Sal Is Prepared To Share An Intimate Story

Hey, folks. It's me, Sal.

You know, we have a lotta fun here at the ol' blog. We have laughs and cries, and sometimes Sal is happy, and sometimes he's sad, but whatever Sal is feelin' there's always somethin' you can count on: Sal's got somethin' to say. Today is no different, except Sal's gotta bring the room down a little bit and talk about somethin' pretty serious.

In the brotherhood of sports, there's one thing every guy wants for every other guy, and that's for that guy to stay alive. So, when Sal heard about this football player-guy tryin' to kill himself, it hurt Sal. It hurt him to the core, because Sal doesn't want anybody not to be alive. But what hurt Sal, too, is the fact that hearin' about this near-suicide thing brought Sal back to a dark place. It's a dark place that Sal doesn't like talkin' about much, but because he's comfortable talkin' to all of you, he's gonna share it. Here goes:




Sal's shiverin' just lookin' at that again. That's his dark place, folks. Sal has shared it with you, as promised.

Here's the straight talk comin': A lot of people don't know this, but this event sent Sal spiralin' into a depression that resulted in Sal tryin' to take his own life. See, Sal's a catcher, but that title is a little deceivin', because Sal's gotta do a lot more than just catch the ball. He's got to throw it too. And when a catcher doesn't throw the ball good, it can be demoralizin'. Real demoralizin'.

Sal went back to his hotel room that night and laid awake, wonderin' how he could have thrown that ball directly into the ground. Sal thought of fibs that he could tell the guys to get some of the heat off him like, "That's one of them new double gravity balls they're tryin' out. The double gravity makes the ball go directly into the ground when you throw it." Sal also thought about tellin' the guys that as he was about to throw, he saw a poisonous snake on the ground and he wanted to save everybody in the stadium so he decided to kill it with a baseball.

In the end, Sal knew he couldn't say these things without makin' things worse. So, he decided that maybe the best thing to do was just end his playin' days...if you know what Sal means.

Sal went into the bathroom and looked for some pills. He found the NyQuil that he always had with him just in case he has trouble sleepin' and took like 10 times the recommended dose. Then, he laid back down for his eternal sleep...if you know what Sal means.

Before he knew it though, Sal was up and pacin' around his room. Instead of passing into the next world -- if you know what Sal means -- he was shakin' and throwin' himself up against walls and whatnot. Seems Sal had taken a shitload of DayQuil; not the NyQuil he thought would allow him to "reunite" with Grandpa Salvatore, if you know what Sal means.

Instead of dyin', Sal was runnin'. And runnin'. Runnin' all the way back to Philadelphia from Miami in his underwear. 1207 miles in 16 1/2 hours. That's an amazin' time, in case you didn't know.

By the time the guys had gotten off the plane and back to the stadium, Sal had cleaned the clubhouse, mowed the outfield, repaired the scoreboard and prepared a really delicious 5 course meal for everybody.

It was a very refreshin' run.

But the moral of the story is, that day Sal decided that killin' yourself because of sports is a really bad idea. Not only is killin' yourself a bad idea, but if you don't do it right you could find yourself runnin' up the East Coast in your undies, singin' "Freebird" while people just stare at you. And that's not a whole heck of a lotta fun, no matter how refreshin' that run might be.

Don't kill yourself. Just don't.

Tomorrow's another day. And another throw.