Download Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age with the New York Yankees AudioBook Free
Sixteen-year-old Matthew McGough was a reasonably typical teenager, obsessed with getting through senior high school, girls, and baseball, definitely not for the reason that order. His passion for the New York Yankees was absolute, complete with a poster of his hero, Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly, hanging on his bedroom wall. Despite having no connections whatsoever with the ballclub, Matt dreamed of sitting in the dugout with the fabled Bronx Bombers. So, in the Fall of 1991, he wrote a letter in his very best penmanship to the New York Yankees requesting a posture as a bat boy.
Miraculously, he got the job, and on April 7, 1992, Matt walked in to the madness of the Yankee clubhouse on Opening Day. And there is Don Mattingly, Donnie Baseball himself, asking him to run an errand, an errand which soon induced panic in the rookie bat boy. Thus started out two years of adventures and misadventures—from the perils of chewing tobacco while playing catch with the centerfielder, to being setup on a date by the bullpen, to studying for a history exam at 3:00 a.m. at Yankee Stadium, to his own folly as Matt little by little forgets he’s not a baseball star, he’s a higher school student.
BAT BOY captures the lure and beauty of the American pastime, but much more it is a tale of what goes on to a man when his fondest dream comes true. Matthew McGough wonderfully evokes that twilight time just before adulthood, ripe with possibility, foolishness, and hard-won knowledge.
