“Please tell me Chavez didn’t drink our…umm…special potion during today’s game. Did you see the Flight Log article that went up today? Chavez said he drank the “green sports drink he found in the clubhouse.” Please tell me there’s no connection to the Long Beach Water.”
Walt calmly responded “Well, I would love to do that but I don’t have all the information. It does sound like our special sports drink is green. I don’t know why it would have been in the Rocky Mountain visitor’s clubhouse though. Can you get more details about what he drank?”
“I don’t know if I can Walt. I didn’t find out about it until the article went live.”
“All right. No need to panic Mr. Mosley. I will reach out to some people. There are only a small number of people who have any knowledge about our operation. There are even fewer who would have any access to both the drink and the clubhouse. I will let you know what I find out. Give me a couple of hours.”
Mosley tried to stay busy while he waited for news from Walt but he couldn’t push back the overwhelming sense of dread. His boss had just traded two good prospects to solidify the team’s struggling bullpen and now he might have accidentally destroyed the new closer because of a mistake.
Walt switched from burner phone to burner phone as he worked his way through his contacts. He trusted his guys, but after the incident with L-Pain’s phone, he wasn’t taking any chances for a while. He finally found someone who had an answer for him.
“Yeah, that was our drink. It wasn’t supposed to be there, but it got into the wrong bag.”
“That kind of thing can’t happen Herman. Meticulous attention to detail is the only way this business works.”
“I know Walt. And it won’t happen again. We’ve gone over it several times and there is only 1 bottle missing.”
“I need more information. Which batch is it from?”
“Right. It’s from the weakest mix we’ve made…for initial testing. So…that’s good news, right?”
“You’d better hope so Herman.”
Walt walked slowly across the room after ending the call. He wanted to clear his head before calling Mosley back.
“Mr. Moseley…I have some information for you.”
“Information? Tell me Walt, is this information I’ll be glad to hear?”
“I guess that depends. I tend to think that all information is good, even when it isn’t pleasant.”
“What kind of bullshit is that? Just tell me Walt.”
“The first bit of information is unpleasant. I’m still working on the details of how it happened, but one bottle of the sports drink made it out of our lab unintentionally. That bottle ended up in the Charlotte clubhouse for today’s game. That was what Chavez drank before heading back out to the mound in the 11th.”
“Yes, Walt. That is quite unpleasant. Let’s hope you have more pleasant information to give me.”
“I do.” Walt waited just a moment before continuing. “The bottle that made it into the clubhouse today is from the weakest batch that has been made. In our testing…”
Mosley cut him off. “Testing? You’ve been testing it without telling me?”
“Yes, but not on the ballplayers. We’ve done some testing in controlled situations. This batch has not shown any long term effects. It simply causes the subjects to perform suboptimally for a short period of time and then return to normal function.”
“Ok. I can see how that is better news. Tell me…how long do the effects last?”
“That’s an excellent question. The answer, unfortunately, is…it depends. That’s still something we’re working on. For some subjects, it was a matter of hours. For others, it was a few days. It has never lasted more than 4 days. It usually isn’t that long.”
“Is there any way to tell which one to expect with Chavez?”
“Yes. That brings us to some more pleasant information. The subjects who returned to normal function more quickly were those who were in the best physical condition. Chavez clearly fits that description. I think we should be in the clear pretty quickly.”
“Good, good, good. That’s very good to hear…In fact, almost all of this is good to hear. It makes me think we can pull this off, even with the weak batch…maybe especially with the weak batch. If we can get visiting teams to drink it before games, then they’ll play worse against us and then go back to playing better when they head somewhere else. Yeah. I like that…a lot. It will just look like a short slump when they played us. Man…that’s good stuff. How fast can we get it going?”
“Well, we could actually be up and running pretty quickly if needed. The issue is that we are still working on determining the effects of sustained use. For instance, if a team drinks it four days in a row, how does that impact them down the road?”
“Yeah, yeah. We can figure that out later. I want to see this in the real world...and I just thought of another great thing about this. We don’t have to mess with our minor leaguers anymore. We have enough info to try it out on the guys we actually want to play worse. Hot damn! Good work Walt!”
