The following is a rough excerpt from a coming book not yet titled.
Chapter XX
We flew back to Vegas on a Southwest evening flight. Almost all of our flights around the PCL were Southwest since the airline had a major hub in Vegas. The Casinos drew so much tourist action from around the country that you could get a lift to just about anywhere at any time. Unlike my last PCL residence, Portland Oregon, where it seemed any flight required a red-eye layover in another city, often Las Vegas, living in Vegas granted reasonable wake up calls and flexible flight times. Beyond that, being a baseball player in Las Vegas was a mess.
For starters, Las Vegas offers every species of trouble a player could possible want. Prostitution, drugs, gambling, speeding, fighting, stolen goods, bum fights, and the list goes on in to eternity. If you were a young man with to much testosterone, and not enough brain power, you get high, naked, rich, broke, drunk, beat up and arrested—all in the same night. Ironically, this is part of the Vegas charm; what most folks came looking to experience. Action, baby, action! Get loose, get crazy, use the city like a condom, then don’t even bother throwing it away when you’re done. Just leave it on the sidewalk for someone to step in.
Since this kind of lifestyle was already the minor league creedo, it turned Vegas into some sort of Minor League Mecca, where worshiping required pale faces and blood shot eyes. For weeks the team fasted on alcohol and buffets, and would only breath air blessed with mentholated smog.
But, after about a month, the reality of living in a city that can steal your soul and replace it with a slot machine and astream of watered down cocktails set in. Guys discovered they were living in the place, not just one-night-standing it. The conversations in the locker room shifted form how much they drank, won, lost, screwed, or forgot, to how much they going out at night because tourists kept coming in, getting liquored up, and, well, treating the place like we did just a couple weeks ago.
There was also a ton of complaining about entertaining family. Get stationed in Sin City for any length of time and you become the brunt of every, “well your brother has a place out there, you can go stay with him,” conversation. Sure, why not? Nothing like being some drunken family member’s chaperon for a couple nights, playing tour guide while they vomit up out the window doing their best Hunter S. Thompson impersonation. People, even family members, have expectations on what life in Vegas is supposed to be like, and they want to go have a taste. A couple sips in moderation is fine, but more than that and your in for serious reality shock, and possibly an STD.
Vegas is about this flashy, sexy, free money image, and the ideal of grabbing it in your hands, which, oddly enough, makes it a pretty good training ground for future big leaguers. Up in the Show, guys would talk about money they’d blown, clubs they blew it at, flashy clothes they wore while blowing it, and girls that blew them for all their trouble. They talk about access to things other people don’t have. Big, bombast, bravado. That kind of language translates well to the Vegas atmosphere because folks routinely come into town trying to look the part of some high roller when they aren’t. A suit, a hot dress, and some brash vocabulary choices does not change the fact you saved for years, flew coach, and booked the a hotel package using your parent’s AAA membership discount. You can’t afford to tip the dealer a $50 dollar chip, not even a $20. But this is Vegas baby, Vegas, you want the dream to continue, you have to keep up the act.
Becoming a Major leaguer has a lot of the same principles. The new paycheck, the bright lights, and the screaming fans do not change the fact that most of your life you were playing in under dim lights, for no fans or money. Granted, you can afford to tip extravagantly, but you don’t need a one hundred thousand dollar car, thousand dollar shoes, or the custom suites. Who the hell are you trying to impress? The guy standing next to you doing the same thing?
Going to either destination, Vegas or the Bigs, is like going to some fantasyland where things are not what they seem. The difference is, n Vegas, your paying to be there. In the big leagues, they’re paying you. Every day you show up at the park you’re beating the house, winning the bet you placed as a kid when you chased the river on a long shot game. Everyone loves a winner, winners are elite, and elite people act a certain way, even when they are not winning.
Baseball players call this phenomenon being “Show.” It’s a way to describe behaviors that can only be accepted if it happens in conjunctions with a big league lifestyle. Think about it. Go to work one day in an evening gown, or a tricked out leisure suit you maxed out your credit card to get. Wear a pair of douche bag aviator glasses with the tan tints. Douse yourself in enough cologne to pass as human air freshener, wax on about how expensive your shoes, car, or hair cut is, point to fresh tattoos that you can’t read but had to have. Then, when people act like you’re amazing— mostly because they’re to nice to tell you you’re a jackass—act like it’s just another day in your world. Seriously, say that, say it’s “your world.” Boy, that is some serious show shit right there.
Not everyone is like this. Lots of guys don’t need to be Show to know they’re in the show. But, more than a few big leaguers do, and, ironically, it’s usually the ones that don’t have a lot of time in at the top. They, just like someone who won a few bets in Vegas, act like they have beat the house and transcended life as we commoners know it. They now belong to an elite club, and, like all self proclaimed elite club members, to keep people believing they’re something special, they pay to keep up the act. And make no mistake, it is an act. Especially to those folks who can see the big picture, or folks that knew them before they started playing dress up and spouting lines.
For the actors however, it’s life—you’re in the show (or were), you’re elite, you need to act like it. It’s not enough to have the success, they want everyone to know they have it. They want people to think they are Show. The more they live in the world of the play, the more it becomes who they are, their identity. That’s because, while it’s easy to lose your money in Vegas, or your roster spot in the big leagues, it’s hard to lose that addiction to wanting folks to know you’re special, and that pushes players to do some really stupid shit….
