The Screwball: Home advantage

Yup, Eric Byrnes is going to fit right in at any number of international hostels. (via Eric Molina).

Yup, Eric Byrnes is going to fit right in at any number of international hostels. (via Eric Molina).

Well, it appears that Angels ace Jered Weaver recently put his 2,475-square-foot, Mediterranean-style home on the market. Why? I can’t tell you why, but what I can tell you is that he owns an even larger, pricier home nearby. So fear not, concerned fans. He probably won’t be sleeping at the Super 8.

Still, the whole thing does raise an interesting question: If a large, Mediterranean-style home isn’t quite right for a big-league baseball player, what is? Let me put it another way: What exactly appeals, home-wise, to a player of Major League Baseball? Well, having been unable to hit the curveball, I myself remain unqualified to answer that question, too. However, I can suggest that there’s an ideal home for every big leaguer, past and present.

Octavio Dotel

On April 7, 2012, when then-Tiger and current free agent* Octavio Dotel took the mound at Comerica Park in the seventh inning of Detroit’s eventual 10-0 win against the Red Sox, the Dominican reliever established the official record as the most peripatetically employed pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. Indeed, with his first pitch to Boston third baseman Kevin Youkilis, he had officially played for 13—count ’em, 13—big-league franchises, leaving behind fellow vagabonds Mike Morgan, Matt Stairs and Ron Villone at 12 franchises apiece and making the likes of Kenny Lofton (11 franchises), Russell Branyan (10) and Orlando Cabrera (9) look like relative homebodies, so settled that they had expired pizza coupons on their refrigerator doors.

And that’s to say nothing of 19th century players Bones Ely and Buttercup Dickerson, who, in playing for eight franchises apiece, suddenly looked like shut-ins. They probably knew the mailman by name.

* As you can plainly see, the terms “then-Tiger” and “current free agent” are entirely appropriate when referencing the 15-year big-league veteran.

So, what sort of domicile would have been best for our Drifter Of The Diamond, our Bedouin Of The Bump? Well, the traditional yurt—a portable structure used for centuries by nomads on the Central Asian steppes—might have worked, but it’s hard to see Dotel dismantling the yurt and transporting it by yak on three separate occasions in 2010, when the Pirates, Dodgers and Rockies traded him like a Vance Law baseball card at a 1988 flea market. It’s also hard to see him inhabiting a portable teepee, if only because kids on spring break from Chico State would have kept bothering him for peyote and turquoise jewelry, and possibly for advice on how to get home.

“So I take, like, the 70 to the 99?”

And so with portability in mind, but also modernity, we come down to the unsurprising choice between mobile homes. I don’t mean “mobile home” in the colloquial sense, because “mobile homes” these days typically rest on immobile foundations of cinder clocks or concrete slabs. No, instead, I mean RVs and Airstream trailers; the former you drive, the latter you haul. With showers, kitchens and breakfast nooks, RVs are pretty nice. But can you imagine trying to squeeze one into the players’ parking lot in Pittsburgh?

So, Airstream it is, Octavio—or would have been, had I reached you a decade earlier. But to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know where to find you.

Eric Byrnes

For much of his 11-year big-league career, Eric Byrnes was a pretty good baseball player. Granted, in his first season and in his final season, he produced exactly zero—that’s 0, with an “ohhhhhh”—RBIs, but between those ignominious bookends he put together one season with 26 home runs, another with 103 runs scored and several with some seriously stellar defense, all while boasting a style best described as boyish.

Floppy-haired and spirited, he seemed the kind of guy who, had he not played baseball for a living, would have worked part-time at a surfboard shop. And even then, his manager would have gently chided him to stop talking and get back to work.

“Oh, that Eric,” Lotus would have uttered to herself. “He is so floppy-haired and spirited.”

In reality, Byrnes would often skateboard to the ballpark. It’s true!

In sum, he seems a man for whom summer is suitably endless, and for whom old age is a rumor, a myth, a thing so ridiculously distant that it will never map his face or steal his mind, never wrest from the forever-youngness whatever it is that keeps him that way. And so we see him suited not to a high-rise condo, nor to a four-bedroom house, but to an international hostel.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

“Günter,” you can see him saying in the community kitchen, water boiling beside him, “would you mind handing me that penne pasta?”

Nein,” Günter is saying as he hands the pasta to his neuen Freund. “I vouldn’t mind at all. And bitte for sharing your dinner with the entire group.”

Later, at the guitar circle, everyone sings Kumbaya in Esperanto.

Except for Eric. He’s late for a game against the Phillies.

Bill Lee

The Spaceman marched to his own percussionist, it’s true.

And that percussionist was Buddy Rich.

Be-bop-a-zoo-bop….ziddly-dop-a-doo-zop…POW!

You get the idea. With Spaceman as his sobriquet, Lee became as famous for his antics—e.g., speaking in defense of Maoist China, jogging to Fenway Park with marijuana-infused pancakes as his pulmonary protection against caustic bus fumes—as for his pitching, which exceeded mediocre by a pretty fair degree. After pal Bernie Carbo got traded in 1978, Lee famously walked out on the Red Sox and returned wearing a “Friendship first, competition second” T-shirt.

He ticked off the Angels by stating that they could take batting practice in a hotel lobby and “never chip a chandelier.” He called manager Don Zimmer a “gerbil” and openly questioned his strategy. He threw a variation of the Eephus pitch, calling it the Leephus pitch. And toward the end of his career, he hurt his hip when he fell out of a building.

Be-bop-a-zoo-bop…ziddly-dop-a-doo-zop…POW!

After retirement, he didn’t retire from his Spaceman post. As a self-styled exile from major league baseball and an expatriate of polite society, he announced in 1988 that he was seeking the presidency of the United States on the Rhinoceros Party ticket. He wrote books, made radio appearances, became the subject of a documentary film, appeared in High Times magazine and continued to play amateur baseball into his seventh decade on planet Earth.

So, what sort of dwelling would Lee have warranted?

Well, since the flighty earthling couldn’t have lived in the space pod he might have deserved, how about the kind of geodesic dome home that futurist Buckminster Fuller developed? Indeed, Fuller’s views on “Spaceship Earth,” most notably that mankind’s first priority should be the sustainability of planet Earth, frequently overlapped those of our earthly Spaceman—even if Mr. Lee did start a baseball-bat company that procured its wood from old-growth forests. The best part? With proper planning, the Angels could have taken batting practice inside the Spaceman’s dome home.

Be-bop-a-zoo-bop….ziddly-dop-a-doo-zop…POW!

Nyjer Morgan

Oh, this one’s easy: the International Space Station.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: What about Spaceman Lee?

Well, the ISS launched in 1998, some 16 years after Lee retired. Sure, you could have launched the Spaceman into orbit, and he might have liked it, but the fact of the matter is that he’d have been free-floating out there, with no way of performing experiments with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

Or eating.

But Nyjer? Oh, that lovable space cadet would be perfect for the ISS.

The only challenge is that the Indians might have to time his pinch-hitting opportunities with one of the 15 earthly orbits the ISS completes each day.

Considering that the ISS travels 27,724 kph, that’s harder than it sounds.

After all, on reentry, Nyjer would at least need to wear a helmet with double earflaps.

Craig Breslow

The Boston leftie is a certifiable genius. How do I know? Well, it takes one to know one, you know. I also know because I looked it up on Wikipedia. Have you seen Wikipedia? It knows everything!

Anyhoo, Breslow majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. This is not unlike majoring in large-scale basket weaving at Community College Tech. How do I know? Because basket weaving was hard! Not unlike biophysics.

And so the question—other than “where the heck did I put my keys?”—is this: Where should a Breslowian genius—namely, Breslow himself—live?

At this point I think we can all agree that he should live right here in my office. In fact, he should probably sit right here in this chair.

And now for a quicker list of ideal homes for players past and present:

Pete Rose

A room at the Bellagio.

Dock Ellis

Ken Kesey’s school bus.

Chris Perez

Anywhere in Amsterdam, really.

Bryce Harper

Dorm room.

Jonathan Papelbon

Soundproof room.

Andy Pettitte

Retirement home

Brian Wilson

Tree house.

Milton Bradley

Doghouse.

Rafael Palmeiro

Glass house.

Nick Swisher

Frat house.

Pat Burrell

Sorority house.

Not that Burrell would have had his own room, mind you.

But he’d have definitely had a key. Oh, yeah. He’d have had a key.

Ian Kinsler

Halfway house.

No, it’s not because he’s a recovering scofflaw.

It’s because he’s always getting caught in rundowns.

Alex Rodriguez

Down at the end of lonely street.

Bill Buckner

A log cabin—with no phone, TV or radio—deep, deep in the woods.

Rabbit Maranville

Rabbit hole.

Nellie Fox

Foxhole

Jimmie Foxx

Foxxhole.

Scratch that. I think it’s a strip club in Tallahassee.

Kenny Rogers

Island in the stream.

Jamie Moyer

Springfield Retirement Castle.

Babe Ruth

A house, any house, that Ruth built.

Frank Tanana

The home itself doesn’t matter so much, as long as it has…

/removes sunglasses

… a Tanana hammock.

Sad Sam Jones

Um, a bouncy house?

Ozzie Guillen

Angrydome.

Lenny Dykstra

County jail.

Rickey Henderson

Rickey Henderson’s house.

Why? Because Rickey Henderson says so.

Derek Jeter

A suite at the Playboy Mansion.

Adrian Beltre

An awesome house on Awesome Street in Awesomeville.

John Smoltz

A wigwam.

Why a wigwam? Because there’s no such thing as a toupéewam, that’s why.

Bo Belinsky

Monastery.

Just for the fun of it. Or, if you prefer, just for the hell of it.

John Rocker

New York City Subway station.

Again, just for the fun of it.

Kevin Millar

Army barracks

Once more, just for fun of it.

Arky Vaughan

Houseboat.

Eddie Plank

Boarding house.

Billy Butler

Bed and country breakfast.

Keith Hernandez

Smoking lounge at LaGuardia.

Barry Zito

Palapa hut.

Tom Glavine

Anywhere that’s not in the inner 66.6 percent of the city.

Why? Because he’s always lived on the outer third.

Ernie Banks

Duplex.

Ugueth Urbina

Graybar Hotel

Denny McLain

Graybar Motel

Barry Bonds

Graybar Holiday Inn

Seth Smith and Jonny Gomes

Timeshare.

Ichiro Suzuki

Have you heard this man talk? If you have, you know he should live atop a mystical mountain, issuing wisdom in the form of poetic, inscrutable riddles.

Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky

Secret dungeon.

Jose Offerman

Ever more secret dungeon.

Don “The Caveman” Robinson

A five-bedroom ranch-style home.

What, you thought I was going to say a cave?

La Marr Hoyt

A cave.

What, you thought I was going to say a five-bedroom ranch-style home?

OK, clever readers. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the space provided. As for me, I need to go make room for Mr. Breslow.


John Paschal is a regular contributor to The Hardball Times and The Hardball Times Baseball Annual.
10 Comments
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Jack Johnson
10 years ago

Mariano Rivera: Igloo. Why not? The guy already had ice water in his veins.

Chipper Jones: deer blind.

Ty Cobb: anywhere but next door.

Azure Texan
10 years ago

@ Jack

Indeed!

The latter suggestion raises an intriguing question: To which player (or players) WOULD you want to live next door?

My picks: Yogi Berra on the left, Eddie Gaedel on the right.

Or maybe Bert Blyleven and Mark Fidrych.

Or maybe Moe Drabowsky and Jay Johnstone.

Or maybe Dan Quisenberry and Joe Charboneau.

Or maybe…

Paul G.
10 years ago

Weaver’s old pad must be something or that neighborhood must be ridiculously desirable, because that is not a lot of square-feet for a million dollar home.

Alas, I was waiting for the Paul Householder entry, but it never came.

Azure Texan
10 years ago

@Paul

You speak the truth regarding cost per square foot. But that’s SoCal for you. I used to live in La Jolla and let me tell you, each square foot was so precious and expensive that I tried to throw a weekly one-man party inside at least one of those square feet just to justify the cost.

On your second point … sheesh, how did I not think of Paul Householder? Reminds of the lesser-known players Jimmy Leaseholder and Johnny Squatter.

Greg Simons
10 years ago

My favorite? “Ken Kesey’s school bus.”

Well done, AT.

Azure Texan
10 years ago

@ Gil Tex

Tom House: The House House.

Azure Texan
10 years ago

@ Jason A.

Well put, Jason A. You clearly know the lay of the land even better than I! And thanks for the compliment. Now, on through the fog!

Azure Texan
10 years ago

@ Greg

Greg, are you saying that that’s your favorite entry?

Or that that’s your favorite school bus?

Jason A.
10 years ago

You obviously know your Northern California geography… but Chico State students moved on from turquoise during the Carter administration.  After growing bored with ultimate frisbee in the ‘80s and hackey-sack in the ‘90’s, this once-happening burg of party notoriety has lost its focus.  Must be the peyote.  Great read!

Gil Tex
10 years ago

Jose Conseco:  The big house
Jim Bouton:  Random House
Darryl Strawberry:  The White House
Jack Morris:  Cooperstown!
CJ Wilson:  The medicine cabinet, with other dbags

OK, maybe I went a little too far on the last one.