Author Greg Larson on The DA Show (CBS Sports Radio) | Clubbie

It's D.A. on CBS Sports Radio. We appreciate the love around here. The D.A. Show each and every morning, 6 until 10 Eastern, 3 until 7 Pacific, on hundreds of affiliates nationwide and north of the border on CBS Sports Radio. Our next guest was just a fan, but he loved baseball so much he thrust himself into the game and the lifestyle. He became a clubhouse attendant for two seasons for the Aberdeen Ironbirds, the minor league affiliate, short season Single A of the Baltimore Orioles, just up the road from Baltimore. He's written a book called 'Clubby' about all those crazy, madcap experiences behind the scenes as a clubhouse attendant and the fallout around it. Joining us this morning on the show, you can watch as well at watchDA.com of the simulcast, and you can watch on Twitch by going to the CBS Sports Radio channel, is author Greg Larson. Greg, good morning, how you doing?

Doing great, D.A. I'm down here in Austin, Texas. I got water and power and all that good stuff back now, so I'm ready to go.

Water and power in Austin is actually a big deal these days. How bad did you get hit with the snow last week?

My apartment got down to 43 degrees, but I have a fireplace, which is better than a lot of people here in Texas.

Were you sleeping in hoodies and jackets and hats, or could you put on a fire and actually be decently warm?

No, I didn't want to light my apartment on fire, so I had the fire die when I fell asleep. I had the hoodie on, hat, everything, three layers.

Better or worse, was it tougher than two years as a clubhouse attendant living in a closet?

It was shockingly similar, if you'd believe it, as far as difficulty goes. When I was in the New York-Penn League — we're both New York-Penn League alums here, Hudson Valley Renegades, Aberdeen Ironbirds, New York-Penn League no longer exists — my second season as a clubby for the Ironbirds, I was actually living in the equipment closet in Ripken Stadium for the entire season.

Oh my gosh. So how did you even get in there? You were just a fan before that, you don't have a background in baseball, right?

Well, technically I was a fan. I played about 48 hours of Division Three baseball with the Hamline Pipers in St. Paul, Minnesota before I was cut. Then, oddly enough, I transferred to Winthrop University where I was on a baseball scholarship for washing jock straps. I was the equipment manager there on a baseball scholarship. So when I graduated in 2011, that was the only job experience I had in the entire world: cleaning equipment, jock strap washing, all that. I graduate college, that's my job experience. I love the game, I say screw it, I see an opening in the New York-Penn League, I'm going to become a clubhouse attendant. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. If I had known what two seasons in a minor league baseball clubhouse would be like, I would hesitate to take the job, but I think I would still do it for sure.

Where does the job 'clubhouse attendant' get listed? That's not on LinkedIn, is it?

I found it on Teamwork Online, which is a listing for a bunch of random professional sports jobs. It was a fluke. Those jobs do not get listed online ever. They're passed down to somebody's nephew, generation by generation. So it was just this magical circumstance.

Author Greg Larson, our guest this morning on the D.A. Show. So you get the job, what is your first holy crap moment about when you are now the new clubby with the Ironbirds?

It's going to sound counterintuitive, but it was when I found the player handbook. I stole it — there's only one player handbook from the Orioles for each minor leaguer, and some guy was gone that day, so I just swiped the player handbook, totally not kosher. Looking through that handbook and seeing stuff like the salary scale was the first cognitive dissonance moment for me. I saw the salary scale said $1,200 a month, $1,250 a month. I was making about triple what the players were making. When that clicked in my mind — and that's not an exaggeration — these guys are making about $4,500 a year in short season, it's three months, they're only getting paid for the season. I was making about $15,000 each summer. When that clicked in my mind, I was like, 'Holy crap, this is not the world I expected this to be.'

Sam, you might want to catch that one. It's amazing that you say this because I felt the same way. One of my first jobs in Fort Myers, Florida, I did play-by-play for the Fort Myers Miracle, which is a short season Single A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. Getting to know some of the players down there, the biggest part of their day was when the post-game spread was out. They hounded hot dogs, they crushed all the food. I was making $18,000 a year, and what I realized is they were making less than me. So free food like hot dogs and pretzels was the biggest deal to them. They ate way more than a college kid because they had to — it was their chance to eat for free.

Okay, let's pop jack up this old system of the dues system. They paid the clubhouse attendant dues, and in Single A it would be something like $7 to $10 a game. For that dues money, that's what they're paying to get the leftover hot dogs after the game. Now with the changes in minor league baseball with contraction, that's changing — the major league affiliates are now providing food. But my favorite postgame spread story: Brian Roberts, 2012, All-Star second baseman for the Orioles, he was doing a rehab stint with the Ironbirds as I was the clubby there. When a major leaguer does a rehab stint, tradition is they buy the post-game spread. We don't care about who the starting pitcher is, we don't care who's in the stands — all we care about in the clubhouse is what the post-game spread is going to be. So Roberts is doing a two-game stint for us. First game, he comes to my clubhouse, the equipment closet, and says, 'Hey, I got here too late to get the spread today, but I'll get it after tomorrow's game.' I said, 'Okay, cool, what do you want to get the guys?' He said, 'Applebee's.' So that game and the workouts for the next game, everyone's like, 'What's the spread going to be? Applebee's, Applebee's!' All of a sudden, it's the second game of Roberts' rehab stint. We're in the clubhouse watching ESPN, we see Buck Showalter and Brian Roberts doing a press conference saying Roberts is done for the season — an oblique injury, we're shutting him down, he's having season-ending surgery. All of Orioles Nation is like, 'Oh crap, there goes our second baseman.' All of us in the clubhouse were like, 'Oh crap, there goes our post-game spread.' That's how important that stuff is. You got first-round draft picks crying out, 'No, no Applebee's tonight! I wanted those baby back ribs!'

Yeah, exactly. So did I read that you becoming a clubby for two seasons, you actually had to sacrifice a relationship? Your girlfriend broke up with you?

It was a part of it, a big part of the issues. Much like the players, I got stuck into that world. In the off-season, I got fat, I started turning to booze, I was playing too many video games — I was way too good at Madden 2007, franchise mode, winning way too many Super Bowls. My girlfriend, she's like, 'Do you really want to go back to Aberdeen? You're setting yourself up to have no other choice right now.' And that's what happened. I went back and got sucked in even deeper than ever. I was on the field taking batting practice, I was traveling with the team when I did not have to, I was putting on a jersey. I was literally, like I said, living in the clubhouse. After that second season, it turned into the end of our relationship.

What is it like to live in a clubhouse equipment closet? You don't have a lawn, I guess you do have right field, but you don't have a kitchen. You're just waking up, you crack open the door and there is the clubhouse, the locker room. What is that like?

The fact there's no windows — that's the thing that drives you the most crazy, the no windows thing. I hadn't thought about that before I made that choice. But this was my kitchen as well — I prepared food in there. So it's the kitchen and my bedroom and the equipment. The smell of rosin — do you know the licorice, the cancerous licorice smell of rosin? It is so pungent and overpowering in the equipment closet. That's the thing I remember most. If I smell rosin, it gives me a little panic attack just thinking about being confined in that little box for a summer.

So you were swinging deals for memorabilia and some big cash transactions out of that closet?

Yeah. Here's how the cycle would work: I had all this equipment in there and nobody was keeping inventory of it but me. So what would happen is, let's say a visiting team would come in — the Staten Island Yankees was really great for this. Their coaching staff loved Bud Light. So I would trade them a few caps, they would trade me a few cases of beer. In exchange for that, they give me a few caps, and then I would give those caps to the stadium beer supplier, and then I would get extra tips off the top. So I was constantly making everybody happy but scraping some off the top for myself.

Wow. So you kind of had a bit of a degree from the school of hard knocks from the streets, but also a bit of a business acumen here because you're taking product, you're swiping it, you're trading the product to then make some money on the back end of it.

Oh yeah. And to me, that's not even the most nefarious scam I had. The major league affiliate, in this case the Orioles for the Ironbirds, would provide bats for the players, and I would be in charge of all those bats. They're terrible — ash, bone rub, they'd snap like a toothpick. In order to get a new bat, I would make the guys trade me their broken bat, ostensibly just as some sort of honor system. But then what I would do is take those broken bats, slap the player's name on it, and then we'd sell them for $20 in the gift shop, of which I would get $7.50.

Wow, $7.50 per bat, huh? That adds up.

Yeah. And what I found out — nobody knew who these bats belonged to except for my little piece of athletic tape on the bottom. And what I found was, nobody wants to buy a Sam Kimmel or Manny Hernandez bat, but they really like buying Trey Mancini and Mike Yastrzemski bats. So then I would just flood the market with Mike Yastrzemski bats that he never ever touched.

I just cringed thinking about all of these Ironbirds fans, they're like, 'Oh my god, I have a piece of history, Mike Yastrzemski's broken bat from Single A ball.' Never was his in the first place. I hate to say it, guys. Right now there is a fan listening to this show of the Orioles that is looking at his basement and in the memorabilia room is a Trey Mancini Aberdeen Ironbirds bat, and he's like, 'Damn it, that's not Trey Mancini's.' Jaws dropping to the ground, so upset. Consolation prize: now you're part of a book though. Who was the worst dude in the clubhouse? The worst player that just treated people like crap or treated you guys like crap?

I hate it, it's pretty easy. A guy named Jose Nevar. He would throw his clothes onto the ground, wouldn't pay on time for dues. I would just take it — I did not stand up for myself enough. 'Oh yes sir, I got you.' Because he was there the first season. By the second season, I was a little bit more school of hard knocks style, I would kick guys in the ass a little more, but I was too green to stand up for myself at that point.

You get any pushback for writing this book and telling the secrets of the clubhouse?

So far, so good. One of the main characters, you remember Alan Mills from? He was a reliever for the Orioles, New York Yankees, 12 seasons in the majors. He was a part of a couple of famous brawls — one with the New York Yankees in which he knocked out Darryl Strawberry, one with the L.A. Dodgers in which he was a part of the L.A. Dodgers bullpen that went into the stands at Wrigley Field and fought some fans. This is Alan Mills. He was the pitching coach for the two summers that I was there, so we were pretty close but also butted heads a lot. He got his advanced copy last week. I'm sitting here in Austin, I get a phone call from Alan Mills — Alan Mills and I talk once every five years. He says, 'First of all, do you have water and power?' I said, 'Yeah, but it was touch and go for a few days there.' He said, 'Yeah, well, it's going to be touch and go the next time I see you after you wrote this book. You made me the damn villain of this book.' I was like, 'Oh my god.' He's not the villain at all. We're very similar but very different at the same time. We had about a five-minute argument that felt like I was in the clubhouse again, getting yelled at by the guy who knocked Darryl Strawberry on his ass. By the end of it, he said, 'I just want you to know that I used to be a clubby too, and I want you to know that anything that happened, any disagreements we had, was all in love and none of it was in malice.' I said, 'Mills, the same thing goes for this book. Any sort of jokes I make about you, anything I expose about you, is all in love, none of it is in malice.' He said, 'That's really good to hear, man.' It cracked open a little bit. That's the closest I've had to pushback.

Okay, so this is the last interview that we'll have Greg Larson here on the show because he'll be dead the next time around from Alan Mills. He'll come and hunt him down and kill him in his awesome apartment.

That's right. If Mills hasn't killed me yet, he's not going to kill me.

So the book is going to be available April 1st for baseball season. Look for it a little over a month from now. April 1st, it's called 'Clubby' and it's all about behind the scenes, a minor league baseball memoir by Greg Larson. Greg, this is great stuff today, man. Good luck with the book. This is a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. If you're not making tacos, I don't love you no more.

Oh, directly to my heart. Well done, Greg. Nicely done, Greg Larson. Great job. Amanda knows the show, huh?