march 24th, 2025
Today’s prompt: What’s an important event in your life that happened on or near today’s date?
Holy balls, great topic. It’s almost as if I’m cherry-picking this shit.
March 24th has been a big day for me through the years:
-On 3/24/88 I hit for the cycle in a T-ball game, undoubtedly the acme of my hitting career (I’d be a pitcher-only roughly 3.5 months after this).
-On 3/24/95, I jerked off to the video for “Creep” by TLC for the 17th consecutive day.
-On 3/24/00, I struck out a career high 14 batters as a senior in high school (against the Everman Motherfuckin’ Bulldogs, what’s up Jay!!!).
-On 3/24/03, while in college, I missed my 9:00 AM Monday class due to an Upper Body injury (hangover) and various Lower Body injuries (dehydration, crabs, tetanus).
-And the reason we’re here: On 3/24/05 I was, for the first and only time, released from a Major League Baseball organization.
Spoiler: getting released sucks. It wasn’t altogether surprising, though, considering that: I was a righty that threw 87 with no discernible breaking ball, and my off-season regiment consisted of four straight months of drinking/drugs/gambling followed by two more months of drinking/drugs/gambling plus a bi-weekly half-mile run. Seriously, I did nary a baseball or baseball-adjacent activity from September 1st to December 28th, and was fucking SHOCKED when I didn’t make it out of Spring Training. Don’t forget, folks: I’m a goddamn idiot.
Here's a few bullet point items from what I remember about that day:
-I woke up that morning finally thinking my arm was in shape…about three months later than it needed to be.
-On the way into the facility most days, there would be autograph seekers standing outside the gate. They’d ask who you were, hoping you were a big-time prospect, and the first time this happened I gave them my real name. From then on, however, I started fucking with them, and saying things like “Tony Fassas,” “Spike Owens” (Johnson County’s own!), and “Pumpsie Green” (if you know why that last one’s funny, we’re definitely good friends). On this day I made my ruse too obvious and said, “Bob Stanley,” and got called out on it by some Masshole. Can’t win ‘em all.
-Breakfast that morning was French Toast, omelets, and bacon, which was my absolute favorite spread at Spring Training. They ran that out every Thursday, and I was so glad I got one more shot at it.
-I kinda knew what was coming when, for the first time all month, my name wasn’t on a list of guys scheduled to face hitters that weekend. I definitely knew it was coming when one of the roving pitching instructors found me in the weight room and said, “Hey, Dipshit, they need to see you up front.” I then tried to sneak my way back to my locker and hide the only MLB-issued jersey that ever had my last name on it so that I could try to take it home with me, but those motherfuckers watch you like hawks at that point; they’ve seen that movie before. They did let me keep a really nice bullpen jacket, though. Oh, and I also stuffed a grocery sack full of French toast and bacon on the way out.
-First thing I did after getting the news was call my mom, ‘cause that’s just what you do when life punches you in the dick, right? There were tears, of course, which quickly gave way to worry on her end when I told her my plan was to drive the 1,200 miles from south Florida to north central Texas straight through. “Sweetheart, I know you’re upset, but you shouldn’t do that. At least stop somewhere in Alabama.” “Mom, I have almost $1000 in cash they gave me for traveling money. If I stop in Alabama, I’ll be taint deep in bourbon and discount whores for a week.” For some reason she started crying again, so I told her my compromise: I won’t stop at a hotel, but I will drink an entire case of Red Bulls on the drive. Give-and-take, folks, it’s what makes the world go ‘round.
-I made it home without incident in exactly 20 hours, slept for two days, then went about finding a place to play for the 2005 season. I got hooked up with an independent team, decided to try steroids for the first time, pitched really well for a month, then blew out my shoulder in the visitor’s bullpen on a June afternoon in San Angelo, Texas. Oh, and later that same night I hooked up on a trampoline with a real sweet gal (read: she weighed more than Larry Allen, but damn sure didn’t have his footwork).
So yeah, that’s all that. The lesson? I dunno, maybe don’t be a lazy fat ass? On occasion I’ll get upset with myself for not taking my career more seriously, but it doesn’t last too long. The reason? When all this happened, I was 23 years old and had a complete inability to look at things like an adult; in fact, I was more than a decade away from being to do so. I was a really immature kid that, for better or worse, did things his way. Most of the time that mindset served me well; sometimes it didn’t.
Would I like to know if I would have been good enough had I maxed out my talent and conditioning? Of course, but that ain’t the timeline I’m living in. I’m living in the one where I fucked up my only shot at my dream, but then went on to do a lot of cool shit later. Like teach, coach, get married, become a dad, and write stuff like what you’re reading today. Coulda been worse, right? I mean, shit…the French toast tray could have been empty as I headed out of the complex.
march 20th, 2025
So here’s the deal…I just don’t have time right now to write and edit a traditional ASF post. Between my real job, and multiple side gigs of varying success, and alternating between wanting to both fist bump and slap the shit out of my 10-year-old son for his smart-ass mouth, and having so much exotic marital sex (read: missionary at a 45° angle; that’s our position on the bed and not an allusion to my dick, smartass), I just can’t find the few hours a week to do this shit the right way. But I did make a promise a couple months ago (to make one post a week) that, while I can’t keep to the letter, I can try to keep in spirit. New goal for ’25: an average of one post per week. So far, I’m at four, which that means I have to average 1.17 posts a week from here on out. Certainly doable.
If not traditional ASF posts, though, then what? I don’t want this to be just another slapdick blog where I throw up a bunch of slop about how the fuel pump on my truck needs replacing, or how bad the fact that my parents are entering the winter of their lives is fucking me up, or how I mistreated the leather on my belt and have a pervasive throat rash right now. If you want whiny, self-indulgent, mundane bullshit that’s cool, but you won’t find it here; check Facebook for them shits.
The solution? I asked the internet, “What should I write about?” It turns out there are several thousand websites that will give you prompts for writing journal and diary entries; it also turns out that several of these prompts are perfect for my particular flavor of nonsense. So that’s likely to be the new normal around here for a minute. Gotta be able to make an adjustment, and such.
Today’s prompt: What’s the most impressive thing you’ve personally witnessed somebody else do?
I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve seen some shit. To wit:
-When I was nine, my white trash 13-year-old neighbor with a hair lip and two-guard chili bowl showed me her massive, disproportionate titties in our backyard. These were the kind of tats made up of like 85% puffy areola, and were resting quite comfortably atop a beer gut no 7th grader should have, but you’ll be happy to know that I played it cool and didn’t act like this was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to anyone. A few months later my parents moved our family to another city, undoubtedly sparing 13-year-old me the indignity of using allowance money for an abortion.
-In college, I watched a future Big Leaguer show up to an intrasquad 20 minutes late with a hangover that would have crippled Pat Summerall, throw a catcher’s shell on his head when he couldn’t find his helmet, grab someone else’s bat, and hit a first-pitch oppo bomb wearing tennis shoes. He then jogged to first base, touched it, and peeled back to the dugout like it was fucking beer league softball. So gangster.
-While coaching in my 30s, I once watched my buddy Tink spend well north of $300 in singles on a Thursday afternoon at a strip joint in goddamn Waco, Texas. What a legend, unleashing a mid-week central Texas titty club performance that’s unlikely to be topped.
These are all cool, and I’m glad I saw them, but they don’t have shit on what I saw Nicole do once.
I was 23, aimlessly drifting from one binge to another, when I met Nicole at a bar through a friend’s girlfriend. She was way hotter than me but, somehow, she was buying the shit I was selling that night. She had lived in small-town Texas her whole life, but her mom was born in Nicaragua, so she talked like a country girl but had the eyes/skin/hair of a Managuan beauty queen. And the rack of a goddamn angel. I’m an ass guy, but a pair of hammers like hers make you understand why some dudes are so into uptops.
We went out for sushi/drinks/foreplay a few days later, and come 2:00 AM we did the song-and-dance of “We calling it a night, or going somewhere to do finger stuff?” We quickly decided that we would go to where I was staying at the time, which was…my parent’s house. ‘Cause apparently my favorite thing to do back then was fuck in a twin bed in what used to be my brother’s bedroom that’s been repurposed as a storage facility for my dad’s collection of obsolete 1980s computer parts. (BTW, if you need 70 or so floppy disks for an Apple IIe, I know a guy.)
A 23-year-old got laid. Whatever. Most everyone’s got stories like that, so why am I telling you this one? ‘Cause of the ride home.
It was about a 30-minute trip. I enjoy the act of fucking and blowing a load as much as anyone, but it was the hour or so leading up to it that I really dug; the anticipation. Especially while in a vehicle, ‘cause you could knock out a goodly portion of the preamble…which is exactly what happened. There was a lot of in-pants exploration occurring in the cab of my ’01 GMC Sierra, but even I was a bit surprised when she said, “Take your pants off.” I’ve always been a follower and not a leader, so I dutifully obeyed, and quickly found myself on the business end of a top-notch handy.
But again, what’s the big deal? Most every dude I know has either gotten road head or been jerked off in a car. What made this occasion so memorable, and so impressive that I’m writing about it 20 years later?
Because…
…I WASN’T DRIVING!!!
By this point in my life I was squarely in my “Get fucked up, stay fucked up” phase, and was in no shape to get us home. She didn’t drink, so it was an easy decision as to who should chauffeur us. We hadn’t made it out of the parking lot before shit was going down, and as soon as we got on the interstate, she instructed me to lose my britches. I then watched her navigate both I-35W South, as well as my unit, with the type of efficiency, aplomb, and dexterity I’ve yet to see matched since. She was Geoff Bodine with her left hand, expertly controlling a vehicle that was in desperate need of a realignment; she was also goddamn Lana Rhoades with her right hand, masterfully working a dick in desperate need of a realignment. It was an epic performance, and one that I shan’t soon forget. Let’s give Nicole a hand for giving me a hand, folks. What an effort.
Postscript: Two weeks later we went out again and ended up back at my parents’ house once more, this time in her car. The twin bed was eagerly awaiting another dalliance but, before we could hook up, I fell asleep. On the toilet. While taking a shit. Nicole came looking for me, found me, and I haven’t seen her since. Can’t win ‘em all.
