Post by terry on Aug 22, 2011 2:06:54 GMT -5
MR. TERRANCE KENNETH SCOTT
twenty-seven | william mckinley high coach/teacher | tim lincecum
code word: admin edit
"Hey, Terrance Scott, nice to meet you! Terry's fine, I actually prefer that, please, call me Terry. You been in Lima long? No? Well, why're you here? There's more exciting things in Lima than my office, man. ...Oh, interviewing me. That's probably exciting for you. Not. Well, I'm twenty-seven now - I know, weird, seems like yesterday I was a student here. I coach the baseball team here, occasionally do some study hall. I do teach French. ...I got my degree in it. I actually got a degree in college. Don't act so shocked! ...*laughs* Man, you are just the weirdest interviewer. I've been living in Lima since the thing happened - you know what I'm - yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that. ...Oh, no, we broke up. He's doing well, though. We still write. I don't go advertising it around campus or anything, enough people think I'm weird as it is. All right, let's get to it!"
"Am I competitive? Hell yeah, that hasn't changed at all. Now I'm trying to get twenty-five other kids to be as competitive as me. But honestly, we can be contenders in the national stage this year. We have some great kids playing for us in podunk Lima. Seems all the good players come from podunk towns in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever heard of a good player from a big town? No. We're being competitive. Or I am, at least. We're gonna win this whole thing. It's just the way I think, man. If you let yourself wonder about if you can do something, it won't get done. You have to plow through. And you come across as needlessly competitive sometimes, but you can't get complacent, y'know?
"I guess I'm a little hyper, yeah. I get jacked up easily, with the baseball and everything. Honestly, I'm easy to get wound up, whether it be with a party or a goal or booze or anything. ...Take out the booze part, I don't want to seem like a drunk, cuz I'm not. I go out with Coach Beiste every so often, but... thanks, man. Anyway. I get wound up, not gonna lie. But if I get wound up, it's easier to get my team wound up, and then we go out there and kick ass because we're all on the same page. It's kind of obvious I'm a bit hyperactive, though. I tend to fidget, move around a lot. You notice my foot tapping? Yeah, I can't sit still. I've been physical all my life, so being in an office, not really my thing. It's easier to sit still if I have music on. Mind some music? No? How's MGMT? ...Cool, I like 'em too. Obviously.
"...There. Where were we? Oh. I can be blunt. I know this. A lot of the press in Colorado knows it. My old teammates knew it. It's not really a secret. I say whatever's on my mind, whenever it pops up. I guess that's more a lack of a filter than being blunt. Derek used to say blunt people secretly hated life, so I wasn't blunt. I dunno where he got the idea that blunt people hate life. I've known plenty of blunt people who were cheerful and all that. ...Derek Wilkinson? I think he's with Cleveland now. First baseman. ...So I don't really have a filter. You saw that, with me not talking right. I trip myself up a lot when I speak, which is probably why I tend not to say a whole lot outside of these interviews. Plus, you seem like a nice enough guy. I try to be the kind of teacher who can give out advice, but I'm not very good at it. I try, though, that's the important thing, right?
"...I'm not confrontational at all, no. I guess that's why the media crucified me for what happened. I'd be easier to hit than Kyle. I tend to back down from actual, real fights. Baseball works because it's an imaginary fight. It's on your terms when you're a pitcher. You're the one with the control in the scenario. When it comes to words, I'm a bit of a moron. When it comes to fists, I'm too scared of doing lasting damage to someone to try. Plus, I'm a teacher now, we don't fight. We break up fights. It gets a little rough because I look like I could be their age, and I act dumber than some of the kids in my class sometimes, but I take my work seriously. I might not be confrontational, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to break things up when they happen.
"I like it here. It's nice to be back in my hometown, y'know? Traveling is wearisome, I'm not a big fan. Plus, we didn't go to Canada often, so I couldn't show off my French. But Lima is nice and quiet. I like the school, too - last year there was a ton going on, during my first year, but this year should be a little easier, since I'm settled in. My kids in baseball are great, hard workers, all of them. No one gives me much flak here. It's a lot more forgiving here than in Denver.
"Anything I don't like about Lima? Uh... Breadstix. It's objectively terrible. There are hardly any good restaurants here. But it forced me to learn how to cook something that wasn't top ramen, so, you know, close a door and open a window. I'm not great with this new electronic grading system, either. I can't work computers to save my life. All analog. My students hate me for it. 'Why is everything handwritten?' Because I said so, damn it! *low voice* Hey, can we keep this next bit... off record? It's not... no, nothing explicit. It's just... I'm not a huge fan of our football team here, either. A lot of the kids, they have obvious bullying problems. Coach Beiste, she's doing her best to curb it, but some of them are just nasty. I try to stop things before they happen but sometimes you just can't.
"*normal voice* I'm thinking we'll get to an interleague tournament this year, a league outside of the Midwest Division. We're strong, I'm telling you! We've got a few potential all-stars here! ...Yes, I did just quote Major League. I like watching movies. I get bored easily.
"But yeah. I suppose that's me. Hyper and competitive and ready to take the McKinley Titans to Regionals. ...I sound like Schuester. ...Will Schuester? He's the Glee club coach. He is me multiplied by a billion with seventy less IQ points. And a hard-on for Journey music. I try not to be judgmental, because God knows I know how painful judging can be, but seriously, Journey? What is up with that? ...Okay, Kansas is slightly better, but not much. You listen to Journey? ...You might have a point, they do play it a lot in stadiums. It gets annoying after a while."
"Do I miss the stadiums? No. I don't. I was playing in Coors Field. The pitcher's death zone. The only guy who could do it was Ubaldo Jimenez, and he lasted a season doing it. ...Well, you know, I was used to playing here. I was a McKinley Titan when I was in high school. That was back in... God, 19... 1997? Jesus, that's a long time ago. Before that, I did a traveling team through the parks and rec system in Lima, and before that was Little League. And teeball. My dad started me right away, didn't he? He took it hard when mom left. I barely remember it, I was like, three, but he really wanted me to be the man he didn't turn out to be. Some people remember him - Randy Scott? He was a pitcher for the Twins before he blew his arm out and ended his career. That was right when I was born. I guess mom couldn't handle the stress. I've never been able to ask her, she... she just left. Never came back.
But dad loved me. So much. He did force me to do baseball sometimes, and sometimes I hated it, but I was a kid, and he always - always - made sure I felt comfortable with whatever I did. 'Comfortable isn't always something you like', he'd say. 'It's something you can do even when you hate it.' And he's right, you know. Baseball's my security blanket. It always has been. But I really loved it in high school. God. Back then, the school was all sports, all the time. Our football team kind of sucked, so everyone else got tons of people coming to the games. Our hockey team made nationals my junior year, and everyone... they were all psyched. It was one big happy sports family.
"Baseball wasn't exceptionally popular, but we had some great players. And apparently I was one of them. I got a full ride to Ohio State with one of my buddies, Jeff McDormid? He's on the Yankees now, backup catcher. ...Oh, they just traded him? Where? ...I'm getting off track, sorry! Well, college was something I needed to take seriously. Everyone was busy telling me that I was odd for a pitcher and I'd never get drafted because of my looks and my skinniness and my ability to actually play more than one position, so I decided to pick a subject and study my ass off in it to get a degree. My dad said Engineering, but I knew I wasn't smart enough for that, so I said French. My aunt did that, and she ended up being a pretty great interpreter for Shell Oil. Might be fun, I thought. So I plowed through French. Four years of college ball. I got drafted three times in those four years by the MLB, but I needed that degree. I wasn't going to be my dad. And my dad wasn't going to let me do that, either.
"I wish I had more to say about my early life, before the big leagues. It's just... you know, it was about getting from point A to point B to point C the whole time. Teeball to little league to high school. Elementary school to middle school to passing senior year. I had friends - Jeff was a constant for most of my life. I didn't really date, but that was my thing. I got a bit of action, but nothing that would last. High school is high school, y'know? You don't marry your high school sweetheart unless you got no brains or something.
"But college was pretty much the same thing. Pass this French test. Game against University of Ohio. Midterm in Calculus. Team party at Joe's. It's all a series of things that happened. Nothing was really that meaningful, you know? It just... happened. I got a degree, and let myself get drafted by the Rockies organization when I was 22.
"I guess Lima was pretty excited about it. Lima doesn't usually produce big ballplayers. Except Jeff. He bailed from Ohio State freshman year after getting drafted, and was already making a ton of noise as a rookie with the Yanks when I started single-A ball. I swirled around the minors for a year. The next year, I got invited to spring training with the actual Rockies and made the cut.
"God I am so bad at storytelling. I'm sorry. I probably sound like I'm reading from a teleprompter. But you know, twenty-four years old, rookie starting pitcher, probably the most maligned part of our bullpen because I'm the rookie starting pitcher. I had fangirls already though, which was wholly bizarre and unsettled me. One of the guys wondered why I never did anything with them, but it wasn't because of my orientation, it was because women throwing underwear at you is, like, mentally unstable activity.
"I told this to the guy, and somehow got the attention of one of the big men in the starting lineup. Kyle Carson. #75. The face of our organization. He said he thought that was smart, and classy, avoiding fangirls. We became pretty good friends in the early weeks of the season. Our little locker cubbyholes were next to each other, so we were pretty much always by each other. Then it carried into the dugout, just standing next to each other, commenting on things while he spat out sunflower seed shells and I shoved more gum in my mouth. I am still addicted to gum. Seriously, it's a problem.
"And we would do things after the game, with the others, but it kind of became clear that he wasn't interested in what the rest of our teammates were doing. Like me. I knew he had a wife, but he never mentioned her at all. She was a non-entity to him, almost, like he married her as a cover.
"You know the rest, though. Kyle and I were lovers. We both admitted it before, when the whole thing came out right before the playoff race. I still think it's horseshit that the news said they found out about it then. No, they were probably saving it until the moment it would destroy our team. They picked a good time - September's a pretty bad time to hear a scandal's unfolding. We tried to play it off, but Kyle was fucking married and I looked like I was twelve. We were barely in first in the NL West, but our team was so distracted by the sheer amount of attention that we tanked it. Lost to the Giants in the last week. They went on to win the NL Division. Lost the World Series to the Yanks and Jeff. Jeff was pretty supportive of me through it all, honestly. And so was the actual team - you know, the guys I played with. They all had a feeling. They made it very clear to both me and Kyle that they didn't care. Though they told Kyle that he really should've divorced his wife, like, years ago. That eventually happened.
"The front office did. Kyle got traded to Oakland in the off-season, and I was let go. Unceremoniously. No team wanted to touch me, either, since I was apparently a clubhouse cancer. Eh, sports is not the most LGBT aware place in the world. I moved in with Kyle after he moved out from his wife's home. She got a good bit of his money. The off-season was fine - the team was still friends with us, Jeff came down and saw me a lot, it was all good.
"But the season started and I had nothing to do. Nothing. I still exercised, but that was only because I didn't know what else to do with myself. I'd been playing baseball since age three. And now I was doing nothing. It was the thing that broke me and Kyle up, really. He was always everywhere but home, and I was seriously leeching off of him and feeling useless. I needed to get a new life, and he knew that. Maybe one day it'll work out again.
"I moved back to Lima. My dad obviously knew everything that happened, and took me back in. He was a bit miffed I never took the time to tell him I was gay, but what was I gonna do? I had baseball practice 24/7. There just wasn't time. I looked into doing some work for the local Little League team, since I knew they were always hard up for coaches, when I read in the paper that the McKinley High coach recently passed away. Or something. Sue Sylvester was frighteningly vague on that front. I applied.
"Sylvester interviewed me for the job. Said she heard about me. Hadn't everyone, I said. She seemed to like that I was there to talk about work, and not to throw my own pity party, and asked if I had a degree in anything. Fucking scored a French teaching position and the coach's spot.
"Yeah, maybe my one season in the big leagues was kind of disastrous. Maybe I fell for the wrong guy. He was never a bad guy, just... you know. Right? ...but hey, that's the past. I know I'll be asked about it for the rest of my life. But most of the kids at McKinley don't know about it. They have football and Glee club and Cheerios and all that jazz. Some of my players know, but they all know that if they're uncomfortable, they come to me and we work it out. Coach Sylvester vouched pretty hard for me to the principal, and the faculty seems pretty okay with me. The last thing I want is to be some sort of martyr. I love it here. Sometimes you need to do what you want to figure out what you need. And I needed this.
"Plus, you know, I came in third in NL Cy Young voting that year. That's pretty fucking huge.
"...well, thanks for your time. I know I'm a terrible storyteller... you flatter me needlessly. But honestly, man - anytime you're around, stop in, it's cool."
"Hey, it's Hal. Again. I know I just did one of these - yesterday even - but I had to get this guy down while he was in my mind. Plus this site needs some adults. I kind of love Tim Lincecum? Like a lot? In a 'I want your babies' way? That was more than you needed to know."
"You ever talk to that Karofsky kid? I dunno, he weirds me out, but he might be able to help you here."
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