The BFCE is currently winging his way back to sunny Southern California from a week at baseball Fantasy Camp in Fort Myers, Florida (editor – brand names have been removed to protect against any potential lawsuits…) Fantasy Camp is an opportunity for an assortment of former ball-players, former wanna-be ball-players, weekend warrior softball players who want to test their luck with the small ball and those who have might as well created a giant funeral pyre of dollar bills fashioned from the money they paid for the camp.  It’s also an opportunity for 150 men to revisit one of the most uncomfortable places on earth – a locker room full of sweaty, heaving and some oddly staring men.

Now, you can go on any number of sites and read about how the baseball is surprisingly good while the guys all get along so well that Oprah would hold up their behavior of men’s true potential… but how boring would that be. It would also be a complete and total fabrication – at least the part about 150+ guys all getting along for an entire week – wars have been started with a smaller number of men being together for significantly less time.  As long as The BFCE is in the house, a burr is going to end up under someone’s saddle.

Fantasy Camp (heretofore known as FC) is an opportunity for a person to pretend that they’re a major leaguer for a week. Which means we get to stay out late, drink heavily, swear like sailors, develop intense but short-lived grudges, scream and yell at will, tell incredibly stupid and tasteless jokes and –most importantly – not have to apologize at our excessive flatulence. Oh yes – we also get to throw baseballs at each other, usually as hard as we can. If there’s a better recipe for all the ingredients of aberrant behavior, I can’t think of one - short of a riot in cell block C.

One of the first things you notice about FC is that guys are divided into two basic categories – fat guys and everyone else. You have to be over 30 to attend, so the camp had a decidedly weighty tilt. Many of the guys were far north of their ideal playing weight – think Canada, then keep going north. One of the biggest shocks for the fat guys was seeing their picture (there’s a photographer who seems to be everywhere) and muttering “man, am I fat.” Yes, you are. And the reason you’re fat is because you eat too damn much. I just spent a week with you. Locusts are less dangerous.

There was a play where one fat guy was rumbling to first base, which happened to be manned by yet another fat guy. It turns out the first thing to go on a fat guy is not your athletic ability, but instead your ability to stop without dragging a parachute behind you. The ensuing collision looked like two walruses during mating season. One guy fell down – we had to shoot him with a tranquilizer dart of Lidocane and B12.

One of the best things about FC is that there are trainers and clubhouse guys – these guys are the real stars of the show. The trainers are great at creative uses of ice and tape, while the clubhouse guys make sure you look presentable by cleaning your clothes every day. As an added bonus, the clubhouse guys would come around after the game, pick up all the equipment and put it away – without complaining. This is the true fantasy part of the camp. I don’t want to marry the clubhouse guys , but I would like for the next wanna-be Mrs. BFCE to spend a little time watching these guys work.

It’s important to remember that one should not taunt the trainers. One guy walked past the trainer’s room and announced “I haven’t been here all week!” He then suffered a torn thumb ligament. Which has actually kind of cool, because he could bend his thumb all the way back down to his arm. Perfect for grossing people out. Not so good for hitch-hiking. He also suffered a nasty case of turf toe the same day. The turf toe was actually healing well until him teammate accidentally stomped on it – causing both the camper and the toe to explode in agony. The witnesses were pretty evenly divided between “oh man, that hurts – I’m glad it’s not me” and “look at the blood spurting out of that toe – that’s so COOL! – I’m glad it’s not me.”

Here’s a little known fact about professional baseball players – many of them don’t seem to like each other very much. They’ve been raised to believe that the guy in the locker next to them is there to take their job. Not exactly the best basis for friendship, especially when you then hand these people 34 inch mallets. On top of that, many baseball players are drafted straight from high school. Not that they’re dumb, but if you ask some of them to count to four, they’ll stomp on the floor five times.

One of the really nice things about FC is the fact that – because you’re emulating professional baseball players - you don’t really have to think very much. Everything is scheduled for you. If something goes wrong, there are professionals there to pick up the pieces. Books were so scarce that you think they’d carried the Ebola virus. Plus, the campers all paid a lot of money to spend a week pretending they’re baseball players – so they’re not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed, either. It’s like a perfect storm of laziness and pure stupidity and it infected everyone. Here’s a sample of the conversations our team had in the ride back and forth to the camp…

The pros fall into three categories – pros who seem to genuinely like being at the camp, pros who like the paycheck and do some work with the campers, and pros who seem to be like Shatner at a Star Trek convention. Most of the pros were fantastic – they worked with the campers, really love (or at least like) baseball and seemed to be having fun hanging out with us.  But for the “pros” in the last category, listen up – The BFCE didn’t pay two mortgage payments for you to come down and steal his money.  Put in some effort! Don’t bother showing up if all you’re going to do is sit in the damn equipment room and tell campers to go away if they want a friggin’ autograph. These guys worshiped you at one point – if you want to piss away your legacy with some of the team’s most avid fans, don’t do it on my time.  If you’re going to fuck us, at least tell us we’re pretty.

One of the fun parts of the week was giving our teammates nicknames. Baseball is much more fun when there’s a moniker involved. And most current baseball nicknames are – frankly – pretty weak. Which made it easy to have really lame nicknames – something at which we excelled.

We came up with

·         “Wheels”

·          “Big Papa”

·          “The CEO”

·          “Mouse”

·          “The Iceman”

·          “Thermo”

·         “Uno” and “Deuce”

·         “The Canuck”

·         “Tut”

·         “Hollywood”

·         “The Mayor”

While The BFCE loves each and every one of these nicknames, the one that stands above all the others is “Thermo” – so named because his face got so red, he looked like a thermometer that was about to explode. It turns out that the treatment to relieve “Thermo” of his affliction was (a) copious amounts of distilled spirits and (b) sleeping in hotel hallways.

"Uno" and "Deuce" were brothers who The BFCE simply could not tell apart. Uno was first in the lineup, Deuce was next. Because remembering nicknames is way easier than remembering real names. Sometimes the simple approach is best.

Tut was another fun one. When Tut asked how he got the name, I simply told him he was as old as Tut. Iceman was so named because he spend the first three days wrapped in ice. Apparently, he pulled a hamstring putting his game pants on. Or so we hope.

While “Thermo” represents a high point of nicknames, it is not the single best nickname ever donated by The BFCE. That honor belongs to Leo, whose nickname was “SR.” Which might seem like a pretty damn boring name, until you realize that “SR” stands for “Snatch Repellent.” Yes, my man Leo was the ultimate anti-wingman.  Going out with Leo meant that you were going home alone. Or worse, with Leo asleep on your floor. Turns out that Thermo and SR have a lot in common.