Last Year of My Life (Continued)

The Journals of Patrick McGinty
continued from yesterday

Is this a rash I see? Good lord I’ve got the pox! Maybe that’s the problem. One would think the doc could have diagnosed something so obvious. The train conductor tells me of a brother who dies of ulcerative colitis. That sounds important. If I’m going to drop dead I’d just as soon it be from something with an important sounding name or maybe it would be better to get run over by this train. It’s quicker. The conductor shakes me. We’re in Ridgway. He says I passed out and was mumbling about covering home with the bases loaded. The pain is bad today. There’s a McGinty family living somewhere in Ouray County. They might be relatives although they’ve never produced any ball players, so I doubt it. Prospects here are slim since everyone is working for the railroad or in the gold mines. Who can blame them for wanting to get ahead. Damn the pain! I hope if this is it they bury me with my spikes on. I’ll have to dig them out of my locker back in Denver. It’s been 10 years since I’ve played ball. What torture sitting there on the bench watching our boys take a pasting.

The train creeps over Dallas and makes a stop at Sams. Two young boys are playing catch along the tracks. One says he lost his only pair of shoes in Leopard Creek and is hoping for an early summer. That one kid has a cannon for an arm. I leave him my calling card. A prune-faced woman approaches as I board the train. She scolds the boy, and tears up the card while letting loose a scowl in my direction. They never said it would be easy. The pain in my back is getting worse. I wonder if it’s the altitude? I think I’m developing puritis ani…or something like that. Dr. Turlo prescribed a furlough from whiskey then he headed off to the local bar for lunch. I wonder if there’s a hospital in Telluride these days and, for that matter, if I’ll make it that far.

It’s snowing as we climb the last pass to Telluride and it’s only a few months till the dog days arrive back in the Midwest. There’s a rancher’s kid here by the name of Collins that I came to see play but the weather could be a problem. His dad was shot during the labor dispute in 1902 and I think he wants out of Telluride. Too many bad memories. All this way for another snowstorm. Maybe I should seek honest work like preaching or gallivanting around the countryside with a medicine wagon. I’m too old to find a rich woman to marry and too young to retreat to the rocking chair. Mining and baseball have a lot in common. The workers and players do the sweating and the owners make the money. But at least we play ball above ground in the sun. I sign up Eddie Dougherty, Mike Finnegan and two Tyrolean kids named Petresko. One looks like a catcher and the other throws kind of funny. Who knows. Telluride’s really hopping tonight. The miners must have just got paid. There’s not much point in getting back to the room since I can’t sleep anyway. I think I’ll take a walk.

I wake up in a room filled with the smell of roses and ammonium. There’s a nurse standing nearby. Did I die? Is this some kind of celestial emergency room? She brings me water as a young man walks into the room. He asked how I’m feeling. I say it’s too early to tell. He tells me how he found me passed out in an alley in Finntown. Thought I was drunk but then thought better when he checked me. Says I was screaming like bloody murder. It’s all foggy to me. After I tell him what I do he says he’s a baseball player and was the youngest member of the state championship team in 1913.

Then the doctor comes in and we go through all the pleasantries again. Hey, the pain is gone. Upon consultation with the doc I find that I have passed a kidney stone. Apparently I accomplished this feat at about three o’clock in the morning on the way to his office. Guess I kept the whole town up half the night. The kid asks if I want to see the little devil and I decline. Damn, I feel better. He brings me some eggs as the nurse encourages me to get up and walk around. The kid wants to talk baseball. Says he remembers me when I played for the Tigers in 1908 but that he won a few dollars betting on the Cubs in the World Series. We lost it four games to one.

According to this enlightened doctor I should be fine in a day or two. He adds that he can’t do much for my gout. I ask about my strangulated hernia and he just shakes his head. What about that pain? I thought I had tuberculosis or something. He laughs and says a kidney stone is no walk in the park. That’s a great way to put it, doc. He says I’m as healthy as a horse but should slow down on the drinking. I wire the doctor in Denver that I will not be keeping my appointment. I hear there are a couple of pitching prospects down in Dolores and a Ute kid built like Ping Bodie. I’m on my way.

– Rocky Flats