F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The very rich are different from you and me.”
Ernest Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”
Sunday morning, two time zones removed from the Jayson Williams manslaughter trial, Larry Walker found an unidentified dead man on his property near Evergreen, Colo. This, I suppose, is one of the many things that separate professional athletes from the rest of us. Not that they would find a lifeless body in their backyard, but that their backyard would be so vast that a lifeless body could be there — and they wouldn’t be aware of it.
I’ve been a homeowner for two decades now and, like most folks, I’ve yet to find anything resembling a corpse on my land. The only strange stuff that winds up in my yard is stuff that’s been blown there by the wind. Stuff such as:
1. Garbage can lids.
2. McDonald’s wrappers.
3. Promotional flyers.
4. Stray Whiffle Balls.
5. My neighbor’s leaves.
It would take something along the lines of a tornado, of course, to blow a dead body on my property — or on Larry Walker’s, for that matter. That’s why the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office wonders if the body in question “was dumped there.” This would explain why the Rockies right fielder, who is absolutely not a suspect in the investigation, didn’t notice it until he was driving along a trail — well away from his home — in an all-terrain vehicle.
And so we’re reminded, once again, that fame and fortune aren’t without their drawbacks. They can enable you to buy luxurious homes on large tracts of land in exclusive suburbs — land with wooded areas and trails best traversed in all-terrain vehicles. But there’s always the possibility you’ll stumble across a dead body while surveying the back 40.
A spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office told the Denver Post, “I’m not sure [Walker] was prepared” for what he saw. Heck, who would be? It would be one thing if he’d found, oh, a misplaced Gold Glove Award or a home run ball he’d hit off Ismael Valdes in ’97. But decaying human flesh? Who’s equipped to handle that — other than Phil “the Vulture” Regan, maybe?
That’s the problem with huge estates. There’s so much room for … mischief. Jayson Williams’ manse in Somerville, N.J., is set on 61 acres that include a lake, putting green and skeet-shooting range. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to drag the bottom of the lake, and I certainly wouldn’t want to dig too deeply in the bunker beside the putting green. (Assuming there is a bunker beside the putting green.) Gives me the willies just thinking about it.
As for the skeet-shooting range, well, we’ve all seen what kind of trouble that can get you into. Skeet shooting means shotguns, and shotguns, when improperly handled, can shoot unsuspecting house guests in the chest — and land you in a courtroom facing 55 years in prison (as is currently the case with the former Nets forward). Such mishaps don’t happen nearly as often in, say, townhouses. In townhouses, there’s barely enough room for a Ping-Pong table, never mind a skeet-shooting range.
Wonder what Mike Danton makes of all this. He’s the St. Louis Blues player who was arrested by the FBI Friday and charged with hiring a hit man to bump off an “acquaintance.” The reason he wanted this “acquaintance” bumped off, according to reports, is that he feared the “acquaintance” was going to leave him — and “ruin his career” by making accusations about his “promiscuity and use of alcohol.”
It’s all very confusing — though Danton’s agent was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying, “I can tell you it had nothing to do with drugs and alcohol, period. Once we get all the facts, we’ll be able to realize what really happened. He’s a good kid. He really is.” Still, something tells me that by the time the trial is over, the prosecution will have Danton looking like Robespierre.
To recap: There’s a dead body in Evergreen, Colo., a dead body in Somerville, N.J., and nearly a dead body in St. Louis. Just another day in the Weird World of Sports. Larry Walker went for a drive in his all-terrain vehicle, killing time while on the disabled list, and wound up in the middle of an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries.” The rich really are different from you and me.
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