My wife and I received an Air BNB request online two weeks ago… It read as follows:
We’re five guys from Germany who don’t do drugs. We are excited to visit LA and really enjoy clubs and West Hollywood.
“What do you think, babe?” My wife asked me. “Should we accept their request?”
“I dunno,” I responded. “Five guys? Clubs? West Hollywood? Sounds like we’re inviting a bunch of Europeans over for a Bacchanalian orgy.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said. “They seem nice AND they said they don’t do drugs.”
“When you have to tell people you don’t do drugs, it means you definitely do drugs.”
“I’m approving them. We can always charge them if they mess anything up.”
I don’t know if I am the only one whose mind works like this, but when I hear that a crew of 25-year-old German dudes want to “go to clubs and enjoy West Hollywood,” I immediately think of that scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Jordan Belfort waltzes into his apartment early from a business trip and finds 25 guys sucking each other off on his $50,000 couches.
When you “Air BNB” your house out, you can’t help but formulate some concerns. We have rented to people of all sexual orientations and we are not bothered by any of it, however, in the six years that we have been doing this, I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that at some point, two strangers from Idaho fucked in our bed the night after they took their kids to Universal Studios.
My wife and I have been Air BNB’ing as long as it has been approved in Los Angeles. We own our house, travel often and don’t stress out when a family of four comes to LA and wants to rent our place for the week. We are often out of town during these times and for years most of our vacations have pretty much been paid for.
When we first began doing this, we rented our place to some younger twenty-somethings and their abhorrent treatment of our property became a serious issue. One six-person rock band from Brooklyn decided that our couch cushions would make fine ashtrays. Following another rental, three bachelorettes from Colorado accidentally left two dildos in my 9-year-old son’s bedroom.
After that, we decided that our home would be rented to families only.
But then we had the request from the five guys from Germany. Since we were going to be out of town that week and we didn’t have any other requests, it seemed like a safe option. Not only that, but the money we would get for the week would sure help us pay some badly overdue bills.
“Fine,” I told my wife. “But if our place gets wrecked that’s on you.”
We traveled to Tucson to visit my mom for a week and asked our dear friend Lauren to help check them in as they arrived. She called us that night with some interesting news.
“They seem sweet,” she said. “It’s weird though… all of them shave their legs.”
“Told ya, they’re male escorts,” I blurted.
“Shut up… maybe they’re like, on a swim team or something,” my wife offered.
“Well, they’re all in their early to mid 20’s,” Lauren relayed. “Good looking guys… but they are using one of your potted plants to put their cigarettes out in.”
I envisioned this happening in my bathroom
500 miles away, I decided to just let it be. There wasn’t much to worry about. I had hidden my guitars in the basement, my vinyl collection was labeled off-limits (A 6-year-old had ruined a treasured Dire Straits LP I had left on the turntable a couple of years earlier) and we had a grand total of $32.16 in cash in the house. My wife’s jewelry was locked away in her closet and about the only valuable thing in our home was a shoe San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker had given me about 13 years ago… So what if they shaved their legs and smoked? Outta sight outta mind… We spent the week in Tucson hanging with my mom.
When we got back to our house on Saturday night, we anticipated the place would appear like it always does post Air BNB… Most people do their best to tidy up, take out trash, re-set furniture and clean out their leftovers from the fridge.
Upon entering our house, the first thing I noticed was that the entire place smelled like Axe Body Spray. Like, the entire house. Every room, every hallway, every bathroom… It had a post 9-keg fraternity party eminence to it.
My entire house smelled like this guy
When a toilet paper roll was finished, rather than replace the roll on the dispenser, they managed to just toss the empty cylinder behind the toilet.
We pride our house on our “Kids Art Wall” where we encourage guests to add to the collection. Over the years, dozens of kids have contributed drawings to the wall and it’s a fantastic little abstract collection of developing artistic minds across the world.
Needless to say, these guys didn’t add anything to the art wall.
They also did not bother to turn off any light in the house.
Nor did they take out the trash… at all. In our backyard, stuffed in about 25 paper grocery bags, resided the ruins of their week… hundreds of beer bottles, countless empty boxes of cigarettes, discarded Red Bull cans and bottles of Starbucks Double Shot Cappuccinos. There were over a dozen empty pizza boxes from three different delivery joints nearby and nine discarded Jack Daniel’s bottles… Not to mention the new cigarette butt succulent plant they had crafted. Maybe they didn’t do drugs, but these guys fucking partied.
Birds-Eye View of our new planter
According to my calculations… and to the grocery store receipts I found in one of the random trash bags, these guys lived on beer, cigarettes, pizza, energy drinks and coffee for five days. That was it. There was NO sign anywhere that a single meal other than pizza had been consumed. There was, however, one ominous item listed on a grocery store receipt from Thursday: MAYONNAISE.
“What do you think they bought mayonnaise for?” I yelled to my wife across the house.
“Uggh, there are shaved pubes in the sink!” she responded.
As I went around the house opening every window to air it out, I could only imagine what kind of debauchery these Euro-bros got into in our house. Was there any freaky sex? Any late night drug use? Did they jack-off in every room? After finding a piece of pizza jammed in our pool filter, my wife panicked, called our cleaning lady and told her she would have to work a double shift the next day. After finding an empty carton of cigarettes that said “Smoking Kills” on the floor of my daughter’s room, we decided to sleep on the floor in the one room where we do not allow renters to use rather than in our own beds.
My daughter’s room. Morning.
The next morning, the Axe Body Spray scent was still lingering. We had taken out the trash and emptied the fridge, but our cleaning lady had the hardest job. When she was done for the day, she mentioned that these five guys had managed to use 32 bath towels during their five day stay. 32 fucking towels. When I was 25-years-old, I owned ONE bath towel that I washed like every six weeks! Who the fuck did these guys think they were?
I decided that a quick internet search on these guys might alleviate my concerns. The kid who had booked the place and had been responsible for the payment was listed as simply a “coach” in Munich. Not sure what kind… Soccer coach? Life coach? Sober coach? (Doubtful). Whatever the case, I checked out his Twitter account and he had recently tweeted about his upcoming trip to the United States. It read as follows:
Me and the boys are going to Hollywood to parteeeey with movie stars! Then VEGAS BABY VEGAS! What happens in Vegas STAYS in VEGAS!!!
After realizing that this guy was still quoting Vince Vaughn from Swingers, a 20-year-old film, I felt a small bond with him. He had probably tried to find a decent place in LA to rent, but was met with rejection after rejection by worried homeowners like myself. He was 25 and just looking to party with movie stars and now he was apparently in Las Vegas, most likely contracting that new un-treatable strain of gonorrhea I keep seeing on billboards all over town.
Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea is here!
After a few days, the house felt like home again and my son and daughter fell into their summer routines of Fortnite, swimming and staying up until 11. I thought of this strange world we were subjecting them to… After all, not many kids are forced to leave their houses for Air BNB renters every few weeks. Still, maybe the constant travel and new experiences will teach them more about the world and someday they’ll thank us for forcing them into the car for 8-hour road trips to Arizona… Maybe someday my son and his good friends will go desecrate a family’s house in Germany with their own beer bottles, cigarettes and sink pubes. If anything, these are experiences that not every kid gets to have.
I put my kids to bed and brushed my teeth. My wife and I agreed to watch a new Netflix show and I drank some water. Happy to be back in my bed, I finally felt relaxed for the first time in a week…
And then I found a used condom in the drawer of my bedside table…
ZACH SELWYN’S HOUSE IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON AIR BNB… FOR RESPECTABLE FAMILIES ONLY.
Film Threat Media has tapped Zach selwyn to host their “Anti-Oscars” award show “Award This” Sunday February 2nd at Frida cinemas in Santa Ana, California. Selwyn will emcee the event and introduce nominees as well as imrpovise and compose songs for the live event to be streamed simultaneously.
It was somewhere between Los Angeles and Palm Springs when I found myself helping a woman re-apply bloody gauze to an open wound that had split open due to complications from liposuction in Tijuana.
Moments later, another woman – with a razor blade tattoo on the side of her neck – smacked her 7-year-old son for spilling his Mountain Dew on her iPhone and screamed something at him in Spanish.
Sometime after that, a man with an infant child walked out of the bathroom in the back and promptly dumped a full diaper in the trash bag hanging in the middle of the aisle.
We still had seven and a half hours until we hit Tucson…
Welcome to the Flixbus.
For the past few months, my mom and a bunch of other friends have been raving about a new public transportation service known as “The Flixbus.” For a low price, you can travel on this large “comfortable bus” anywhere you like and select from a great list of pre-chosen movies – and use free WiFi the entire time. I looked it up and it seemed legit. And definitely affordable. A ticket to San Diego from Los Angeles cost $4.99. A ticket to Palm Springs? $6.99… To get to my hometown of Tucson, I was looking at $22.00. Since Southwest Air wanted nearly $400 for two one way plane tickets, I booked my 9-year-old daughter and I on a 12:30 Flixbus to Tucson leaving from downtown LA.
Wanting to beat the crowd, my daughter and I took a Lyft down to the parking lot across from Union Station, right by LA’s famed “Twin Towers Correctional Facilities.” It’s an intimidating spot – heavily populated by at least five bail bond storefronts and street meat hot dog vendors. It’s hard not to take note of family members leaving the bail bond stores, openly weeping about their loved ones having spent the night in jail.
“Are they crying because they have to take the Flixbus too, daddy?” My daughter asked.
“Uhh, no. Whole different situation.”
I promptly took notice of the waiting area and its potential to escalate into a violent “prison yard” type of situation. A woman was walking around selling homemade “street tamales” out of a plastic bag, three 12-year-olds were selling bottles of water and packs of cigarettes and two men with children were openly sharing a blunt in front of their kids. (As would happen, I ended up buying two street tamales and a bottled water, as I had not thought to pack any food for the journey.)
I hadn’t even boarded the bus yet and I was $19 dollars in the hole.
The line to board the bus was non-existent. as Everybody sort of milled about near an area until the ticket conductor shouted out, “Palm Springs, Phoenix and Tucson line up HERE.”
The awaiting pack scrambled immediately. As people got tossed aside and trampled like they were rushing the stage of a Travis Scott show… Elbows were thrown. Space was cleared. Somehow, I managed to grab all of my luggage and scoop up my daughter before she was flattened to death. Sadly, even though we were the third people in the waiting area, we had been easily bullied to the back of the line by the violent mob, which was led by a 6’7” ex-linebacker wearing a baseball cap reading: K.U.S.H. Keeps Us Super High.
My advice? Pay the extra $20 online and get a reserved seat.
Once my daughter and I got on the bus, we noticed that any available seats together had been claimed. Eventually I was forced to convince a man who looked like he had recently been let out of a Texas prison to switch seats with me so that my daughter and I could sit together… He scoffed, kicked the side of the seat and mumbled something under his breath.
“Thank you so much, sir,” I said.
His response?
“I run this bus, cocksucker.”
Lovely.
Eventually he moved and we accepted the fact that we were stuck in the last seat in the back of the bus… basically right next to the toilet. And then, minutes before we left, a rather large woman came back and destroyed the bathroom… I nearly vomited. My daughter asked to switch seats. The bus pulled out into traffic.
Nine hours to Tucson.
Back of the bus…
The first thing people tell you about the Flixbus is that you can watch unlimited movies and surf the web, email, text, whatever you like. As it turns out this is simply not true. After trying for nearly an hour to watch Euphoria on HBO GO, I was alerted repeatedly with notes that I was in a “non-connection zone” and that I was possibly traveling “out of the continental United States.” I switched over to Netflix and was met with much of the same. Incredibly long loading times, spotty streaming and the inability to watch anything. After looking up the Flixbus website, I came across some small type in the “Services” section that read, “Please do not stream Netflix, YouTube or HBO Go on the Flixbus as it slows down everybody’s WiFi speeds and will not load correctly.”
Wow. That would have been nice to know. Oh, also? They DO NOT ALLOW MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS on the bus that are bigger than 12 inches… So unless you’re strictly a harmonica player, forget bringing your acoustic guitar anywhere. (Since I was going to play a gig in Tucson, I now had to rent a guitar from the local music shop).
Anyway, reading deeper, they recommended that passengers watch their curated film selections on the Flixbus app, which were “expertly chosen” and free. I checked it out. The selections were the same as what you’d expect on an airplane: Wonder Park, A Madea Family Funeral and about 9 shitty Melissa McCarthy movies.
Seven hours and 45 minutes to Tucson.
As we rattled over the freeways on the outskirts of Los Angeles, weaving in and out of the carpool lane, I was convinced I was going to die on the Flixbus. My daughter was getting carsick from the bumps and sudden stops and I could not believe that I had chosen this as my best means of transportation to Tucson…
A recent Flixbus accident in Germany.
The bus continued to shake from side to side, causing a middle-aged lady across the aisle from me to begin moaning. Like, painfully moaning. And grabbing her sides. Thinking that she may be in labor with a child, I looked over and noticed that she had a freshly dressed wound on the side of her mid-section. At one point, she screamed “Fucking FUCK, can you drive a little slower?”
“Are you OK ma’am?” I asked her, hoping she hadn’t been shot in a bank robbery gone wrong and was using the Flixbus as an escape tool.
“Uggh, yeah – I’m just recovering from plastic surgery,” she said.
“On the Flixbus?” I responded.
“Well, I live in Palm Springs,” she proceeded to tell me. “I went to Mexico for liposuction because it’s like, 75 percent cheaper down there.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “Didn’t you go through some sort of like, recovery first?”
“I’ll be fine once I get to Palm Springs.”
We hit a bump and she made a noise that I have only heard once before in my life back when I witnessed a goat slaughter in a tiny village in Mexico in 2003.
“Oh fuck,” she screamed. “One of my sutures popped – can you just hold your finger here for a second?.”
Shielding my daughter from the horror of this situation, I regrettably leaned over and put pressure on an area of bloodied gauze that had come undone. Eventually, the woman fastened it back together with a clip and thanked me profusely. I excused myself to the bathroom and threw ice cold water on my face.
Some of the better results from Dr. Machado’s Tijuana Surgery Clinic. Facelift? $44.99
30 minutes later the ride was smoothing out. Looking out the window I saw the desert approach.
“Folks we are stopping in North Palm Springs in eight minutes,” the driver announced. “We will have time to get refreshments and some air.”
“Thank fucking God,” the bleeding woman said.
We pulled into an AM/PM parking lot in Palm Springs and the lady limped off the bus and met her ride. She waved good-bye to me and sped off into the Palm Springs afternoon. For all I know she bled out on the way home and is dead.
The good news was that 12 passengers got off the bus in Palm Springs. This freed up some seats and we moved a few aisles away from the bathroom. The miles began to roll away and I started to fantasize that I was Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy taking the bus to a new dream, over expansive desert land and into the heart of opportunity. Of course, Jon Voight was heading to New York City in 1968 and I was going to Tucson to visit my mom, but the view sure was pretty.
20 minutes later, I opened up one of my tamales-in-a-bag and gave it a shot. It smelled like some sort of fucking rotting animal. A few passengers looked over at me and covered their faces with blankets and scarves. Acting casual, I took a small bite and chewed for a few seconds before beginning to feel violently ill. I managed to spit the food into a bag and quickly wrapped it up, avoiding the grossed out looks of my fellow Flixbus friends. Luckily, that was exactly the moment when the newborn’s father emerged from the bathroom with the full diaper. He tossed it in the center trash bag and the entire bus groaned and began cursing him out.
“What am I supposed to do?” The dad asked the gallery of hecklers.
“Flush that shit,” the guy in the K.U.S.H. hat suggested.
The driver came on the intercom and reminded everyone that nothing but toilet paper could go down the toilet. The passengers collectively groaned and went back to their devices. At this point, between the tamale and the diaper, the bus was turning toxic. If you lit a match in the thing, there was a strong chance the bus would explode.
Six hours to Tucson.
Our next stop was in Blythe, California, on the Arizona border. Here, we were given a 30 minute lunch period and the only restaurant around for miles was a McDonalds 25 feet away. Assuming this would be my last chance to eat before 9:30 that night, I broke down and ate six Chicken McNuggets and an Oreo McFlurry.
I also called my mom to alert her of our progress.
“How’s the Flixbus?” My mom asked. “Watching any good movies?”
“Well, nothing really works,” I said. “Half the seats don’t have outlets, the WiFi in the desert sucks and they don’t allow streaming… and I refuse to watch Life of the Party. (That’s a terrible Melissa McCarthy movie BTW…)
“What kind of food do they have?” She inquired.
“They don’t have food,” I said.
“What?” She said. “On their website it says you can purchase snacks and stuff from the driver?”
What? Here I was nearly puking street tamales and eating Chicken McNuggets when the driver had food on him the entire time? Why were we not informed of this? I tracked down the driver as he smoked a cigarette and asked him if I could see a menu of the food they offered on board.
“Their aint no menu, mane… We just have some Ruffles and shit.”
Ruffles and shit?
“Come on my man, you don’t have like a Tapas box? My daughter needs some Wiki Stix!”
“This aint Alaska Airlines, mane,” he responded.
Eventually, 100 miles from Phoenix, a college kid broke down and went into the bathroom to vape. He was far from discreet and as a man who once routinely snuck weed to smoke into airplane bathrooms, I viewed his efforts as amateurish. The key to smoking on a bus or airplane is to basically flush the toilet as you exhale with your face nearly in the bowl. Yeah, this is a disgusting activity, but for some reason back in the mid 90’s I had no problem shoving my head inside an airplane toilet. Now I can’t even USE bathrooms on moving vehicles. Anyway, the kid opened the door and a cloud of Watermelon E-Juice enveloped the back area. The kid walked out as if he had done nothing wrong.
Stick your head inside and flush as you exhale. Works every time.
The smoke was impossible to miss and even though it dissipated quickly, it really upset the bus driver, who pulled over to the side of I-10 and DEMANDED to know who had smoked on the bus.
My daughter raised her hand to volunteer the information.
“Put your hand down,” I said, knowing that being labeled a “narc” at age 9 doesn’t do anybody any good.
“Who was smoking back here?” The bus driver said. “I demand an answer!”
I expected somebody to speak up… but nobody did. We all held together in a Flixbus code of silence. Shit, we felt like we were in La Cosa Nostra. For the first time on the ride I sensed a camaraderie with my fellow passengers. We all sort of looked at it the same way… If this was a bus in 1957, people would be smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey from flasks. We all had the same thought… Let the kid vape.
Four and a half hours to Tucson.
The rest of the trip went fairly smoothly. I was amazed at how well behaved my daughter was and as the stops piled up, the passengers started getting off. A few people got on in Phoenix and we got to Tucson in roughly nine hours and 30 minutes. To put that in perspective, If you drive directly from LA in a car, you’re guaranteed to spend eight hours on the road and you have to buy gas. If you fly to Tucson from LAX, door to door takes about five hours and 30 minutes. So, I basically lost four hours of my life, had to endure some awful smells and I got to be an impromptu nurse to the woman recovering from plastic surgery.
When we got to my mom’s house, she had food and wine waiting for me and I told her all the fun stories from my 400 mile road trip in a public bus. We laughed, drank and I slept in until 8:30 the next morning when I awoke to my mom freaking out about a dead animal in the walls.
“Zach, some animal died in the wall I called the exterminator already,” she shrieked.
I woke up and smelled what she was talking about. I opened my backpack and found the OTHER street tamale I had forgotten to throw out buried beneath my laptop.
“Found it, mom,” I said.
She made me throw it out in the neighbor’s trash can…
WATCH Zach’s music video for his song “Watch the Horses”…
Re-Examining the 1997 NBA Draft – If I Had Been Selected…
(Originally published @Nerdist Sports 2017)
At the end of my senior year in college – despite having not played organized basketball since high school and maintaining a 1.8 blood alcohol level for four years straight, my friends dared me to declare for the NBA draft. I wrote an official letter the NBA commissioner David Stern and presented my accolades: Six-foot-two. 3.8 G.P.A. Fraternity scoring leader and dunk contest winner on the 8-foot hoop in the parking lot.
I wasn’t selected.
Looking back now, I have to argue that I might have been a better pick than 75% of the players in the 1997 NBA draft. Sure, the draft produced perennial all-stars Tim Duncan (#1), Chauncey Billups (#3) and Tracy McGrady (#9), but for every one of those guys, there are three Ed Elisma’s (#40), Bubba Wells’ (#34) and Ben Pepper’s (#55). Who’s to say that if I was chosen in the late second round I wouldn’t have made a better impact than a guy like 44th pick Cedric Henderson?
I was too short to be a forward, my high school position. My handle wasn’t strong enough to compete for a point guard slot, so basically, my only shot was to be drafted as a shooting guard – and my guess is I would have been picked somewhere around 46 – where Orlando took Alabama marksman Eric Washington. (Whose best year came with the Idaho Stampede in the NBA D-League in 2010).
Due to some late garbage time minutes, I estimate I would have averaged roughly 1.2 points a game… Which is more than draft picks C.J. Bruton (#52), Roberto Duenas (#57) and Nate Erdmann (#55) ever averaged in their careers.
The 11th pick of the draft was a guy named Tariq Abdul-Wahad. Nobody past the top 10 picks truly ever made a big statement in the NBA. Sure, Stephen Jackson (#42) was a key piece to the 2003 Spurs, Bobby Jackson (#23) was a sixth man sparkplug and Mark Blount (#54) was a dependable center for a few teams – but overall, 1997 was pretty mediocre… Even though I once bought into the ESPN theory that Jacque Vaughn (#27) would be the next Allen Iverson.
My own personal draft journey began after a two-game playoff run in the annual 1997 fraternity basketball challenge.
It was in a game against Pi Kappa Alpha. Their starting point guard tried to take me off the dribble to the left. I stuck my arm just above his bounce and poked the ball free into the open court. I ran after it, scooped it up and laid it in for the victory. My fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi had won our first play-off game in 10 years. In our next contest, we gave the brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon a good run, and I poured in 21 points. Ultimately, we lost on a late technical foul call when I got kicked out for calling the referee a “dickbag.”
It was after that game, while consuming a lot of Natural Light beer, that I decided to declare for the draft.
On draft day 1997, I sat on my mother’s couch with baited anticipation as the others had their moments. I ordered some pizza for my family. My mother thought I had lost my mind.
As the evening progressed, I had seen enough of the long, tailored mustard and pinstriped suits making their way to the podium to shake David Stern’s hand. I watched as guys like Tony Battie (#5), Danny Fortson (#10) and Antonio Daniels (#4) put on those crisp new NBA caps. I accepted the inevitable as the first round telecast came to an end.
The second round was only on the radio, so I sat in my Civic, listening in.
“And with the 48th pick in the 1997 NBA Draft, the Washington Bullets select Predrag Drobnjak from KK Partizan, Serbia.”
Really? A guy named Predrag was taken? Nobody could even pronounce his name. So what if he was a six-foot-eleven three time Euro League National Champion? I played on the frat tournament second runner-up team!
Most of the players from the ’97 draft ended up overseas, injured or, in Ron Mercer’s (#6) case, involved in a strip club assault or two. I was no different – except for the fact that I never played one minute in the NBA.
Then again, neither did Serge Zwikker (#29), Mark Sanford (#30) or Gordon Malone (#44).
I still think I would have had a shot.
Ed. Note: Zach Selwyn currently averages 15.2 points per game in his over 40-YMCA league.
Recently, as a creative experiment, I decided to commit myself to sitting in the Hollywood YMCA sauna for 20 minutes every morning for ten straight days in a row.
My plan was to arrive at the same time every day… roughly 9:45 a.m. and see what different characters I would meet from all walks of life. After all, as a longtime YMCA member, the sauna has always offered up a diverse cast of dreamers, stars, trust fund kids, drunks and Hollywood failures and I was hoping that maybe this little adventure would lead to a fairly decent piece for Los Angeles Magazine. So, I re-upped my monthly membership and sauntered down through Hollywood at the beginning of May for my first documented YMCA sauna adventure.
DAY 1:
A toothless man wearing jeans and a hoodie with a bandage around his head just told me that he was currently recovering from a Samurai sword attack…
As he began unwrapping his head bandage, I quickly noticed a large raised scar that slightly resembled the laces on a football running across the crest of his cranium.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Is it – SAFE for you to be in a sauna?”
“I dunno,” he chucked. “After the attack, the YMCA let me join for free for a month so I figured I’d try it out.”
I soon came to find out that this man’s name was Ray and he had moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s to make it in “fuckin metal, man!” He claimed that he had some minor success but got derailed by the drugs and now he was pushing 65, missing a few teeth and living just outside of the park next to my kids’ old middle school.
I asked Ray if the jeans and hoodie thing was some sort of extreme weight loss plan – like when wrestlers jog with garbage bags on to cut weight.
“No – I just don’t get naked around other men since I was released from prison,” he said.
“Oh,” I eeked out. “I’m gonna go.”
Before I could go, he wanted to explain the scar on his head.
“Some guy was swinging a Samurai sword over by the Pla-Boy Liquor Store,” he explained. “I tried to stop him – but that was a bad move. Luckily the clerk called the hospital and I got stitched up. This town has changed since I opened for Faster Pussycat, man.”
That was day one.
DAY 2:
In the 30 years I have been going to gyms, I have never walked into a sauna and found a guy playing with himself while sporting two nipple clamps on his chest… However, on only my second day in my sauna quest, I was met with a dude who looked like that Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerrmann proudly fondling himself.
“Uhmmmm,” I said as I walked in.
“Sorry, saunas make me horny,“ he said. “What about you?”
I have been hit on by men before. Christ, I was a 22-year-old actor in Hollywood back in the day… But this was excessive. I was staring at a grown man’s penis, and was solicited with the fact that saunas ‘turn him on’ within 30 seconds. I crouched in the corner for a few beats, praying that somebody I knew came in, but I told myself that I would commit to a full sauna session – especially since my day one experience had ended so abruptly.
He then asked me if I wanted to retreat to the steam room because, “The smoke provides better cover for hand jobs and stuff…”
“What?” I said, horrified.
“I feel like a zoo animal here because everybody can walk by and look at us inside.”
Jesus Christ. I proceeded to tell him that there were other dudes at the Hollywood Y who would fuck him up for even suggesting a sexual favor in the sauna, but he just scoffed. He did not seem at all intimidated by my threat in the slightest… He then followed up with another line that made me laugh.
“Have you ever had an orgasm in 180 degree heat? It’s fucking mind blowing”
“Well… I did grow up in Arizona,” I said.
He laughed. Shit… Why did I make him laugh?
I finally told Rex that I had to go pick up my kids. I had lasted four minutes and 30 seconds… So far my 20 minutes a day goal has been limited to nine minutes in total.
DAY 3:
I have never taken my cell phone into a sauna, but for some reason a lot of people do. And today, a younger guy was in the sauna taking selfies of himself while wrapped in a beige towel.
“Do iPhones even work in this heat?” I asked him, just happy that he wasn’t playing with himself or showing me a scar on his head caused by a katana that was once used in feudal Japan.
“The new ones do,” he said. “It’s great for Influencer stuff.”
So are you a ‘Sauna Influencer?’” I asked, hoping that he was so that this sauna piece would really have some legs…
“No – I’m a Sober Influencer. Follow me @soberguy1989 on Insta.”
Ugh. Sober influencers. Due to my regular IG posts about bars and drinking, I get a ton of suggested sober influencers placed into my algorithm… and most of them tell me that I definitely have cirrhosis and that I have been dead since I was 32. No shade, but I hate sober influencers… I do love sober people, and I have hundreds of good friends who are clean and sober – but just don’t try to preach your way of life to everybody who might still be able to handle a few cocktails every once in a while.
“So you get paid to talk about how great it is to be sober?” I asked him.
“Sometimes… I mean, I used to drink a lot – like 4-5 beers a night!” He explained. “But then, when I hit 30 I couldn’t do it anymore.”
I’d chuckled knowing that I was currently sweating out two bottles of Trader Joe’s Campo Viejo Rioja onto the floor at that same moment. Which is when he began spreading his gospel.
“Have you ever asked yourself the addiction questions? Like… Are you employed? Are you happy? Are you single or broke? Are you in massive debt?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, in reality – I’m happily married and fairly happy overall – but I am definitely unemployed and in massive debt – but I guarantee you that I would be the same way even if I was sober.
And that was that. He took some more photos of himself. I did my 20 minutes and went on with my day.
DAY 4:
The Hollywood YMCA sauna used to be a creative cocoon for industry veterans, actors and mainly…screenwriters. I knew dozens of guys with past TV deals and feature films who often discussed how they were optioning some comedy series to NBC. Of course, this was back when Hollywood was still functioning.
I met writers, directors and first AD’s from all walks of life in that sauna – and heard fantastic stories. One I recall in particular was from Randy Carter, who was Francis Ford Coppola’s Assistant Director for decades, who would spin Apocoalypse Now Martin Sheen stories that would make any film junkie feel like they were losing their minds in the jungles of 1969 Cambodia.
Today, however, I sat in the sauna with two young kids who called themselves screenwriters. They ran off a string of complaints about how selling your original script would never happen and I laughed under my breath at their naivete. Still, they kept on about “established IP” and began complaining about the fact that they were writing scripts for a vertical platform called ReelScreen – and how they should both be the next Tarantino.
“Wait… So you guys are actually currently employed as writers?” I inquired.
“Yeah, but it’s like, bullshit vertical soap opera stuff,” one kid said. “It like… barely covers my rent.”
What? I thought to myself… Rent? Writing? A possibility?
“So – Sorry to pry,” I said. “But – are they accepting writing samples – or looking for writers?”
The kid studied me for a few seconds. I was the epitome of middle age… Dad bod. Beer belly. Thinning hair…
“Uhm… It’s a pretty young platform,” he said. “So probably not.”
I decided not to pitch them my sequel to Splash and I finished my 20 minutes in silence.
DAY 5:
Today was one of those rare days where I found myself alone in the sauna. It was beautiful… and the wood was dry and it just felt safe and peaceful. I let the sweat drip down my body and fall onto the surface where I made a little Rorschach Tests for what shapes I found. It was a parade of dragons, butterflies and weird silhouettes of men scooping ice cream… It felt like I was on mushrooms… More days like this please.
DAY 6:
Reid, an old pal of mine from the basketball courts, was in the sauna today and asked me if I heard about the old guy who got kicked out for regularly soliciting hand jobs in the steam room.
“Holy shit, that dude hit on me!” I said. “Did he look like that Gilgo Beach Long Island serial killer Rex Heuermann?”
“Yes! He tried to lick my nipples last time I was in here – turns out he was 64!”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel as special, knowing that this dude was basically chasing every dick around the sauna. I took some pride in the fact that I was 15 years younger than him, so for a second I considered myself a “twink.”
Wait. What?
DAY 7:
Big delay upcoming. The sauna was closed because somebody had defecated on the rocks. I think I may be done with this experiment. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was the Samurai Sword guy…
DAY 8:
It’s been two weeks since the sauna reopened after being scrubbed and sanitized. I have certainly missed my daily trips but was looking forward to getting back to a nice schvitz following a quick jaunt to New York where I slept for a total of nine hours in three days.
So, imagine my surprise when three fully naked old Korean guys and a moss of white pubic hair greeted me on a random Thursday. The three guys were laughing about something I was not privy to, but there were no towels or clothing ANYWHERE. I mentioned that this YMCA demands that you wear some sort of covering, but they didn’t understand me. All I heard was that the Koreatown YMCA was temporarily closed, so a bunch of members were coming here now…
I walked out early, but was pleasantly amused when fifteen minutes later I saw the same three naked men try to walk into the co-ed jacuzzi area buck fucking naked.
They were politely asked to leave… I waved at them before going to do 40 crunches.
DAY 9:
Look, I never liked the guys who use the sauna as their “gym.” They use it to do crunches and squats and shadowbox and shit. Today – some dude was getting after it. HARD. I am pretty sure that there is an unspoken rule that you are not allowed to exercise in the sauna, but I’ll be damned if this guy, who was wearing a pointy felt hobbit hat, wasn’t taking up the entire room with jabs and push-ups…
“Dude, what does that elf hat do?” I asked him.
He threw a few crosses before alerting me that it keeps the heat closer to the head and therefore you can stay in the sauna longer.
“Yeah, but you look like Frodo Baggins.”
He stopped and looked at me. He was larger and had some bad tattoos and I immediately regretted commenting on his Lord of the Rings hat. He didn’t even respond. He just took the towel from around his neck and wrung it out over the electric sauna… right in front of the sign that clearly states “Do not put liquid on the electric sauna – it will short fuse.”
Frodo then walked out and left the door open… About two minutes later he came back, soaking wet from what I assumed was a trip to the shower. His hat was gone – and he started doing push-ups on the floor. I walked out a few seconds later, 11 minutes short of my goal.
DAY 10:
My final day of this experiment was somewhat heartbreaking… especially because Reid was back – and he informed me that his mother was recently conned out of her life savings by a “man” she met online who claimed to be Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar.
Now, apparently Sammy himself had reached out online and told his mom that he was in debt and needed some money for surgery… He also tossed in that he thought she was very attractive. (For the record, she is currently 82-years-old).
Well, the next thing Reid knew, his mom was on her way to Los Angeles to meet the famed Red Rocker at the Sunset Marquis Hotel… Of course when she got there, Sammy Hagar was nowhere to be found and her $450,000 dollar nest egg was gone.
“Jesus, that’s heartbreaking,” I said, flabbergasted. “That’s like that one girl who thought she was married to Brad Pitt.”
“Exactly,” he said. ”Apparently this fake celebrity thing online is a new scam on the elderly… It’s happening everywhere – My cousin’s dad just sent 200 grand to Chilli From TLC.”
“What the FUCK!,” I said. “Who could be that stupid?”
“Dunno. The world is full of online scammers. By the way, are you hooping today?” He asked.
“No, I’m writing a story about the sauna.”
“Ew.”
Reid high-fived me and mentioned a future beer together and I nodded and smiled knowing that my ten day experiment had finally come to a close.
I also made a mental note to not return the email I recently got from Stevie Nicks…
So there ya go. 10 days. One sauna. Many stories. I’m sure there have been more lascivious tales, steamy stories and 180 degree orgasms in the days of sauna past but these were my encounters over the past month… But do me a favor and check back next week…
It has been nearly 19 years since I left my childhood home for college.
In that time, the closet in my old bedroom has been housing the rotting souvenirs of my youth. Souvenirs that eternally remind me of my precious, fading juvenile memories. Items that will forever sentimentally call out to me, and ALL of us children of the 1980’s… Invaluable, beautiful trinkets that I have been unable to part with since I was 13-years-old.
The author’s childhood closet looked a lot like this until last week.
Of course, I am referring to thousands of ridiculously worthless Pac-Man key-chains, Garbage Pail Kids and armless GI Joe figures. Go-Bots and Star Wars spaceships that were shoved into back drawers directly next to a myriad of autographed baseballs – ranging from superstars like Gary Sheffield to busts like onetime Cleveland Indians prospect Luis Medina. At least 120 baseball-themed posters, like the Jose Canseco-Mark McGwire Bash Brothers print and the Bo Knows Bo Nike series. And finally, a colossal amount of baseball cards littering the back wall of my closet, long ignored and cast aside.
From what I remember, there is even a small collection of stuffed animals that somehow found themselves packed into a moldy cedar trunk – not unlike the toys from Toy Story 3 – who were forgotten when Andy eventually headed off to college…
They are all there. Forgotten and lonely, praying that someday their owner would return home and rediscover them – bringing them out for one last play date…
As mentioned, the majority of the closet was packed with my onetime extensive collection of baseball memorabilia.
My mother always told me typical stories of her mom accidentally throwing away all of her toys and collectibles when she went off went to the University of Wisconsin in 1964. She never forgave her parents for tossing out scores of Mickey Mantle baseball cards and rare Howdy Doody collectibles, which were now worth thousands of dollars. So, in my early years, she encouraged me to save certain things and to collect potential items for future profits… So, I jumped into my collecting with a furious passion.
Back then it was cool to own 123,000 baseball cards.
Today, they call it hoarding.
My closet has virtually lain dormant for 19 years. In that time, a certain online website known as ebay has shattered the dreams of memorabilia collectors everywhere, revealing that there were a lot more Mike Schmidt rookie baseball cards in the world than we once would have thought. Onetime Topps Nolan Ryan rookie cards – that the Beckett Baseball Card Monthly previously listed as being worth 725 dollars – are now available online for eight bucks. And the glorious holy grail of all kid collectors nationwide – the 100 dollar Don Mattingly 1984 Donruss rookie card – was suddenly available for a paltry $14.99 on ebay.
Even the crown jewel of my collection – my grandfather’s 1920-21 Christy Mathewson W514 Strip Card – which had once been admired by a middle-aged man willing to trade me a used car for it, was now selling for 250 dollars online… or best offer…
The goldmine in my closet has officially gone belly up.
My grandfather’s 1921 Christy Mathewson card. Once worth a car. Now going for $250 on ebay.
My mother finally placed the phone call that I always expected would come… The newsflash that it was time I went home to clean out my closet of all my old childhood memorabilia. The alert that she was turning my room into an office – and that she needed some ‘at home’ space.
“What?,” I said. “Clean out my museum?”
“If it’s a museum, nobody is taking the tour,” my mom responded.
So, reluctantly, this past weekend, I returned home to Tucson, Arizona to begin cleaning out the two-decade old treasure chest that I once swore would only be sold to pay for my kid’s college fund.
I arrived in town like a cast member of American Pickers. It had been so long since I had explored my collection of stuff, I wasn’t sure what was still in that closet. After all, 19 years? I wasn’t sure if moths had eaten away at everything… or if I would discover some long lost prize that would pay off my student loans and credit card debt.
When I opened the door to the lost tomb of my childhood, I was immediately hit with a warm wave of nostalgia that spread over me as if I was a 13-year-old screaming at Ken Griffey, jr. for an autograph in 1988. Everything was there. All the busted bats I convinced players like Joe Carter and Cory Snyder to give me during Spring Training. The scores of batting practice foul balls I had gathered and had signed by one time major league prospects like David Taylor and Craig Smajstrla – and tens of thousands of baseball cards. Other souvenirs like pine tar rags, batting gloves and lineup cards from my days of following the Tucson Toros and the Cleveland Indians helped compose my makeshift museum. I had stored unopened Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes that had cut-out baseball cards of Angels’ rookie Wally Joyner on the back panel sitting in the corner of my closet, adjacent to a Michael Jordan Wheaties box. I even found a few Kathy Ireland Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues that had been dear companions to me on lonely junior high afternoons… It was a beautiful assemblage of my long lost childhood. And I couldn’t quite figure out where to start.
My unopened box of macaroni and cheese featuring baseball cards of Wally Joyner and Eric Davis.
From1981 until about 1990, I rearranged my bedroom in a tribute to the game of baseball. Don Mattingly was my boyhood hero, and box scores, batting averages and ERA’s practically ran my life for nine splendid and unforgettable years during my adolescence.
When other kids went to Golf-N-Stuff on the weekend to meet the cute 6th grade girls like Amy Foust and Erin Shelly, I went to Tucson’s premiere baseball card shop “The Sports Page” with my collector-geek friends. My mother would often walk by my room and see me obsessing over Dave Winfield’s career batting average or Rickey Henderson’s stolen base record and casually mention that she had heard some of my other friends were going to a local water park with some classmates… I offered up a simple shrug of my shoulders and poured directly back into rearranging my baseball cards, occasionally choosing to alphabetize them so that I would always be able to pull them out at any given moment.
Girls were certainly around, but I was way to insecure too ever do anything about them. I left the girls at school to the skater kids who were dressed in Vision Street Wear and rode designer Gator skateboards…
80’s Skater Steve Caballero was the envy of the cool kids at my junior high. I refused to get a “skater cut” until much later…
Me? I was a baseball card kid. The Vice President of the baseball card club and a hip-hop music fan who used to write songs like The Baseball Card Rap to perform with some of my friends at a school talent show.
Basically, I was a complete fucking geek.
My parents seemed to never truly understand my obsession with America’s pastime. Perhaps it was because my own personal baseball career had come to an abrupt end when I broke my arm in fifth grade. My much-hyped little league comeback fell through and I hit a combined .216 over the next three seasons. So, I found my true baseball success in collecting memorabilia and autographs from big league ballplayers.
My mom could only stare in bewilderment as her oldest son spent all of his allowance and Bar Mitzvah money on what she viewed to be merely useless pieces of cardboard. In fact, the only time I remember talking to my mom about baseball cards was when I asked if I could fly to her childhood home in New Jersey to look in the attic for all those Mickey Mantle rookies she claimed her mom once threw away.
My travel wishes were never granted.
I started picking through my closet at a snail’s pace. Initially, it was mind-blowing.
Old baseball cards and memorable pictures brought me back to those hot summers spent in drug stores scrambling for the newest rookies, slipping Wade Boggs rookies into plastic album sleeves and standing outside in the 92 degree Tucson weather trying to get minor league players like Craig Biggio to sign a baseball.
The majority of my memories came rushing back to me all in the cards. It was like a Rorschach test…I was thrown back into Mattingly’s clean-shaven face on his ’84 rookie… Dwight Gooden’s pre-cocaine gold tooth on his ’85 Fleer card. Even Ryne Sandberg’s impossible youth on his 1983 Topps rookie that I traded for back in 1985.
Every scrapbook, picture and signature recalled a memory of a childhood full of innocence and a passionate love for the game of BASEBALL.
It was actually a fairly peaceful and calming experience. For the first hour, I was suddenly 11-years-old again. Going through common cards and rediscovering lost names like Alvaro Espinoza and Steve Sax was both magical and cathartic… However, when I came across a poorly-forged Mark McGwire autographed baseball shoved deep inside my closet, I suddenly burst into tears.
The first friend I had ever had in my life was a kid named Nathan. Our parents had lived together when we were born -two months apart- in 1975. At age two, Nathan’s family split Tucson and moved back east to Fairfield, Connecticut. My family stayed in Tucson. Still, by that time, a brotherly bond had already been formed and as the years moved on, Nathan and I grew closer through written correspondence, summer travel and phone calls.
Around first grade, we discovered that we shared an intense passionate love for the New York Yankees – forced upon us by our fathers. We also both had an extensive collection of baseball cards, inherited from older kids who had moved onto skateboards and girls, and we both began collecting them with fervor. As the years rolled on, our collections grew endlessly, as did our friendship.
My first Yankees game was in 1983 – with Nathan and our dads – against George Brett and the Kansas City Royals. (It was the day before the Pine Tar Game). Dave Winfield hit a home run and Nathan and I split about 5 hot dogs and 3000 calories of stadium treats. A lifelong obsession had been kicked into high gear and the memories are still there – from Winfield’s homer soaring into the bullpen to that first view of the infield as we walked up from the escalator. I get chills just thinking about it.
As the years rolled along, Nathan and I continued to share our baseball card collecting stories through the mail. However, it wasn’t until 1986 or so, when I had begun obtaining hundreds of players signatures at spring training, that Nathan began to get somewhat jealous of my collection. At the time, if you were a kid in Tucson, you could walk up to Hi Corbett Field and practically stand in the on deck circle as the teams warmed up to play each other. My buddies and I would skip school and get to the field to watch guys like Mark Grace and Rob Deer take batting practice before snagging their signatures. It was the end of an era, when ballplayers still made the league minimum of $62,500 and didn’t face any threat of being harassed and jumped by some stupid drunk fan hanging around the dugout… Even though they did offer Dollar Beer Night time and time again.
Meanwhile, as my autograph collection grew, I found that more and more collectors from across the country began asking me to get them signed baseballs from the superstars of the day like Canseco and McGwire…(This was way before the steroid era and Canseco’s tell-all book Juiced).
McGwire and Canseco. The 1980’s Superstars who made me a lot of money as a kid.
Still, realizing that I had an inside advantage to any collector from, say… Vermont, I recognized a little business opportunity.
So, I began charging a fee.
It was actually Nathan’s idea to charge. I was so adept at getting autographs, that I would charge five dollars to a guy in Nebraska for a Canseco ball and maybe a little bit more for a team ball. I went to at least 25 games that spring and got everything I could get signed. From there, it was sold, stamped and shipped. By the end of spring training, I had made roughly $375 and was buying any baseball card I wanted at The Sports Page. It was easy money. It was actually quite perfect and even a bit business savvy… I had become an entrepreneur.
But it was about to get easier.
That August, Nathan wrote me a letter and suggested a way to make even more money.
Have you ever considered forging the autographs?
I was on it like Tony Gwynn on a knee-high fastball. Within days, I had mastered every All-Star’s signature. I spent hours perfecting Will Clark’s end of name “K-tail,” Mark McGwire’s curvaceous bubble “cG” and Dwight Gooden’s sloping, elongated “D.” I had handwriting intonations down pat… And nobody could tell the difference. I was suddenly, a MASTER FORGER.
McGwire’s autograph was my specialty. I took specific pride in having it down perfectly.
Nathan came to visit the following spring and proceeded to take back about 50 forged items to Connecticut. We had agreed that he would sell them to his local card shop and we would split the profits. Within two weeks, after convincing his local baseball card shop that he had been collecting autographs in Arizona at Spring Training, he had pulled in 750 dollars.
All on 100 percent forged material.
I guarantee that if you ever bought an autographed baseball or card in Fairfield, Connecticut or Tucson, Arizona during the late 1980’s… Nathan and I had something to do with it…
I’m sorry.
So that moment, when I held the poorly forged Mark McGwire ball, it made me cry.
I knew I was feeling emotional, but it was for many different reasons. One was because Nathan passed away 15 years ago at the age of 21, long before we ever got to reunite and laugh about our little criminal business venture. Back then, our operation was so easy to pull off, because nobody would question 13-year-old kids who were selling really legitimate-looking autographs. In the years following, I have read about dozens of teenagers and adults getting arrested and caught in the forgery game. (Most recently Babe Ruth baseballs were the subject of a criminal investigation).
Color-treated FORGED Babe Ruth baseballs. Can YOU tell the difference?
I am happy to say that we got out before there was any industry crackdown.
Our little gig continued for a few years, until Nathan and I both stopped caring about baseball cards and retired from the forgery racket about $2500 richer. Girls and music and pot had entered our lives and we suddenly realized that maybe those cool skater kids had the right idea all along…
So, there I was. In my childhood bedroom, holding that poorly forged Mark McGwire baseball – obviously feebly done with a nervous, shaky hand back in 1987. It was a touching return the last days of my innocence… Long before overdue bills and property taxes. Long before I followed a girl named Leslie around the country on the heels of a Grateful Dead tour just to hope she would consider me as a boyfriend, and long before I had a family of my own to feed… And long before Nathan’s demons got the best of him.
And now, here was my mother demanding that I throw away everything in my closet. I decided to take a stand.
“Mom, I can’t do this right now,” I screamed from across the house.
“Oh shut up and get rid of that crap,” she responded.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and approached her in the living room about five minutes later.
I sat down and relayed some of the stories and forgery adventures I had shared with Nathan all those years ago and told her I wasn’t able to emotionally get through the memories stored in the closet just yet. Having recently lost her best friend to cancer, my mother sat me down and talked me through it.
She totally understood.
She also informed me that it had been 15 years since his death and that I needed to get over it. She had to go clean out her best friend’s house in San Francisco just after she had passed away a year earlier… All I had to do was throw away some baseball cards and get back to my family in Los Angeles.
It was as intense of a moment I have ever shared with my mother and we have never felt closer.
After agreeing to keep a few items, but sell the majority of the cards to a baseball card shop, I managed to get through the rest of my closet somewhat easily. I found some special bits and pieces that, worthless or not, meant the world to me and tucked them away for my son.
My grandfather’s Christy Mathewson card passed down from my uncle for my Bar Mitzvah.
A Craig Biggio Tucson Toros cap.
Even that 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly card.
Every 12-year-old’s dream card. The 1984 Don Mattingly rookie.
The rest of my collection was bundled up into a box and headed towards a baseball card shop. I decided I was going to sell it all to the “Sports Page.”
I dialed the number from memory. 886-5000, expecting to hear Mike or Orby answer, the way they did back in 1988.
Instead, a woman answered. She did not work at the Sports Page.
She went on to inform me that the Sports Page had closed roughly 12 years earlier, and that she used to get people calling her looking for the shop all the time. Turns out, I was the first caller looking for The Sports Page in about 9 years.
Wow. Had it been that long?
I was shaken again, but I eventually managed to find another store in Tucson willing to look at my collection. As I brought the nearly 120,000 cards into the shop, I looked around at the changing face of what was once my obsession. Gone were the display cases full of modern rookie cards. The new collector’s items of choice were LeBron James or Kobe Bryant autographed game-worn jerseys. Both of which came with a certificate of authenticity. I couldn’t blame ‘em.
I sat and talked to the two baseball card employees for roughly 45 minutes about the changing face of collecting, the effect ebay had on the hobby and the future. After they scoured through my cards, they told me there wasn’t really much they’d be interested in, and I told them I kind of figured that would be the case. They suggested Goodwill. I admired a Derek Jeter autographed baseball mitt in a glass case and a Josh Hamilton signed bat before thanking my new friends for their time.
However, before I packed it all in and left for the parking lot, they informed me that if I had any autographed items of value I’d be willing to sell, to come back and they would take a look.
I surveyed the store and thought long and hard.
“Well, I do have a Mark McGwire autographed baseball…”
I looked towards the sky. Nathan would be so proud…
Zach Selwyn 