Take on the legend of José

My favorite sports memory isn't of a particular championship, chip-in off the green, or touchdown.  It isn't a particular perfect game, hat-trick, or dunk.  My favorite sports moment has more history to it than any of that.   In the late 80's, the sports world turned to Oakland, California to tune into a little baseball team who was quickly becoming legendary.  The team featured a willy old closer, a top of the rotation starter, a manager who would become legendary and Rickey Henderson.  But even the championships were secondary to the Bash Brothers who were quickly becoming all the rage.  Mark McGwire and José Canseco were belting homeruns like no kid my age had seen and when they did, they based high-fived with their forearms.   Mark would eventually set the season home run record * and José had his sight set on being the first 40-40 guy. They were the talk if baseball and all the world was expecting a third member of the bash brothers to soon join the party, José's twin brother Ozzie.   

The entire world figured that if José could hit 37 home runs, his biological equivalent could do the same.   Ozzie did come up for a cup of coffee but was never able to hit the curve.  A pitcher would get ahead of him 0-2 or 1-2 and throw the hook and Ozzie would twist himself into the ground like a cartoon.  But after a while we all forgot about the third triplet because José and McGwire kept belting home runs and winning World Series games 

Years later, before the 70 home runs, the tell-all books, the twitter account, years before the world knew Big Mac and José were juicing, they had both left Oakland and were playing on the Cardinals and Rangers respectively.  McGwire's star was still rising but José's was already a comet, barreling down to earth. 

One day against the Indians, the Rangers asked José to play right-field although he had long ago traded in his globe for a permanent DH role.  The game was going by, I can't tell you anything about it, until Carlos Martinez hit a long fly ball to right.  José had it tracked while searching for the wall with his bare hand until the ball caromed off his head (http://youtu.be/DLs0pjWnzTY) and bounced over the wall for a bizarre homerun which has been the top highlight of every blooper reel since

But the little known story behind that play is what makes it that much greater.   José in the twilight of his career was known to frequent the local bar scenes and the night before had allegedly gotten pretty hammered at one of Cleveland's top joints and had gone of quite a bender.  The next afternoon when his roommate called José's agent to report he never came back and  couldn't find him anywhere.  They did an all out search and finally found the slugger covered in blood, piss and prostitute and in no shape do anything.  Quickly a plan was devised, so as to not draw attention on their star having peed himself and fallen and busted his Cuban face.  

Part of José's contract stipulation was playing a certain amount of games and with José's injury history, his people were afraid he wouldn't make it. They called Ozzie, who was playing on an independent team in Columbus or something, and asked him to get to Cleveland ASAP.   He arrived at the ballpark about 30 minutes before game time, threw on a uniform, took his position in rightfield and became a legend

and nobody ever got the better of it

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