On
an almost regular basis I get questioned about my tattoos. “How may do you
have? How long did they take? Did it hurt? Why did you choose that?” For almost
everyone who has ever asked me any of those questions I generally give them a
straight, non-emotional answer. In most cases it’s usually people I’ve just
met; therefore there is no need to get into an elaborate story that they’ll
more than likely forget the next morning. It wasn’t until my good friend, and
former girlfriend Sarah Payne asked me the “why” question that I really
formulated an articulate answer. I gave a brief history on each one and
finished by saying, “I’d rather scar my body with the memories of the things I
love, rather than have my memories scarred by the things that love me.” Having
gone through torrential break-ups, my parents divorcing when I was
five-years-old and an array of health issues, I’ve rationalized getting tattoos
as my therapy. I currently stand at 44, but it’s the 33 tattoos I got from June
through October of this year that have meant the most to me; my baseball
tattoo.
My
parents divorcing was an incredibly difficult transition, especially
considering that two months prior to their decision my father had moved us from
our yellow two-story house in Stockton, California to a brand new, light blue
one-story in Bakersfield. At the time we were one of roughly 20 families who
lived on Mountain Oak Road. A school was being built about a block away and
there were few kids in the neighborhood around my age to make friends with,
only my older brothers were around to talk to and go outside to play with. I
still remember vividly the afternoons and weekends we shared in our front yard
in Stockton. My mother and father sitting happily in lawn chairs while watching
my brothers, a few of the neighborhood kids and me play whiffle ball for hours.
When we picked teams we never referred to ourselves by our real names, it was
always Andre Dawson, Chris Sabo, Mark McGwire or any slew of professional
baseball players we idolized. As the youngest of three boys my parents made
sure that my brothers helped school me in the fundamentals of the game, and
when they failed to do so my parents would jump in and help me with my swing or
the best way to scoop up a grounder. It was one of the few times I can recall
my mother and father working together. Occasionally we would pile into my dad’s
brown Ford Pinto and head to Billy Hebert Field to watch the Class-A Stockton
Ports play, or if we were really lucky, we’d stay at our grandparent’s houses
in San Leandro or Livermore and head to Candlestick Park to watch the Giants or
the A’s at the Coliseum, depending on who was in town for a home stand. Despite
the collapse of my mother and father’s marriage the one thing that continued to
remain intact was our collective love for the game. For years the only time I
can recall my parents being in the same location at the same time was at one of
our baseball games, or on the Sunday night when we had to head back to our
house after a weekend visit with our father. But even in those moments the
events that took place between the two of them didn’t really seem to matter. As
my brothers and I hit, ran, threw and caught, the only thing that really
mattered to us was the smile on our parents’ faces when we did well.
Baseball, at least in my eyes has always been the common ground for my family.
Whether the rest of them would like to admit it, they all still love the game
to some degree, but clearly not as much as I. My father and my brother Adam are
avid Giants supporters, while my brother Matt and I have rooted for the A’s
since we each caught our first games in the Coliseum. My stepmother, stepfather
and stepbrother follow the Dodgers and my mother remains the one outlier who
loves the Red Sox. The mystery behind this decision still boggles me. At family
gatherings we’ll have a few discussions and smack talking about how each
other’s team’s seasons went. For the most part however, my other family members
stopped going to games and really following their team except when the playoffs
come around. For me, baseball never faded in the slightest.
As
I got older I followed it more closely. I read the box scores with breakfast
every morning, I watch as many games I can each day, I still play catch and hit
the batting cages when I can; hell, I even play fantasy baseball and have been
doing well at it for the past seven seasons. When I got my first tattoo in 2007
my mother was a bit surprised that I opted to get an Irish flag as opposed to
an Oakland A’s logo. I’m pretty sure she meant that as a joke, but I took it
seriously. For the past four years I toiled away at a perfect representation
for my love of the game, trying to incorporate every facet, which draws me in
year after year. The original concept was more mocking, in that it was supposed
to be a half-sleeve on my left arm of the A’s mascot, a large, ferocious
elephant breaking through my skin and charging down the mascots of all the
teams I opposed (Giants, Red Sox, Marlins, Mariners and Mets). It seemed simple
enough, but I was quick to get rejected by tattoo artists from Vancouver, Wash.
to Bakersfield on account that my arms were too skinny and the design was too
large and detailed. As time pressed on I got different tattoos, none of which
had to do with baseball, but with that I still continued to come up with a
solid design. On paper and in my head I always saw my original concept working,
but every time I looked at it I was blinded with loyalty to my team, not the
game. Back in March of this year as I lay helplessly on hospital bed fighting
dehydration, strep throat and a staph infection I kept thinking about the
design. It seemed like an odd thing to think about at the time as my body was
shutting down, but then again, when all you have is time, it makes the most
sense. I thought about whether I would ever see my family again. I thought
about whether I would be able to have a family of my own and be able to teach
my kids the game. But most importantly, I thought about the spring and summer
days in Stockton, swinging for the fences with a plastic yellow bat while
wearing a Chicago Cubs batting helmet as Matt threw me his best curveballs. It
was then I knew where I had gone wrong with my ideas.
Three
IV bags and a slew of creams and antibiotics helped get through my own personal
hell. In the days that followed my recovery I talked to a tattoo artist at
Black Lotus in Eugene, Oregon about my new idea. Felix, a baseball fan himself,
was more than happy to accommodate my request. Still about a month away from
being completely healed I set to work, gathering photos and stories of all the
mascots and logos throughout Major League Baseball’s 132-year history. I
scrapped the original, more cynical concept and took a different, more positive
approach. The new design features every team from both the American and
National Leagues, and in a few cases, renderings and tributes to teams that no
longer exist. The location went from a sleeve on my left arm to settling in on
both sides of my body between the top of my ribs, down to my hips. On the right
side we started with the American League logo at the top and did a
pyramid-style stacking of all the teams, using classic logos, colors and team
names in a few cases. Historical accuracies were also very important. For
instance, we moved the Milwaukee Brewers mascot, Bernie, back to the A.L. side
along with a lesser-known counterpart from the mid to late 70s named Bonnie.
The A.L. side also features one of my favorite moments from baseball: Game 6 of
the 1986 World Series when Bill Buckner let Mookie Wilson’s grounder “split his
wickets,” but in place of Buckner I substituted Wally, the green monster. The
National League side is just as intricate. I used the current Washington
Nationals mascot, Screech, but subbed out the Nationals uniform for a powder
blue Montreal Expos uniform in lieu of the team relocating and changing their
name back in 2005. The Pittsburgh Pirates Parrot mascot features an array of
stories ranging from the no-hitter Dock Ellis threw against the Padres back in
1970 while under the influence of LSD to the cocaine trials of the 1980s, which
centered on Kevin Koch, the former man inside the outfit. Overall, the design
took about a week to design each side and over 30 hours to carve into my body.
More blood, sweat and tears… and money went into this project than any other I
had created.
Baseball
has always been good to me. Sometimes it brought me the highest of highs, like
when the A’s won the World Series in 1989, and the lowest of lows like in 1994
when the last month-and-a-half of the season including the World Series was
cancelled. Regardless of what the men who have played the game have
accomplished on and off the field, the game itself is not about them. The game
is about the scores of men and women who give themselves emotionally to their
teams year after year. It’s about the kids who pick up the game for the first
time and learn the values of hard work and how to be a team player. Most
importantly, it’s about spending time with your family at the ball yard or in
the front yard. This tattoo is the one I love to talk about the most because so
many people can relate to it. Despite the fact that it’s plastered on my body,
it’s truly a design that was made for everyone.
