The Bullpen Banter: Fireworks, bombs, and breakers
Above: Former Boston College teammate, Nick Sciortino, played for Greenville Drive. Here we are before the game taking a picture for Pete Frates and Team Frates Train 5/12/17 Hi Everyone!! How is everyone?!? I am fantastic! We have our third off-day of the month! After 0 days off in March and April, we have had three this month. It feels fantastic! So what has happened since we travelled to Greenville, SC a week ago? A lot. First of all, the Greenville Drive stadium is awesome. My dad designed it!!! It has great dugouts. It has a great locker room. It has a bullpen with cover over it! It was awesome. Shoutout to Papa Burke for a job well done. The boys were STOKED!
This is a true story. My father was part of the relocation of the team from Columbia, SC to Greenville. The stadium is built to the exact dimensions of the Fenway Park. During the design of the stadium, we flew to Boston to see Fenway Park up close. At the time, I was fairly young, and I never believed that:
1. I would play at Fenway Park (BC played in the Beanpot every year)
2. I would play the Red Sox (BC played the Red Sox in spring training)
3. That I would play professionally in Greenville!
We got to Greenville after a rainy trip in Kannapolis, and of course, it continued to rain on us in Greenville. Luckily, I had my Aunt Pat and Uncle Bill at the first three games. They sat through the cold rain, and they even stayed out super late to take me to dinner, so I wanted to make sure I said thank you at the start of this. They took me to Yard House and Ruth’s Chris. I went from PB&J’s with a waffle house dinner to Yard House and Ruth’s Chris. I almost had a full body seizure when I tasted the steak at Ruth’s Chris after a breakfast of steak and eggs at Waffle House. It makes 0 sense that those two pieces of meat came from the same type of animal.
I would like to very clearly state that this is more a testament to Ruth’s Chris and not a diss on Waffle House. I am very clearly on the record of loving Waffle House. My life’s purpose is to bring Waffle House to California. Needs to happen.
Joking aside, I cannot even begin to explain how good a Ruth’s Chris dinner tastes after a few months of minor league baseball.
Anyways, Greenville was quite eventful. Other than the fact that we got our butts kicked repeatedly, we had a lot of funny moments. First of all, the first national anthem at the stadium was nuts. Every night, we rate the national anthem as bullpen. A tremendous national anthem scores an 8.1 or above. We never see those. Most fall in the 4.5–7.2 range. Pace is a huge factor. When you hear 140 national anthems in 155 days, you hate hearing somebody take 5 hours to sing a single verse. Ain’t nobody got time for that!!! Anyways, we have had some awful anthems. I mean horrible. Finally, we had a girl at Greenville who was great. Just as she hit some of the last lines, her voice cracked worse than I have ever heard. It was so bad that she completely stopped and said “that was bad” in the mic. Might’ve been an expletive in that too. Can’t remember. The whole stadium was silent. I felt bad for her, but she gets a decent score for being the most memorable of the year!
I give this girl total credit. She laughed it off, but the silence in the stadium once she said “that was bad” was absolutely deafening. It is one of the more awkward moments I have ever been a part of.
Because of apartments in left field at Greenville, they have limited places to shoot the fireworks. Apparently, the only possible spot in right field…. where our bullpen was. They legitimately placed the fireworks launcher on the fence between our two bullpens. The launcher was 5–10 feet from the pitcher’s mound. Nobody told us this….When they hit their first homerun, they shot fireworks, and I promise you that I think I peed a little bit. The homerun cleared, and almost instantly, three loud bangs went off ten feet from my head. The fireworks exploded directly above us, and we were immediately showered with shrapnel. It is bad enough to give up homeruns, but it is way worse when you are getting showered with fiery pieces of paper. It is WAY WAY worse when you give up so many homeruns that the interns have to come reload the launcher mid-game!!!
When I tell you that one of these homeruns was the longest of all time, I am serious. We were in extra innings, and the game was tied. Our closer, Pat Ruotolo, faced Bobby Dalbec. Bobby Dalbec hit one so hard that I audibly gasped!
In left field, there is green monster.
Behind the green monster, there is an apartment building.
On top of the apartment building, there is a bar.
On top of the bar, there is a huge sign that says Greenvill Drive.
Yea… it went over all of that…
I drew a red “X” below to show you what it cleared…
On the last day of the series, we were hoping to salvage a win before the off-day. Unfortunately, poop warfare returned. I honestly did not think that poop warfare was a thing, and now, I am mentioning it twice in a month!! Supposedly, somebody pooped in the middle of the Greenville locker room. Because they had beaten us pretty badly, they were convinced that we did it. Needless to say, their bullpen was not happy with us. Even more needless to say, I promise you I was not the culprit. Maybe it was a disgruntled employee or something? People need to stop pooping all over the place if you ask me.
To this day, we still do not know the mystery pooper. I was kind of hoping that weeks or months later someone would finally come clean, but they did not. That being said, if you are someone who thinks it is ok to poop in a locker room, then you probably do not have a strong sense of guilt / remorse.
Unfortunately, our home stand has been very boring. We are 3–15 over our last 18 games. Gross. We stink. Just awful baseball. We did have a game cancelled because of power outage. In the fifth inning, all of the stadium lights went out. Pitch black. Couldn’t see a thing! They cleared the stands, and we finally had the game cancelled at 11pm.
Up until this point in my career, I had never had experienced a game cancellation due to a power outage, but unfortunately, this would not be the last. It is a common theme throughout the year that the stadium was falling apart. They were in the process of building a new stadium, so the stadium was on its last leg. It was not surprising that basic stadium operations caused a breaker to pop.
That being said, we were 3–15 on an 18-game stretch, which is almost statistically impossible to do, so in a way, the stadium was doing us a favor with this cancellation.
Also, I witnessed Fernando Acevedo eat an apple. He chews it all up and separates the skin. Then he spits the skin out. Never seen that before. Seems like too much work to me. Anyways, I know this one has been more boring. We have a bus to Charleston tomorrow, and I will send one on the bus back. It will be a lot better!! Logged Bus Hours: 63
PB&Js: 45 Greenjackets Record: 12–25
Total Rain Turtle Opportunities: 6
Total Rain Outs: 2
Rain Turtle Success Rate: 33% Potentially Dead Apartment Neighbors: 0 **UPDATE**: There has been movement in the room. I think they are alive LeBurke James
Originally published at https://bullpenbanter.substack.com.
