Trash Talk by Robert Gussin

Author:Robert Gussin [Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Day one was relatively successful. Professor Gribbs’ presentation on ‘Trash the World Over’ went extremely well for the first twenty minutes, but then some of the athletes got a little bored.

Curt Shining, the only baseball player in the group shouted from the back row, “Enough shit. I don’t want my dinner dishes made from somebody’s garbage.”

Before Professor Gribb could address the comment, Reggie Bright, a football player from Cleveland, shouted back at Shining, “Hey Curt, shut up and go back to sleep before we have another ‘Shining moment’!”

All of the athletes and some of the environmentalists who followed major league baseball cheered and whooped. Bright’s reference to a Shining moment was the result of an incident two weeks before that had brought Shining, an outstanding pitcher with Texas, to national sport’s notoriety and to the injured reserve list, which was why he was available during baseball season to attend this meeting.

Shining was pitching a perfect game against Philadelphia. Texas led 2–0 in the top of the ninth. There were two outs and no Philadelphia batter had reached base. Shining was one out from a perfect game in front of his hometown crowd. He had two strikes and one ball on Hector Rivera, Philadelphia’s all-star second baseman. The crowd was absolutely silent, although bursting with anticipation. Shining wound up and threw a high fastball right down the middle and Rivera connected solidly. Shining’s mind was already on the celebration, and so he never reacted to avoid the line drive that came back like a bullet at the mound and hit him smack in the forehead. As Shining dropped like a stone, face down in a heap on the mound, the ball ricocheted in a slight arc right to Roberto Jessup, the Texas first baseman who was standing directly on the base and caught it for the final out. The crowd went wild, Texas players rushed from the dugout and from their positions on the field, but when they got to the pitcher’s mound, they weren’t sure what to do. A few patted the prone Shining on the back and congratulated him. Jessup lifted him up and held Shining erect, dancing around. Finally, he dropped Shining and the trainers picked him up and carried him to the dugout. Fortunately, some smelling salts restored his consciousness and tests revealed just a concussion, which would keep him out of the lineup for about two weeks. Shining only began to realize what happened after reading the many newspaper accounts of “another Shining moment” the next day.

After the brief outburst, Gribbs finished his presentation without further interruption.

Barkey’s presentation went well. He started by providing a description of trash talk for the benefit of those environmentalists who were not familiar with the art form. He gained enthusiastic cheers from the athletes when he attributed the origin of trash talk to two college coaches. The late Woody Hayes, former football coach at Ohio State, and Bobby Knight, the basketball coach for many years at the University of Indiana, and more recently at Texas A&M.

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