Tuesday night is reserved for Kangaroo Court - the judge, the honorable Bert Blyleven, is in charge of this fun evening. His cash grabbing partner this year is Tony Oliva. They come out in outfits and the fines are start flying around. The Rookies at camp get fined for being just that, Rookies -- $10 each. If you took a called strike 3 -- that's $5 (the line was pretty long on that one). Forget your shower shoes -- yep, make it another $10. Just mind you the funds raised by Kangaroo Court all go to Children's Hospital of SW Florida -- a more than worthy cause. Pro Staff (JC Romero, Juan Berenguer, Jacques Jones) all get dinged for showing up late to various coaching meetings during the week. Frank Viola has to get his cash out after having a NY Mets undershirt on revealing his potential true alliance (He loves the Twins -- no questions to ask him there). But the judge had one big final thing to reveal before the evening was out -- it was some information he received on this camper (yep....me).
So I was told in the locker room after monday's games that is was brought to his attention that I was "out of uniform" for game 2 -- another pro staffer made him aware of this - and of course could not pass along anymore information. I will give him a thumbs up for this as I had time to prepare for this so called mis-identification (that's what I will call it). The accused (me) was, accordingly to the accuser, wore the wrong jersey to the dugout and had to run back to the locker room and get my "Away" (or blue) jersey. People, readers of the blog this could be no further than the truth -- the facts are we played a home game in the morning (our white jersey) and that extra layer of cloth is like a blanket and it was warm out -- I took that white jersey off after our first game and it was in laundry -- my blue jersey was on (vouched by my 13 teammates and 2 coaches mind you) and never had to change out my jersey anywhere near game-time (afternoon 1pm game) -- I would own this.
Judge Blyleven finally brings up the accuser -- a Mr. Al Newman (the opposing manager of the afternoon game) and of course Al sticks to his ridiculous story. I lawyer up with my favorite left handed pitcher Frank Viola to fight the case. I let Sweet Music know that I have 15 witnesses here, no problem. Frank asks my teammates to stand up, raise their hand if they vouch for my story of no uniform switch outs -- unanimous 15 hands raise up -- now Newman says it was "pregame" -- Viola says "were the umpires there?" Newman says "no" -- this was brilliant, Viola had him, we win, case closed, Newman should be fined -- as Lee Corso says, "Not so fast my friend.....", the Judge decides to that Newman's ridiculous claims could be backed up by his players. A small huddle of "The Shakers" (team name) forms and quickly they decide I am guilty. To which the Judge makes the final verdict. GUILTY. I storm up to the bin and throw in a big bill, Viola gets fined for being the attorney, and then it goes from ridiculous to crazy -- all of my 13 teammates and 2 coaches get fined on top of all of this. Holy Moly what just happened. Newman starts the story, his players back it up, and then my whole team has to get their wallet out -- oh my....oh my. My coach Soup Campbell told me, "You are not pitching the rest of the week!" as he was headed back to his chair.
I will need to do some damage control (I gotta find 15 $20 bills) before our first game today -- I thought I might pitch, but now hoping I am still in the lineup.
Al Newman -- this is not a warning, but Kangaroo Court is in session on Friday...."not so fast my friend"......
**Let's be clear on 2 things here -- this was a lot of fun and I was never mad.....and Al Newman better watch his back until Friday.
~~ "You can observe a lot just by watching." - Yogi Berra ~~
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