Jim Bouton - Two Wild & Crazy Guys

What if we blew up the other team’s dugout?

Important Notice:

I have been advised that the statute of limitations has expired on any and all criminal activity that may be described in this essay, including but not limited to my criminal usage of the English language.

In a prior story, Jim Bouton – The Prank, I told you how Jim and I traded Don Collins to the New York Mets – at least he thought he had been traded to the Mets. As you might expect, we were very proud of how our cunning and deceitful prank not only fooled Don but also entrapped our entire team in our net of chicanery. In order to protect our self-proclaimed reputation as “Two Wild & Crazy Guys,” we had to come up with an epic prank!

Baseball has a history of pranks. The “hot foot,” when someone would sneak a match in the sole of an unsuspecting teammate’s spikes and light it on fire, then everyone would laugh as he hopped around the dugout on one foot. Or, the “Toasted Nuts,” when someone would rub Deep Heat in a teammate’s jock strap and a few minutes after he put it on, everyone would watch him dance around the locker room with his nuts on fire. How about “White Christmas,” when someone would shoot a fire extinguisher under their teammates’ hotel room door and the occupants would run out of their room covered in white powder, looking like the Ghosts of Christmas Past. All of those pranks were funny but were too pedestrian for us. We were determined to come up with an epic prank worthy of Two Wild & Crazy Guys!

“Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” As starting pitchers, Jim and I would only pitch every fifth game, which meant we had lots of free time to plot with the devil. We were going to be in Nashville, Tennessee on July 4^th to play a series of games against the Nashville Sounds, Cincinnati’s AA farm team. One of the owners of the Nashville team was country singer Jerry Reed of “She got the Gold Mine and I got the Shaft” fame. Nashville was a fun town and had a new ballpark, so we looked forward to the road trip. Let’s pull a prank while we’re in Nashville. After an intense locker room brainstorming session, we came up with the perfect prank – “What if we blew up the Nashville dugout during the ballgame?!”

Ideas only become great if you can execute them. How were we going to get fireworks in the Nashville dugout? The more difficult question was, how were we going to ignite the fireworks if we were able to get them in their dugout? We couldn’t just run over during the game and toss firecrackers into their dugout, that would be lame. Then I came up with an idea based upon a childhood experience – use a cigarette as the time-delay fuse for the firecrackers. Brilliant!

The next day, Jim drove across the bridge from Savannah to a Fireworks Super Center in South Carolina and bought an arsenal of Black Cats, smoke bombs and bottle rockets. Now, we were ready to develop our plan. First, we experimented with the cigarette as our time-delay fuse. We stuffed a match head in the end of the cigarette, which would allow us to ignite it with a lit cigarette. Once the cigarette was lit, it would take approximately five minutes to burn down to the filter. Next, we had to figure out how to attach the firecrackers and smoke bombs to the cigarette so it could be easily attached to the underside of the bench in the Nashville dugout. We attached the cigarette to a rectangular piece of cardboard at a slight angle that would allow it to burn to the filter without burning the cardboard. Then we inserted the smoke bomb’s fuse into the cigarette near the filter, attached the firecracker fuses to the smoke bomb’s fuse, and taped the firecrackers and smoke bomb onto the cardboard with the cigarette. We named our explosive masterpiece the “module.” We built four modules for our Nashville road trip.

We were in Nashville on Sunday, July 2^nd, playing an afternoon doubleheader. I pitched the first game and Jim pitched the second game. I had great stuff that afternoon. I was pitching a perfect game – no hits, no walks, no errors – then, with one out in the last inning, I gave up a broken bat single just out of the reach of the second baseman. Adios to the perfect game, but I went on to get the next two batters out and finished with a one-hit shutout. Jim pitched the second game of the doubleheader, and although he gave up ten hits with three walks and was on the ropes for most of the game, he also finished with a shutout. The next day, the newspaper headline read, “Bouton Shuts Out Nashville.” At the end of the newspaper article, it mentioned that I had pitched a one-hit shutout. When we saw the headline, Jim said, “Look at the bright side, if you would’ve pitched a perfect game, the headline would’ve read, “Bouton’s Roommate Pitches Perfect Game.”” He was exactly right! Bouton was somebody, I was nobody. We both laughed.

The morning of July 4^th, we were up early – that meant well before it was time to watch All My Children. We took a taxi to the ballpark to put our plan in motion. We had enlisted our club house boy as an accomplice and met him at the ballpark. The plan was to have our clubhouse boy go over to the Nashville dugout to ask for some ice and then, during the National Anthem while everyone was looking at the flag in centerfield, he would use his lit cigarette to ignite the modules. The three of us walked over to the Nashville dugout with the modules and taped them under the aluminum bench near the water cooler. The modules were situated with the tip of the cigarette facing the dugout wall so our clubhouse boy could easily ignite the fuses. We didn’t expect to see anyone at the ballpark that early in the morning, but just as we returned to our dugout, we saw the Nashville manager, Chuck Goggin, walking across the field toward his dugout. Goggin was a Vietnam vet and had the reputation of being a hard-ass, so we were lucky he didn’t catch us planting explosives in his dugout!

Skullduggery can make you hungry! On the way back to the hotel, we had the taxi stop at a grocery store so we could buy some food. Jim had recently read Sugar Blues, one of the first books to expose the health problems related to sugar consumption, and he was committed to eliminating processed sugar from his diet. He was so committed that he brought a hot plate on the road trips so he could cook his “health food” in the room. Hell, he was competing against a bunch of guys young enough to be his kids, so whatever he was doing must’ve been working.

I was pushing the shopping cart down the aisle while Jim was loading it with groceries. We were both starving, so we decided it would be okay to eat while we shopped. I opened a bottle of juice and made myself a sandwich, while Jim nibbled on an assortment of fruits and vegetables. As we were pushing our cart through the grocery store eating our lunch, we came upon a good looking, brown-eyed woman pushing her cart in the opposite direction. She gave us a curious look and smiled. Jim responded to her smile, “Has anybody told you that your eyes look like Bambi?” I thought to myself, “That is the lamest pickup line I’ve ever heard!” Apparently not. She followed us to the checkout line while Jim chatted her up. After we paid for our groceries, including the food we ate, Bambi gave us a ride back to the hotel and Jim gave her a player’s pass to the game that night. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what might have happened after the game…

Fourth of July at the ballpark! The ballpark was packed. The fans were ready for the traditional firework show after the game – little did they know that there would be fireworks during the game!! The local TV sports reporter was in our dugout to interview Jim – he was the celebrity. When the interview was over, Jim told her that she might want to have her crew near the home team dugout during the first inning. She asked what’s going to happen, and he told her to be prepared.

The game was getting ready to start. The Nashville team took the field to warmup. Our clubhouse boy trotted over to the Nashville dugout with a cigarette in his mouth, carrying a small ice chest. While they were getting his ice, the National Anthem started to play, and the fans were singing along. Everyone was looking at the flag in centerfield, except our clubhouse boy, who was busy lighting the modules under the home team’s bench. When the anthem was over, our clubhouse boy trotted back to the dugout with his ice and the umpire yelled, “Play Ball!”

The Nashville pitcher got us out: three-up, three-down. The Nashville team returned to its dugout and our team took the field to warmup. Suddenly, all hell broke loose: BAM! BAM! BAM! SMOKE FILLED THE AIR! The Nashville players flew out of their smoke-filled dugout. Goggin, their manager, yelled at his players, “Which one of you motherfuckers lit firecrackers in the dugout!?” The TV camera was nearby filming the action. Jim and I were in the corner of our dugout watching our explosive handiwork go up in smoke. Our teammates didn’t know who or what blew up the Nashville dugout, but they were laughing their asses off. Bobby Dews, our manager, looked back at Jim and me and shook his head as he said, “I don’t want to know how you guys did that.”

After the game, Two Wild & Crazy Guys toasted another epic prank with a couple of cold beers while we watched a replay on the nightly sports report!

Postscript:

At the mid-point of the 1978 season, I had a 10 – 6 record with a 1.87 ERA and was voted to be the starting pitcher for the Southern League All Star Team vs the Atlanta Braves major league team. Prior to the game, I was sitting in the dugout beside Bruce Berenyi, a right-hand pitcher for the Nashville team who later pitched in the major leagues for the Cincinnati Reds and New York Mets. Bruce was sitting to my left with his left foot propped up on his right knee. I noticed that he had a hole near the toe of  his left shoe. It would be normal for a right-hand pitcher to have a hole near the toe of his right shoe, so I asked him how he got a hole in his left shoe. He laughed and said, “Some asshole threw firecrackers in the dugout during the Fourth of July game and blew a hole in my shoe.” I asked him if he was okay. After he said that he was fine, I admitted that I was the asshole and explained how Jim and I had blown up their dugout. That night, I pitched two scoreless innings against the Braves, gave up one hit to Jerry Royster, struck out Bob Horner, and was named the game’s MVP.

Thank you for reading my story, and I greatly enjoy reading your comments.