This off-season, Rattler Radio is counting down to the 2008 opener with excerpts from the corresponding page of random books out of the library at HQ.
Today’s book is The Masters: Golf, Money, and Power in
The excerpt from page 171 is Sampson sitting and talking with a retired Augusta National caddie. Or, more like his efforts to get a retired Augusta National caddie to talk.
Bobo absently taps the empty beer can on the table. Yes, he would like another beer.
Hey, Gene, a couple more, you say. You are drinking the sixteen-ounce container of Schlitz Malt Liquor, the bull. A buck sixty each. You are buying. You drink, sinfully in the middle of a January afternoon. A sunny afternoon, as you are reminded each time the door to Hill’s Pool Room creaks open and you squint against the sudden light.
“They don’t care nothing about seniority out there, that’s what dehydrates me,” Bobo continues, stubbing out another Kool. You nod while trying to avert your nose, for this Augusta National caddie (ret.) breathes mentholated breath so bilious you think it might actually be green. “I played hooky to caddie there when I was fifteen. Since 1973. Thirty Years. Now the best bag I ever had in the Masters was Larry Nelson, he…”
Bobo bitches and tells stories and time-travels and slurs his words like Foster Brooks, the pretend-drunk comedian. After a while his memory stalls and he starts to eye you like you’re an ATM machine. Bobo has remembered that he doesn’t have a job and notices that, apparently, you do. He would appreciate a small payment, he says, in exchange for his continued observations on the caddie’s life. How about another beer? You reply. Bobo crosses his arms and looks away, pouting.
Match a baseball context to this excerpt at your leisure.
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