The Days of My Yout’
published on 10/24/08 at 7:47 am
They just don’t make bats like they use to, the good old fashioned wooden Louisville Slugger that sits on my mantle. I am gazing at it as I type. It is well used and scarred, faded from many days under the hot sun. We went into battle together many times, Mr. Louisville Slugger and I. And we always seemed to win the day.
The best thing about the Louisville Slugger is the fear it struck into people’s hearts. Half the time, I didn’t even have to use it. As soon as they saw it in my hands, the fight usually left their eyes in a hurry.
Most of the time, if a guy’s a day or two late on his payments, I’d go over my options. If it was his first time and he was usually good about paying up, I’d talk to the guy and say, “Look, you better pay up, Sonny, because I’m gonna collect one way or the other.” I had a reputation to protect, after all. If I let some loser take advantage of my generosity, it would come back to haunt me in a hurry. There are a lot of sharks out there, and they smell blood before it even escapes the body.
If I’d talked to the guy before, or if I just didn’t like him, I had the next option, which was just to t’row him a good old fashioned beatin’. I didn’t need the Louisville for that. Just my two fists, and maybe a roll of quarters or a pair of brass knuckles if the dude was bigger than I was (even then they usually knew better than to hit back).
Next came my third and favorite option. This I reserved for guys who were either really late or owed me big time, or if they just really pissed me off. You know, maybe they just didn’t look at me right, or maybe I didn’t like their face and I thought it would be better if I rearranged it a little. This is where the Louisville Slugger really came in handy.
Why is the Louisville Slugger the best? For one thing, I like the name. Slugger. That says it all. Two, it’s durable. Nothing’s worse than having your bat break when you’re in the middle of a good beatin’, and you have to quit early (unless you want to stab the guy with the shards, but that ain’t my style). Occasionally, I would use a Wilson or a Rawlings just to prove a point. Take this guy Tommy. He owed me twelve grand and could never make a payment. He still thought he could win it back on his next bet and I would tell him, “Tommy, you’re hard headed. Just do this job for me so you can start payin’ up.” But he wouldn’t listen. I liked Tommy, he was a good kid. But enough’s enough, and I made sure I used the Rawlings on him, and sure enough, after a couple smacks to the head the damn thing broke. I said, “See Tommy, I told you you was hard headed!” Alas, he didn’t hear me.
Like I said, most of the time, the sight of the bat alone was sufficient enough to make them wise up. I still liked to give ‘em a couple wacks for good measure though.
My cousin Frank had other methods. He had a big cargo van, and he liked to swing by and have a guy in the back to pick them up, knock them out with some chloroform. They’d wake up naked in the middle of the woods somewhere, tied to a tree.
That sort of thing was just too complicated for my tastes. And if they had a lot of people after them, they wouldn’t even know who did it. Nothing’s worse than sending somebody a message and having them not realize that it was you. Then you have to send them yet another message, and that just ain’t pleasant.
And the Louisville Slugger was my trademark. One time I found out this dude a couple blocks down was using the same type of bat, and I had to go talk to him. I said, “Look, I been usin’ the Louisville Slugger for SIX YEARS now. You been in this neighborhood what, two weeks? Find your own god damn bat! Else I’ll take my Louisville Slugger to you!” And he said, “No, I’ll take mine to you!” And we went back and forth like that but suffice it to say that him and his bat both became fish food.
I don’t like the aluminum bats at all. Sure, you don’t have to worry about them breakin’, but they just don’t LOOK right. And that clang they make just don’t sound right neither. I like that nice THWACK! sound, or THUMP!, if you go to the body. It just sends a more clear message. It’s more professional. Aluminum bats are for amateurs.
There’s nothing worse than being caught out in the open without your favorite bat. It happened to me a couple weeks ago, and I’m still cursing myself for it. A couple guys jumped me and I’d had a little too much liquor so they got the best of me. Needless to say, it would have been a different story if I’d had ole Louis there with me. Next time things will be different, but don’t worry, my pals caught up with those two jokers, who right about now are probably realizing that it ain’t so easy to get your breath when you’re at the bottom of the Cape Fear River with a couple blocks of cement chained to your ankles.
I would highly recommend this bat. If you have a co-worker or neighbor who you just don’t like, say they got that look in their eyes where they think they’re better than you — the bat to the head usually does the trick. After that when they look at you, it will be with proper humility and obsequiousness.
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The_Gov
Nov 3rd, 2008
Nice, very nice.