There are a ton of cool perks you get as student manager for a college baseball team. Ready access to high-quality sporting equipment, access to the very expensive sport facilities and a relationship of sorts with the student-athletes you’re helping out. A position like this can be a dream come true for life-long baseball fans or a tedious, arduous experience that reminds you very much why you stopped playing baseball in high school. For me, it was both, but what I really remember are the road trips.
Our team didn’t travel too often in the beginning of the season. Usually down to Lewiston, Idaho because they had better weather, but that was less than an hour. Normal road trips consisted of a two-hour drive to Walla Walla, where we had access to PAC-10 quality fields and a nearby airport for California and Arizona teams. Oh, we most certainly took the bus to Oregon and my most memorable road trip was the time we spent three nights in Corvallis.
I’m not certain I’ve had more fun, pissed off more people, hurt more parts of my body or met more random people on a trip in my life. One night in particular was the penultimate road trip experience that involved me, in no particular order, getting in a bar fight, making out with three girls, starting a fight with their boyfriends, being saved by the bouncers and snuck our the back by the cute bartender, a free bar tab, getting lost while running the wrong way from my hotel, spraining my ankle so badly I needed an air cast and introducing myself to four stoners who wanted nothing more than to serve me baked goods and send me on my way.
I did this all alone, before the days of ready access to cell phones, in a city where the only people I knew were asleep and in no way what I would consider backup in case I needed it. To this day, there are chunks of that night missing that I’d certainly like to understand, but I’ve accepted won’t ever be fully comprehended.
God DAMN Corvallis, you were fun.
Story to be continued…
