The game of baseball is all about coming back
home, and few know it better than Matt McGough.
What made McGough special was the fact that his
personal home base happened to be the New York Yankees clubhouse, where he
served as a bat boy for the 1992 and 1993 seasons. What made his return to those
teenage-year experiences so memorable is the fact that he’s recounted them in a
new book entitled ‘Bat Boy: My True
Life Adventures Coming of Age with the New York Yankees’.
In the dozen years since he left his job
with the Yanks, McGough gone on to become a federal law clerk in Manhattan, a TV
producer (a 2004 prime-time series ‘Clubhouse,’ was based on his book), and a
regular performer for The Moth, a New York storytelling group. He’s currently
promoting ‘Bat Boy’ and authoring a follow up, one based on his experiences in
the courts system.
When McGough sat down for an interview in
New York recently, he looked
more like a young professor than a junior old clubhouse attendant. But the topic
at hand wasn’t the 30-year-old’s present, but his boyhood past.
According to the book, you initially got interested in a
job as Yankees bat boy in a roundabout way.
It’s funny - it all goes back to one game when I
was sixteen, sitting in the bleachers in Yankee Stadium. Though I’d been to
dozens of games before, I’d never noticed before that there was a kid on the
field dressed in a Yankees uniform.
The natural thought was, ‘How did that kid get his job? Why couldn’t I do that?’
I think it was partially a product of naiveté that
I went home and wrote out a dozen letters to anyone in the Yankees front office
who might be responsible for bat boy hiring – everyone from Steinbrenner on
down.
I
always thought that would be a great job, too, but assumed that it would only go
to someone with an insider connection, someone’s son or nephew or the like. And,
actually, you were the first outsider to be hired in quite a
while.
Yeah, the first in anyone’s memory. Maybe naïve is
the wrong word. I didn’t ask anyone’s advice or permission when I wrote and I’m
glad I didn’t – someone might have told me the idea was crazy and would never
work, which might have stopped me from writing.
Well, you got a couple of unique and interesting years,
as well as a book, out of the decision. But it was hard work, being a bat boy.
You were on the team’s schedule, working for a week, ten days at a time without
a day off. You described sixteen-hour days doing not-so-fun stuff like shining
spikes, wiping sinks, emptying trash cans.
And the thing to remember, too, is that this was
the first job I ever had. I’d done odd jobs around the neighborhood, but when I
went to work in the clubhouse, it was the first time I’d ever had a boss, or
co-workers, or gotten a paycheck – everything that goes along with having a
job.
I learned pretty quickly that it wasn’t a
ceremonial position. We had to be there at 3:30 or 4:00 for
the average night game, which, being in high school.
You were also a full-time student at the
time.
Yeah. You have to be sixteen to work there, due to
child labor laws. Maybe there were one or two kids who’d finished high school,
but generally, in April, May, June, and September, we’d head up to work as soon
as school let out.
Anyway, before games it was running errands, doing
work around the clubhouse, then out on the field in time for first pitch. Afterwards, like you said, there were 40
pairs of spikes to shine, lockers to do, bats to clean . . . it wasn’t unusual
to be there until one or one-thirty in the morning. And then you had to get ready to go to
school for 7:30 the next
morning.
Some
of the more remarkable passages are your descriptions of actually living in
Yankee Stadium, as your de facto home for parts of the season. You wouldn’t go
back home in Westchester County - you’d just work and go to school the
next day. Do you think that was unusual in the Major
Leagues?
It’s hard to say how it worked with other clubs,
because I don’t know exactly what the responsibilities were for other teams’
batboys, but for me and some of the other guys, it made sense sometimes to spend
the night at the Stadium. For
example, whenever the team had a night game followed by a day game, when we’d
work until one o’clock in the morning,
and then need to be there again at eight or nine – it was sometimes easier just
to crash on the couches in the players’ lounge. Which was pretty incredible, having the
run of Yankee Stadium, especially at that age – 16, 17 years old.
It was hilarious, as you described the experience. I
mean, you and the other bat boys would drink and get into fistfights at
times.
It was loose supervision. I mean, our boss, Nick,
was there, too, but we were teenage kids, so, yeah, certainly, there were
adventures and misadventures.
You got to know the players in a way that few others,
outside their families, really knew
them. I’m curious, just based on working for him on a daily basis, what do you
think a guy like Don Mattingly would have done if he wasn’t playing
baseball?
One of the nice things about the book being out is
that it’s brought me back in touch with some of these ballplayers who were my
mentors when I was a teenager but who I hadn’t spoken to since I left for
college 12 years ago. I sent Mattingly and a few other guys the book, and ended
up getting together with him for dinner not long ago. Mattingly told me about the horse
breeding operation he started after he retired from baseball, and it sounded
like he was very content doing that, working with his sons at the barn. He grew
up in Evansville
[Indiana] and, if baseball didn’t
exist, I’d imagine he might have been happy doing something along those
lines.
How about Bernie Williams?
He’s, pretty famously, a very talented musician.
He’d always have a guitar in his locker and frequently before games, he’d hang
out and strum.
Buck Showalter?
From what I witnessed, he was an
attention-to-detail guy. The man spent more time in the clubhouse than even we
did, which is saying a lot because we had to be there before any player got
there and we were there after all the players left. He’d spend the night after
night in his office watching tape.
As for what Showalter might be doing if not for
baseball, it’s hard to say. An accountant?
Finance? Something very
serious. He’s a very nice guy, but he didn’t joke or pal around as much as some
of the other guys.
One of
the things about the book is the way that you, a lowly bat boy, somehow managed to get in on experiences that
very few people outside of Major Leaguers actually see. I remember one bizarre
passage, where you described a relief pitcher trashing a television set after
he’d lost a game. You, and everyone else, would just stand around as if it
wasn’t happening. Did you end up with higher or lower opinion of ballplayers as
a group?
Higher. Before I got the job – and this is
partially about being a 15, 16-year-old baseball fan – I didn’t realize that
these guys were actually real people,
if you know what I mean. They were
just these two-dimensional icons, larger than life. Who was Don Mattingly? Don
Mattingly was the first baseman for the New York Yankees. The idea that he had a
wife and kids, or a sense of humor, or any other personality traits that I might
recognize as being similar to anyone in my family or my school or around the
neighborhood, had just never crossed my mind. So it was a real revelation to go
in there and, all of the sudden, discover that the ballplayers were real people
who I could connect with.
The vast majority of the players were very decent
guys, good human beings. A handful, or maybe more than a handful, were great.
Guys like [Jim] Abbott, Mattingly, Bernie – plus a few lesser-known ball players
like Matt Nokes, Tim Leary, John Habyan, Scott Kamieniecki – really went out of
their way to make me feel welcomed and make sure I was staying out of
trouble.
Even the very few who weren’t that great, it
wasn’t that there was anything malicious going on, and I was lucky that was part
of the experience as well. It’s
instructive to learn at that age that you could work with someone for two years
who might never bother to learn your first name. Or that someone making ‘x’
million dollars per year could stiff you – a sixteen year old working for thirty
bucks a day – after you’ve picked up and paid for their lunch or dry
cleaning.
But I don’t want give you the wrong idea – the
more positive guys and aspects of the job certainly dominated the experience.
The thought’s out there that players, they may love the
game, but they might love the money even more. Just based on what you knew from
being in that world, day in and day out, for those years, do you think they’d
still involved in the game if they were making, say, $50,000 per
year?
Well, you can ask the same question, to a degree,
about people doing any other job. How many doctors or lawyers would be doctors
or lawyers if they were making what the average teacher makes? How many would
chose do something else? You hope
people are doing what they do for reasons other than just money.
I’d guess that with most ballplayers the game is
the starting point, something they thought about at every single waking moment
when they were growing up, but we all know, and they know, that at the
professional level it’s not just a game but very big business, and for a lot of
people. For what it’s worth, in two
years in the Yankees clubhouse and dugout, I never once heard guys talking about
salaries.
Or new cars or whatever
luxuries?
Not really. Not much more, really, than a couple
of brokers on Wall Street might brag about taking a private flight to
Las Vegas or their new house or new
boat. I mean, Danny Tartabull once invited all the players and their wives, and
the clubhouse staff too, to a barbeque at his house. I doubt he was inviting me
and the other bat boys to his house in order to show off his mansion. He made a
lot of money, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted to throw a party for his family
and friends, and was nice enough to invite us along.
One of the more unexpected chapters is your experience
with one of the hangers-on that was attracted to the team due to the big money.
Yeah, working for the Yankees was a rich learning
experience on a lot of different levels. One of the senior bat boys, who was
effectively my boss, explained to me pretty early on that there were a lot of
people on the periphery of the players’ lives who were eager with an association
with them but didn’t have access. With time it became clearer how and why he
always seemed to be wearing a new pair of Adidas sneakers – he’d pass a message
to the ballplayers on behalf of one of these guys, and wasn’t shy about asking
for something in return. Again, at
that age – 16, 17, 18-years-old – you’re prone to make mistakes as to what’s
right or wrong, whatever job you have.
The chapter you’re referring to, I got in a little over my head with one
of that kind of quid pro quo. I tried to be candid about it in the
book.
It was almost funny, the degree of mutual manipulation
that happens. I mean, these guys didn’t even pretend to be fans - they wanted
the bat boys to get them stuff and access so they could make money. And you
wanted your own free stuff.
I was lucky to have learned my lesson before it
was too late.
At the end of the day, are you a bigger fan for having
lived within the team, or lesser? Or, maybe, just more
ambivalent?
I’ve always been a baseball fan, and I’ll always
be a baseball fan. If there’s been any change since I got the job, I’d say I’m a
less rabid fan than I was before. I don’t think I’ll ever boo at a sports event
again, and with the exception of truly incredible heroics on the field, I don’t
usually get as big a high when things are going well for the Yankees as I used
to.
There’s less mystique to it, you
mean?
Yeah. I know Red Sox-Yankees is a big game, but
the Red Sox and the Yankees are going to play again next year, and when they do
that’s going to be a big game, too. I think there’s a certain level of
perspective that comes from being immersed in it to the degree I was. I mean,
there’s a difference between a fan’s relationship to the game and what the
players have to do, but I think I may have picked that up from being around the
ballplayers for two seasons.
It’s a truism in baseball that you can’t get too
high or too low. The Yankees have already lost to the Red Sox twice this season
by a score of 17-1. Those are
games, I’m guessing, that they don’t dwell on any more than they bask too long
in the glory of having scored 22 runs against a team on another day. In either case, you’ve got to get up
tomorrow and do it all again.
During one of the Old Timers’ Days, you saw former bat
boys return to the Stadium to join some of the former players, and you said, ‘If
I’m still coming back 20 years from now, shoot
me.’
Well, part of that is being a kid and feeling
like, when this is over, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking back
and trying to relive my teenage years. But I can say that when I did leave, I
was surprised by how strong the urge to return was. I was lucky to be invited by my old boss
to come back, a few years after I’d left, because he wanted my help in the
clubhouse, which had a different tenor than coming back on Old Timers’ Day. What I realized, by the end of that
second experience, is that it was time to move on.
(laughs) Then I ended up spending a
year-and-a-half writing about it.
Yeah, that’s the only way readers know about it in the
first place.
It was great fun to write and I’m happy with how
the book turned out.
Well, I’d recommend it. I enjoyed it a lot, for what
that’s worth. One final thing - if you ever have a kid, would you recommend that
he or she serve as a bat boy?
Why not? I had some pretty unique experiences and
learned some good lessons as well, and I wouldn’t deny any kid a chance to see
what I saw. I might have learned
more in two years at Yankee Stadium than I did in four years in college and
three years in law school – real-life stuff, about human nature and
interactions. So when I have a kid,
I’d encourage him to apply, yeah.
But your kids wouldn’t be outsiders. They’d be second
generation.
(laughs) Sure.