Big-league bat boy takes a whack at writing

Despite the recent revelations about steroid use among baseball players, the game can still evoke memories of childhood innocence, of hiding under the covers to listen to late-night games on the radio or fantasizing about hitting a game-winning grand slam.

• Photos

Matt McGough describes just such a time in his life in "Bat Boy."

At 16, McGough boldly sent a handwritten letter to the New York Yankees, asking to become their bat boy. Miraculously, without benefit of having known someone on the team, he was given the job for the 1992 season.

McGough's memoir of his experience is fun, charming and well-written.

His normal duties as a bat boy included cleaning batting helmets, polishing 25 pairs of spiked shoes and vacuuming the clubhouse. During games, he took take care of the bats and kept the umpires supplied with baseballs, or retrieved foul balls down the line.

On Opening Day, however, first baseman Don Mattingly asked him to find a "left-handed bat stretcher." Not until after he had asked Yankees manager Buck Showalter and outfielder Danny Tartabull, and made trips to the visiting Red Sox clubhouse and a local sporting goods store, did McGough realize he had been had.

He writes about the time a player impishly took his boxer shorts, wet them and put them in the freezer just before McGough was about to go out on a post-game date. And he recalls teaming up with catcher Matt Nokes on a science experiment in which they built a cannon they hoped would launch a potato from the dugout over the outfield fence.

McGough writes that if Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was around, everyone was cautioned, "Elvis is in the house." Because no one ever knew what might upset "The Boss," everyone was on edge. Towels that were already folded were refolded, tables that had just been cleaned were wiped again.

As McGough matured, he delegated menial duties to the other bat boys and preferred to do only the jobs that kept him around the players and generated their tips.

He began to trade autographed baseballs for albums from the "CD Guy," one of the many "greenflies" who hang around ballparks and try to buy players' friendship with free merchandise. When it was discovered that some of the autographs were forged, McGough found himself in a tough spot.

He retired as a bat boy after the 1993 season, but was asked by the Yankees to return for the 1998 postseason. After the Yankees won the World Series, he even got to ride on a float in the parade along Broadway.