Player Season: The Pickup Artist Who Hacked Nike

by Brad Stephenson

  I awoke shivering in a cold, pitch-dark room. My bare legs were numb from sleeping on concrete – I knew something went terribly wrong.

  My pants were nowhere to be found, my socks were missing and my shoes were nowhere in sight. On top of this, I wasn't wearing underwear; a striped dress shirt was the last remnant of my monkey suit, literally the only remaining article of clothing.

  The panic set in. Was I drugged? Did someone lead me here? Where in the fuck was I?

  I sprung to my feet and tried adapting to my surroundings. It appeared as if I was in some type of stairwell, there was an exit door nearby. So I pushed, hoping to find the lightany lightbut it was locked.

  Then the panic really set in. I pictured being stuck here forever, I knew crazy things happen in Vegas but this was too extreme it was like the beginning scene of a horror film.

  I slowly descended down two flights of stairs and tried to open the exit door on each floor to no avail. Alas, I saw a phone against the wall.

  As soon as I picked it up, it rang.

  "Hello?" a woman said.

  "Where in the fuck am I?" I frantically asked.

  "You're at the Bellagio, and you're calling from the emergency staircase," she said, with a laugh.

  "How in the hell do I get out?" I begged.

  "You can only get in, the doors don't open from the inside. I will send someone up to get you," the woman said, heavily amused.

  "Thank you!" I told her.

  The door opened and two men in cream-colored suits yelled out for me it felt like I was being rescued from sea.

  I walked up the stairs covering my private area because, well, I was free balling. Both of them immediately erupted in laughter.

  "What happened to you?" they asked.

  "I have no fucking clue, please take me to my room," I told them, still puzzled.

  Once we entered the hallway, I realized it was the same floor we were staying on. My bare feet paced along the carpet floor and my hands continued covering my mid-section with my ass fully exposed.

  I knocked on the door.

  "What the fuck?" Justin said, confused.

  "I don't know, I just don't know," I told him.

  To this day I still have no idea what happened or why it happened.

  After sobering up and sleeping, we drove back to Arizona. Our next destination was Florida, the Tampa Bay Rays just reached the World Series, and we were going to stay with BJ.

  World Series 2008

  It was the Philadelphia Phillies against the Tampa Bay Rays and BJ was killing it during the postseason with 8 home runs entering the World Series.

  Justin and I jumped in a $200,000 Mercedes coupe loaned to BJ by the dealership (specifically for the World Series) and parked outside of Tropicana Field.

  There was one cool aspect of going to the game with Justin, and that was getting the celebrity treatment without actually being a celebrity. We were ushered in and alongside us were crowds of people, each of them screaming at Justin for an autograph, and eventually we were led upstairs to an area called the Home Plate Club.

  The Home Plate Club was an exclusive area in between the lower and upper deck, behind glass windows reserved for family members and affluent fans who paid for a membership (which included free drinks and food). Justin and I took advantage of the free beer right away while watching the first inning on TV – this was the first time I laid eyes on Liz.

  The double doors swung open and in walked this radiant beauty. Her brunette hair was down to her shoulders, flowing with primped curls decorated with shiny little pins. She wore designer blue jeans, black heels and a white t-shirt with the word 'BELIEVE' across her voluptuous chest in navy and baby blue sparkling rhinestones. Only a blind man would fail to notice her.

  I was mesmerized and sort of intimidated by her presence but it wasn't going to stop me from approaching–nothing could–she was heaven sent.

  "Hey, I'm Brad, BJ's friend," I said, qualifying myself while she came to a stop.

  "Hey, I'm Liz," she said, her big blue eyes gleaming upon me.

  My window of opportunity was limited and I desperately needed to keep the conversation going. She was walking alongside a young blond-haired girl, probably 4 or 5 years old, and I figured this was the best line of questioning to continue with.

  "Who's your little friend?" I asked, hoping and praying it wasn't her child.

  "This is my cousin, Lauren, isn't she cute?" Liz replied, broadcasting a smile that could light up any room.

  "Hey Lauren, are you enjoying the game?" I asked, milking the topic as she clung tightly to Liz's leg and shook her head.

  "She's shy," Liz said, letting out a laugh.

  Time to shift to Phase 2; getting her number. Some people go with scripted lines but I prefer to specifically tailor each request. I got an educated read on who she was and I noticed she wore expensive jewelry and clothing, signaling she came from a wealthy family, so I went with an unorthodox approach.

  "If you're looking for a guy with money, then look elsewhere because I'm broke!" I admittedly stated.

  Without question, my approach was going to be hit or miss; I was gambling. It just so happened her father is a very wealthy surgeon, and she devoured my line like it was the last supper. Direct hit...battleship sunk.

  "Hah, I don't care about that," said Liz, as she positioned herself closer to me.

  "That's a relief. I'm going to be in town for a little while, maybe I can get your number and we can hangout sometime?" I asked, going nuclear.

  "Sure," Liz complied, writing her number in my phone.

  The operation was a complete success. I knew I would see her again, but I wasn't prepared for how serious our relationship would become.

  Once the game was over, which was a loss for the Rays, Justin and I retreated back to BJ's house and awaited his arrival.

  "We're going out tonight boys!" BJ said, storming through the door.

  We put on our monkey suits and headed out to a two-story club in downtown St. Petersburg – the atmosphere was absolutely electric.

  Previously, going to a club with famous athletes was always a unique experience and it would attract a higher level of attention from girls than one would normally expect to get. However, going to a club with them during the World Series was in a league of it's own – it wasn't fair.

  BJ walked directly to the beer pong table in the back room and jumped in a game midway through, and a mob followed us. The whole room attentively watched him play, like he was up to bat in a key situation. Justin and I shrugged our shoulders and stood to the side, bearing witnessing to the growing number of girls flocking in like a herd of sheep.

  This is when I realized BJ wasn't just a baseball player; he was an entertainer. Each toss he made came with a different facial expression and an assortment of emotional reactions, all of which kept the crowd glued in.

  Then Evan Longoria walked in. He wore blue jeans, a white V-neck t-shirt and a black leather jacket with the collar popped; he was really doing his best to look like Rick Vaughn from the movie Major League.

  "You know you robbed me in Cape Cod," I told him.

  "That's cool," Evan responded, big-leaguing me.

  First impressions are everything, and I didn't like him. He didn't know I was a friend of BJ's at the time, but this lone brush off response made me instantly label him as an enemy combatant. This was the last time we spoke that night, but our rivalry was just beginning.

  We eventually went upstairs to a table the club reserved for BJ, with champagne on the house. I made it my duty to ensure girls grossly outnumbered us, and I delivered, but the mood wasn't properly set, so I jumped on top of the table and began B-walking.

  "That's right B-rad! Get it going!" BJ yelled while simultaneously nodding his head.

  A girl reached out her hand in the middle of my routine, as if she wanted to join me. Instead of complying with her request, I chose to do something memorable, which turned out to be a truly barbaric act.

&
nbsp; I gripped my glass of champagne and unloaded it on her chest, dousing her white t-shirt. BJ erupted in laughter; Justin was literally rolling on the floor and even though we were expressing amusement at her expense – the girl wasn't upset. In fact, she enjoyed it.

  "We gotta get outta here! This is getting too reckless!" BJ declared.

  It's going to be difficult to picture how this happened, but BJ somehow managed to fall inside of a dumpster while we exited out the back door. There was a down ramp to the road, with a dumpster at road level beside the ramp, and in a drunken stupor – he fell in.

  The Rays traveled to Philadelphia after game 2. BJ was gone and Justin went up there as well leaving the house all to myself. So I did what most people would do when left in an expensive place that they don't own; I invited a girl over, Liz to be exact.

  She walked in, once again draped with expensive clothing and dripped in ritzy accessories. Her hair was thick with bouncy curls and she wore a silk teal blouse with tight black dress pants; it worked for me.

  We sat down on BJ's brown leather couch and talked for quite awhile. She told me all about how she was the valedictorian of her high school, how she was active in church and how she was on academic scholarship at the University of Florida; as if I weren't already impressed.

  I told her how active I was at picking up girls and how I was kicked off three baseball teams in college.

  We were on opposite ends of the spectrum. She tried her best to give off the appearance of being a perfect little angel and I made no attempt to conceal my adverse past. They say opposites attract, and we certainly lived up to the saying.

  For the previous year, my encounters with girls were always fast paced but this situation called for a much slower seduction.

  I carried her up to BJ's bedroom and we began softly kissing. Then, she dropped a bomb on me – a line I hadn't heard since I was 15.

  "I'm a virgin," Liz calmly confided, staring at me with blinking eyes.

  "Oh," I responded, without having the slightest clue what else to say.

  I gave her the benefit of the doubt and didn't question the authenticity of her statement. I'm pretty good at deciphering bullshit, but it came off as genuine – I 'believed' her.

  Needless to say, our encounter that night came to a screeching halt after her unexpected and unforeseen testimony. It was a challenging revelation and I'm sure she realized how enticing it was to me. By the end of the night, I was hooked.

  While leaving, she told me she was going to Philadelphia for games 4 and 5 with her dad. Unbeknownst to me, she was in the midst of an ongoing affair with Evan Longoria, and she would spend both nights visiting his hotel room.

  I watched the Rays lose Game 5 and the World Series was over. Shortly after, I got a text from BJ.

  "Take a cab to the field, I'll pay for it," BJ's text read.

  The guy graciously let me stay in his house while he was out of town, I wasn't going to question his request, but I was curious why he wanted me there.

  Then I arrived and it all made sense. There were approximately 200 photographers waiting outside of the players' parking lot, taking pictures as each player drove past. BJ wanted a driver, and I was his Turtle.

  Although I certainly wasn't the focal point, I slowly steamrolled through the exit, you know, to milk the moment. The photographers closed in like a pack of wolves and fired off an insurmountable heap of luminous flashes deep inside our eyeballs.

  I was forced to constantly blink so I could regain an accurate illustration of the road while we drove away. I looked over at BJ and he seemed, or acted, bothered by what took place, a reaction only possible to someone who was accustomed to the attention; because I thought it was cool.

  It was time to go back to Chesapeake, but Justin and BJ wanted to do it in style so they arranged a private jet to take us there. Every high point in this trip was followed by another escalated event, which seemed to heighten a never-ending bar.

  I was euphoric after we touched down in Virginia; the past two months had been unimaginable. Taking a private jet home was a perfect way for my journey to come to an end...at least I thought it had come to an end.

  We went out to Virginia Beach and met up with another MLB baseball player, David Wright, a person I knew long before meeting the Upton's.

  David played AAU and high school baseball with my brother, and I did the same with his brother since we were ten years old. Most of my weekends from ages 10-13 were spent sleeping over the Wright's house, where David would regularly wake me up in the morning by sticking his big toe in my mouth.

  He is probably the most competitive person I've ever met; regardless if it was on the baseball field, dueling in ping pong or playing full court basketball. It was rare for a day to go by during my freshman year in high school when David didn't call me 'fatboy', and not because he was mean, it was just his way of motivating me to lose weight.

  Things were different now though; I wasn't fat and he was famous.

  From the moment I stepped foot inside Catch 31 in Virginia Beach, I could tell he carried a star power greater than anyone in Tampa. David was already a household name from his time with the New York Mets and he didn't have to try; women surrounded him.

  "Hello David," I greeted him.

  "What's up B?" he greeted me back.

  "I'm coming to New York to live with you this summer," I jokingly told him.

  "You can come anytime you want," he replied with a smile.

  Being under the spotlight will naturally change someone, and I noticed David was very talkative and diplomatic to everyone around him. Some may see it as fake, but everything you do is artificial when you have a reputation to protect. He did make sure to not come off as the guy who was better than you though, and he also made sure not to openly hit on any girls in front of prying eyes.

  When it was time to leave, David and I were the only two people who walked outside with an extra girl trailing our footsteps. We all hopped in the back of a black SUV, one girl on my lap and one girl on his lap. Although I certainly couldn't keep up with him on the baseball field; my macking skills were definitely on par.

  Once we arrived at Kyle's house, I took my girl upstairs and he vanished without a trace; something I imagine he practiced while in New York.

  Just when I thought my streak of fun was coming to an end, BJ came over to Kyle's the next day and had a talk with me upstairs.

  "You ready to go back to Tampa?" BJ feverishly asked.

  "You're damn right!" I responded, without the slightest hesitation.

  What was I going to do say...no? There is no telling what path my life would have gone down if I stayed home, I didn't have any alternate plans. Still, I wondered why BJ wanted me in Tampa, what was he getting out of it? My question was ultimately answered the week after we arrived.

  No matter where we went, be it the mall, the club or even in the middle of traffic – BJ's rhetoric was always the same.

  "Get her number! What about her? Get that one's number!" he would demand, and I would deliver.

  Don't get me wrong, there was no hardship on my part, this was a pleasing task and I was good at it. My phone was LOADED with girls' numbers by the end of the week and each new contact was forthright about their willingness to hangout. BJ decided I needed a separate phone to handle the workload and promptly provided one – it was really getting out of control.

  Even though my new 'job' kept me busy, I still found time to keep in touch with Liz. The way I looked at it, all of the other girls I talked to were work related and Liz was the personal object of my desire. BJ planned on going to a Tampa Bay Lightning game, so I asked Liz to meet us there.

  It was Justin, BJ, Cliff Floyd and myself walking through the corridors en route to a reserved skybox. While they stopped to sign autographs, Cliff chose to include me in the action.

  "Hey, you know that's Scott Kazmir right there, you should get his autograph too," Cliff told a little kid, who then asked me for an autograph.

  I
signed it. Cliff was so amused he started stopping people who weren't even in search of autographs, asking if they wanted 'mine'.

  Liz joined us in the skybox during the first period, and brought her dad along with her. I never enjoyed meeting parents and I honestly don't know anyone who does.

  He shadowed behind her as they entered, a short man wearing a light gray suit with a yellow tie and black dress shoes. After cavalierly introducing himself, he shook my hand, but I knew what he was thinking. You can call it telepathy or you can call it instinct–either way–I knew.

  He wanted his daughter, an only child, to marry someone distinguished: a doctor or a lawyer – anything but a glorified pickup artist.

  After her dad was called into work, we all sat down in a sectioned off row of seats in front of the skybox. Suddenly, we all appeared on the jumbotron.

  "Give it up for your Tampa Bay Rays!!!" the stadium announcer instructed to thousands of screaming hockey fans.

  BJ stood up, Cliff stood up and as a joke I stood up and waved to the crowd. I figured Cliff was already telling people I was Scott Kazmir so why not get some recognition?

  Ironically, we ran into Kazmir the very next day while BJ was getting treatment on his shoulder in the Rays training room. This was the first time I saw him since the boxing match a year prior to this and I will never forget the first words out of his mouth.

  "Let's go in the dugout and steal the World Series signs off the wall. We can probably make some money selling them," said Kazmir, and he was not joking at all.

  I thought 'Why in the hell does someone with a $30 million contract want to sell World Series memorabilia?'... but I didn't say that.

  "Yeah, let's do it," is what I said.

  So the two of us exited the training room, walked down the tunnel into the dugout and went to work peeling off World Series signs that were glued to the wall behind the bench.

  "Do you think they'll care if this stuff is gone?" I asked, worried about being caught.

  "Who gives a shit," Kazmir emphatically replied.

  This guy was right up my alley. He wasn't just stealing them for me to sell; he was actually going to sell them for himself. He was the first and only millionaire athlete I met who also sold memorabilia. I saw this as a potential avenue to earn some viable income; naturally, I decided to align myself with him.