Veteran Clubhouse Presence by Pat the Bat: Word is Bondage

Editor's note: Our very own TGP Special Correspondent Pat the Bat responded to our repeated urgent requests for comment on some recent developments. Once again we tip our caps to Pat's business team, Mike and The Guy, who arranged a special session with Pat and our digital tape recorder late Sunday afternoon in Arlington. The transcript follows.

Links to previous episodes of Veteran Clubhouse Presence can be found at the end of this Very Special TGP World Series feature.

Well, well, well, if it ain't the nerditos from the Phillies fan blog checking in on old Pat the Bat...[chuckles.] How are you fellas? How many mgs are you up to with your Ambien(TM) shooters this past week? What, you haven't tried? Well let me break it down for you bloglickers: Tylenol PM(TM) is for pussies. You wanna sleep something off you regret having had your eyes look at, take it from Pat: Don't cheap out. Chase it hard, top-shelf stuff too, The Bat-style. Then, next morning, play it cool, fight every urge to look back. Pretend not to remember and not to care. Does you no good anyway.

Look, I'm real busy right now playing in a [fake yawns] World Series and all, but the Bouche just gave me a litte break here Sunday afternoon, and once I told Mike and the Guy that, they were all, like, can you get these losers off our asses Pat? They just don't quit it with the phone calls and emails. Just five minutes! Just five minutes! Every hour on the hour since Friday, Pat! I don't understand why I take such pity on you asswipes, I've been telling you since May what would happen as soon as I signed with the Giants. But it has been some good luck every time I get involved with you blogarogadingdongs, so another little taste of Pat the Bat might do us all some good. [Laughs.] Ha, Last time I put it that way was in my Irish Pub days.

O.K., you asked for it:

Game 6, NLCS, aftermath. One thing you gotta understand: Every time I saw a middle finger thrown my way, it's like an old teacher visiting his former students. Warmed my heart. Yo, idiots: I invented the middle finger at that ballpark. It only jacked me up more. So anyways, it was, damn, it felt more awesome than you'll ever know spraying beer all around Rube and Monty's playpen. I made sure I got into as many nooks and crannies as I could when the cameras weren't on me. And if I hadn't had a massive pregame colon-blow, which I just knew was The Luck, I would have boxed it up and given it to one of the clubhouse guys to leave on Amaro's desk for the morning, signed with a note: With love from Pat the Bat. As it stood, once the klieg lights dimmed, Huff, Ross, Wilson and I made sure we put our naming rights on certain portions of the clubhouse carpet.

With the postgame interviews and with so many guys who hadn't ever been there before, we took our time in that clubhouse, so my typical Pat the Bat carousing was cut short into some corner feel-ups of hot TV reporters and some fans we let into the lockerroom, and we were pretty hammered and smelled like a frat party getting out of there. About all I have any recall of comes courtesy of the texting I did on my phone, and you-know-who got the brunt of it. Here are just a few gems:

HEY PINEAPPLE...WHEN U WANT A REAL MAN ON UR RIGHT AGAIN, TELL RUBES TO CALL ME. WHAT? WON'T HAPPEN? ENJOY GETTING 1 YR OLDER WITH GRAMPA AS UR WINGMAN.

PINEAPPLE: U REMEMBER WHAT HOT TV REPORTERS DO IN WINNING LOCKER ROOMS? I DON'T HAVE TO.

UTS: NATIONAL LEAGUE FUCKING CHAMPIONS!

YO PIECE: WHAT R U LOOKIN' AT? AHAHHAHAHAHA

JAY$ON: ENJOY UR OFF$EA$ON! JACK AMARO UP TO THE CEILING! THEN GIMME A TASTE. U OWE ME. IM @ LEAGUE MIN (+ WS SHARE) BITCH.

Wilson had some real gems for Utley all queued up for me to send, but I kinda backed off (Wilson did the Howard one. Instant classic.). Some damn good material had to go to waste, but there is a line even I don't want to cross, plus I don't want the guy hunting me down in the off-season. Still, I knew he'd kinda wonder if I didn't send something his way. None of those guys got back to me until Tuesday, so I know all those torpedoes hit home.

Finally, I guess you all want to know what to make of this (ed. note: h/t to TheFightins.com). First, one thing you have no clue about from the media is that the guys you read about being "great teammates" rarely are, but the one-off guys, the "characters"? Man oh man, they are my bread and butter. No sooner am I out in Frisco when I start spending serious time with Wilson, and this guy is absolutely dry as a bone, real sick stuff too, and remember I was on the bench, he was in the pen, so there's a helluva lot of downtime. First off, he starts gettin' me all tech'd up and stuff, shows me this mind-blowing web stuff, and half the time it's sick like Vic's, the other half, I dunno, it's just funny, and we laugh our asses off, I mean, for hours.

If I can leave you compunerds with just one shred of a taste of what it's really like in the bigs, it's that you need to understand veteran clubhouse presence: All it ever really takes is about four or five guys. I already knew Huff and Rowand, I get a solid read on Wilson, then later on comes Ross off the NL East scrap heap, just like me. Insta-bond. And all the little sheep - the rooks and the reserve clause guys just fall in line. And fortunately the place is being run by the Bouche and Spaghetti, it's all West Coast, so the freedom was intense, man. I found out I had it in Philly, the Rays were a bunch of little pretty boy robots, they didn't get it, but out here in San Fran, it was like that instant coffee or whatever.

So Wilson had this interview to do, so he tells me what he did one time, then I say, how game are you for the sick stuff? I got this costume, right? He raises his eyebrows and says, seriously? I say to him, You have no idea. He smiled, and at that point I had him, I knew he was in. So I put Mike on special assignment, he finds it back in my place in Tampa, overnights it. We do the thing on the off day in late August and, wow, how we just punked Chris Rose. I fed Wilson the line about borrowing sugar, by the way. I swear we must have watched that clip 100 times. The first few times we were crying, we were laughing so hard.

Nothing new on the dreamscape from last time. Still the same, if not wilder. Wilson and I were watching this on one of the flights out, which gave us some other ideas, and I keep thinking how Vanessa=Phillies and here I am, baseball single again, and it's just where I want to be, out there, on the verge.

One last thing: Stop pretending you hate me. Watch the parade down Lombard Street and like it, and you'll be regular again before Thanksgiving. Hey, I gotta get to the cages out here, and quick. So I'm in time to win another trophy. The Bouche said I'm due back in for game 5 against Lee. Just remember it ain't personal. Or is it? Burn.

Pat out.

Previously on Veteran Clubhouse Presence:

Giants-Phillies Pennant Throwdown Pervue

Week 3 Diary: Beating the Bushes

Week 2 Diary: Longer, Deeper

Week 1 Diary

An Earnest Appeal to Pat the Bat

Bonus Fanboy Beat Poem Homage:

BURL

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog entry are purely those of the writer, who went to Delilah's once, not really intending to, and found the experience much like going to Abilene for ice cream. The content and allegations contained in this piece are merely inspired by actual events by current or former major league baseball bats or players, one of whom I used to think might provide better content than I could, but I've since come around on that.