Baseball Story: The Haunting

By Nick Hall

It opening weekend in 2003.  I was still a Giants fan, and still trying to convince my new friends from college that I actually knew one of the most hated, yet revered players to ever play the game for the G-men.  I'll let you figure out who that is.

I round up three friends to see who wants to go with me to Milwaukee and catch a game between the Brewers and the Giants.  Obviously, Bram wants to go.  Even though he is a lifelong Reds fan, he wouldn't pass up an opportunity to see the greatest sport in the world in person.  I was also able to sway my arch enemy "Cox", and another friend we'll call "Turd", into going.

Here we are, the four of us planning a little road trip in early April up to Milwaukee for a Saturday game.  The plans include taking off Friday night and heading to Turd's hometown, which also happens to be my hometown.  We decide to stay the night at Turd's house, get some good home cooking, and just hang out as guys for a night low key, since we had to get up before the sun to start our drive to Milwaukee.

Dinner finishes, and the four of us are downstairs in Turd's basement hanging out.  Let me paint the picture of this basement.  It is a 3/4 finished, full basement.  You come down the stairs and straight ahead there is a huge TV on the wall with a grand sectional couch.  Off to the right there is a full bedroom with a nice queen bed. To the left of the TV is a double glass door leading to an outside cement patio that sits just underneath an enormous wooden deck.  Just to the right of the TV is a doorway with no door, just a pitch black room that it leads to.  This is the 1/4 unfinished.

What would four college guys do, with a night all to themselves before they take a road trip?  That's right, rent "The Ring" and watch it together on the couch.  Let me say this, scary movies don't get to me very often, but "The Ring" got to me.  It got to all of us whether they want to admit it or not.

So here we are, four guys on the couch who just finished "The Ring".  It's pretty quiet at this point.  No one says it, but we are all staring at the doorway to the right of the TV.  We are staring into the black abyss that waits on other side, and most likely houses the little girl from "The Ring".  Some chatter starts about nothing, and then it is decided that it is time to call it a night.  Turd escapes upstairs to his old bedroom and leaves us to fend for ourselves in the basement.  That's when it all begins.

Cox, Bram and I are on the couch.  For the moment I have pushed the horrors of what I had just seen out of my head.  The focus now is figuring out the sleeping situation.  One person is going to get the couch, and the other two have to share the queen bed in the bedroom to the right.  A round of paper/rock/scissors ensues and the sleeping arrangement is settled.  Cox gets the couch all to himself, while Bram and I have to share a bed.  At that moment, I was pissed that I had to share a bed instead of getting the couch all to myself, but little did I know that my sentiment would soon change.

Bram and I head off to the bedroom.  We share a bro moment playing a little guitar, before we finally swallow our pride and just get into bed together.  The bedroom door is closed, the light goes out, and the bedroom with no windows turns to black.  Bram and I lay there for a couple of minutes, trying not to touch, until finally I break the silence.  We both have a little laugh about something funny that had happened earlier, but we were both scared.  Thoughts from the horror film start to fill my mind, but I shrug it off and roll over.  Silence again. Suddenly, the bedroom door opens and the light flips on.  There stands Cox, one of the most quick witted, sarcastic, no worries people in the world.  There stands Cox with a blank look on his face.

"The cats are talking" Cox says.  Bram and I look at each other and pass it off as its just "Cox being Cox".  "Whatever man, we gotta get up early" I say.  "No, the cats are talking, I'm sleeping in here" replies Cox.  Now its getting strangely serious, and my wheels start spinning.  "What did they say?" asked Bram.  "One said 'Why?' and the other said 'I don't know.' I'm sleeping in here" and we knew Cox wasn't kidding when he said that.  He shuts the door and Bram and I make room for him in the middle. It's pitch black again, only this time there are three dudes in one bed.  Sounds like a website, threedudesonebed.com.

We talk for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.  Bram and I are trying to figure out if this is real, or if Cox is just being an asshole.  Then it starts getting heavy, and we start throwing out scenarios.  "What if this place is haunted?" "What if we flip the light on and Turd is hanging in front of the bed?" "What if, what if, what if."  Now I went from being kind of scared, to "hopefully I don't shit my pants" scared.  The talk continues and we freak each other out until it is unbearable.  We have to get out of here, at least for a minute.  Bram and I agree to step outside the double glass door to the left of the TV in the other room and have a cig.  Cox comes along out of fear of being alone, not to indulge.

The three of us walk out the double glass door.  We stand with our backs to it, and Bram and I light up a cig.  We start recounting what has happened so far.  We turn around to look inside the basement, and wouldn't you know, right there in front of the double glass doors sits both cats, staring at us, judging us.  The cats don't move for the three or four minutes it takes Bram and I to finish the cig, and neither do we.  We just stare at each other, the cats and us.  We put the cigs out and prepare to go inside.  Cox pulls on the door, but the handle won't turn.  The door is locked.  The door is locked!  Cox tries to turn it and pull on it some more, nothing.  It's locked, and through all the commotion, the cats remain seated in front of the double glass doors staring at us.  We run up the the side of the house and take the steps up the huge wooden deck that leads to the back entrance of the main level of the house.  It's unlocked, a small miracle through all of the panic.  The three of us bomb down the basement stares, run to the double glass doors, twist the handle and open the door.  It's unlocked.  I know what you're thinking, "it's one of those doors that stays unlocked on the inside but locks on the outside unless you turn the lock from the inside".  Wrong.  We open the door and try to twist the handle on the outside, it twists.  It's not locked anymore.

That's it, I've had enough at this point.  The three of us march back into the bedroom, and lay down together.  Three dudes in one bed, shut up about it, I don't care, it was necessary.  Evil was lurking and we had to stick together.  After much ado, we all finally fall asleep about an hour before our 5am wake up call to head to Milwaukee.  I, personally, have never been more happy to leave a house in all of my life.

We head to Milwaukee, and arrive at Miller Park.  At this point my friends are still skeptical about me knowing this Giants player.  So I walk up to will call and ask for my tickets.  They ask me who left me the tickets and I say the players name.  They hand me my tickets and my friends still think I might be bullshitting.  We catch the game, I don't remember the score or who won, and quite frankly it doesn't matter because we almost died the night before.  After the game, we pile into the car and head to the hotel where the Giants are staying.  It is a really nice hotel, and it is about to be invaded by four college kids who got one hour of sleep, no shower, and who look like hoodlums in the clothes they are wearing.  Luckily we fit in, they were only holding a black tie event in the main lobby, so we didn't stand out at all.

We stood there and the people working the desk glared at us.  A couple of bellhops came up and asked if they could help us and we kindly declined.  The Giants team bus pulls up, and the players start to shuffle in, it's the moment of truth for my friends.  The one I know walks by with his headphones on and doesn't see me, so I start to approach him saying his name rather loudly so he could hear me over his headphones.  Multiple employees rushed over to step in front of me thinking I was some crazed fan.  The Giants player turns to see what the commotion is about, and that's when he sees me.  "Hey, what's up Nick?' he says, and the stunned employees stand down.  I think they were pretty upset that they couldn't apprehend me.  I look back at my friends, and their eyes are huge.  I wasn't full of it, it was real.  They come over and meet my friend.  We have a small chat and then it's time to go.

Back to school we go.  It has been a long day, preceded by an even longer night thanks to the evils of Turd's house.  Before we get back to school, we do have to stop by Turd's house to drop him off.  We get back into Indiana, almost to Turd's house on a small country road.  I am driving, and the worries of the previous night are far from my mind as we all talk.  That's when it all came together.  Out of nowhere a cat runs in front of my car and I smash it.  I run it over and it is without any doubt dead.  No more than two seconds after I hit and kill this cat, Cox looks at me and says "that's its."  I say "what's it?" still not having made the connection.  "The cats talking last night, one said 'Why?' and the other said 'I don't know.'.  You know, as in 'Why did he kill that cat?' 'I don't know.'"  The cats knew, they could see the future, and they were not happy.  They messed with us.

I drop the guys off to ride back with Turd, as I had a few other things to do before I headed back to school.  On the way out of town, you should know that a deer ran into the side of Turd's car.  He did not hit a deer while driving.  No, a deer ran into the side of his car while driving.  It was a clear attempt to take me out.  You see the animals, they all talk, and they stick together.  Luckily for me, they didn't see us switch cars.  I have not been, and will not be back to that house ever again.  How's that for a baseball story?