze! Why is my bra in the microwave?”