{"id":29634,"date":"2010-10-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2010\/10\/07\/mr-october\/"},"modified":"2010-10-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-07T03:00:00","slug":"mr-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/mr-october\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr October"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


(Roy Halladay at work. Photo by \u00a0Chris Trotman, copyright 2010 Getty Image)
<\/strong>
We were at Willow, the usual suspects, and we were clustered down at the low-rent end of the bar.
\u00a0
Jake commented that it was getting too popular and there was no place to sit down for the regulars. He was talking to Don about some scheme that might involve a chance to excel, which is Navy-speak for something in between unpleasant and impossible.
\u00a0
\u201cShould we start bad-mouthing the place?\u201d I asked. \u201cIt\u2019s like that Yogi Berra quote. You know, the one about people not going to a place anymore because it is too crowded?\u201d
\u00a0
Jake smiled. Doc seemed to be handling unemployment pretty well, which can be a challenge if you have made a pay-day every two weeks for thirty or more years and suddenly find yourself retired while still only a little north of the prime of life. In deference to reduced circumstances, we drank the Happy Hour white wine, which I would have done anyway.
\u00a0
\u201cFunny you mention Yogi. Did you hear what happened in the Phillies playoff game?\u201d asked Doc, getting off the topic of what he- and we- were going to do the rest of our lives. \u201cRoy Halladay threw the second no-hitter in postseason history. First time since Don Larsen did it in 1956, against the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is his second perfect game of the season, too, and that has only been done five times, never mind in the playoffs. The Reds only got one guy on base,\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI heard he has an un-hittable sharp fastball and a devastating slow curve.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYeah,\u201d said Doc, taking a sip of the dry crisp white. \u201cHe is this year\u2019s Mr. October.\u201d
\u00a0
My arm was itching like crazy under my Brooks Brothers shirt, which happened to be blue, and included a blue collar, though not in the usual way. The new ink was still healing in my skin and I consciously avoided touching it. Kevin had warned me about that.
\u00a0
\u201cHalladay may be Mr. October, but for me, that has got to be Kevin at Lucky\u2019s. He performed under pressure for me.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cWhat on earth possessed you to do that? Reading what you wrote made it seem like you and your son got tattoos before he went in the Navy.\u201d
\u00a0
I sighed. \u201cNo, Officers don\u2019t get tattoos. You know that. But this has been gestating a long time. I saw Kevin\u2019s work on my Associate\u2019s skin, really intricate, and finally said, \u201cScrew it, this is the guy.\u201d\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cDid it hurt?\u201d
\u00a0
I looked pensively at the tulip-shaped glass and the clear golden liquid within. \u201cNo, not so much. I think I could have gone to sleep when he was doing the back of my arm. What surprised me was how much blood was involved, and how long it took. The whole thing was Kismet. I drove up and there was exactly one parking place on the main drag in Northampton, and it was right in front of the tattoo parlor. Eerie.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cDo you want something to eat?\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYou should try the fish and chips or the spring rolls. Or both.\u201d I glanced at my watch. \u201cRufus is supposed to show up at 6:30 and if we order now we won\u2019t have to share.\u201d
\u00a0
Peter ambled by and took the order with a smile. He is growing his sideburns down to his jawline, and that appears to be a new trend, like ink on skin.
\u00a0
\u201cSo I walk into the place. The gal at the counter has diamond studs in her cheeks and big plugs in her ears. I tell her I have a two o\u2019clock with Kevin, and she calls out for him and this tall dude with blue spider webs all down his arms comes out of the back room. He looks at me like I am a walking canvas. I hand him a copy of the design I want and he says: \u201cMan, I am getting a migraine. I gotta take some medicine.\u201d Then he goes upstairs.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThat must have been a confidence builder.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cYeah, I thought about turning around right then. That and the paperwork is kinda intimidating. The legal releases and disclaimers are pretty thorough.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cLike at the hospital,\u201d sadi Doc thoughtfully. \u201cWe need to protect ourselves. Almost anything can result in death, even if unlikely.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI was just afraid he would start drifting off with me on the table. As t turned out, whatever drugs he took worked just fine. He turned on some strange music and got on with it. Ninety minutes with one break. He is my Mr. October this year.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cSo how did it turn out?\u201d
\u00a0
I looked around. Down in the low-rent end of the bar we were fairly inconspicuous. I unbuttoned my blue shirt and pulled it down to expose the ink on my arm. \u201cI dunno. What do you think?
\u00a0
<\/p>\n

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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(Roy Halladay at work. Photo by \u00a0Chris Trotman, copyright 2010 Getty Image) We were at Willow, the usual suspects, and we were clustered down at the low-rent end of the bar. \u00a0 Jake commented that it was getting too popular and there was no place to sit down for the regulars. He was talking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}