Off to a bad start in New York, things got even worse. During spring training in 1992, a thirty-one-year-old Manhattan woman accused Van Go and his teammates Doc Gooden and Daryl Boston of having raped her the previous March 30 in Port St. Lucie, where the Mets spent spring training. As Gooden wrote in his autobiography, Doc, “At night, we’d go out drinking and looking for women, and women would go out drinking and looking for Mets. The hookups were never hard to come by.” He went on to recount how he met the accuser at a nightclub and brought her back to the house he was renting, where they found Van Go and Boston playing the Nintendo game R.B.I. Baseball. Doc says he and the woman had sex, and when they emerged from the bedroom, Van Go allegedly asked her, “You ever been with three guys in a night?”8 She allegedly said no, that she had only been with two guys in a night. Van Go then asked her if she’d like to go to the bedroom with him. She ended up sleeping consensually with all three players, Doc says, and a year later came out of the woodwork to accuse them of having raped her.
The Port St. Lucie police conducted an investigation, with the state attorney general ultimately dropping the charges as the accuser’s story of coercion fell apart. But the damage was done—Van Go was once again in the headlines for the wrong reason, and his wife, Lynette, back in their Arizona home, was not happy.
A little more than a year later, the Mets visited Los Angeles for a three-game series. At 32-65, the Mets were buried in last place, and the team had started to go a little stir-crazy. Pitcher Bret Saberhagen threw an M-100 firecracker near a group of reporters in early July and then a few weeks later smashed a hamper with a baseball bat in the locker room before a game. Following an afternoon game on July 24 in front of 43,301 fans that was won by the Dodgers, Van Go and teammate Bobby Bonilla met up with their buddy Eric Davis (who played for the Dodgers) in the players’ parking lot, climbing into Davis’s Jeep. Van Go, always looking for a prank, dropped a firecracker out of the car window only thirty feet from a crowd of fans seeking autographs congregated behind a gate. The device exploded, injuring three people, including two-and-a-half-year-old Amanda Santos. Davis, Bonilla, and Van Go drove off, having no idea they had hurt anyone and leaving a bloodied Santos to be consoled by her parents, Marivel, an unemployed legal secretary, and Derrick, an architectural draftsman without health insurance. When the media got wind of the story, Van Go refused to comment, and Davis, the driver of the car, was incredulous that it was a big deal. “Yeah, he threw a firecracker out of the car,” Davis told the Daily News. “He didn’t throw no firecracker into a crowd of people. Those people were behind a gate 20 feet away from my car.” Davis said Van Go intended it as a joke. “Everybody throws firecrackers. He threw it six feet from my car. We were laughing about it.”9
But it was no laughing matter. As the story rolled in and the picture of what happened became clearer, the Mets were infuriated, putting Van Go on what would become permanent administrative leave. The Santos family was outraged by his lack of compassion, telling the Sporting News that he had promised to help pay their medical bills but had done nothing more than send a teddy bear and balloons to Amanda. Third-degree felony charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor (Van Go hired celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro to defend him), and in November he pleaded guilty. The judge handed down a suspended one-year jail sentence, three years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and two hundred hours of community service. The Mets considered Van Go’s $11.95 million contract one of the biggest busts in team history. They were so fed up that they cut him with a year to go on the deal. While he claimed to have learned his lesson, his actions said otherwise: when an ambitious reporter tracked him down the following winter near his custom-built fortress in Scottsdale, Arizona, Van Go refused to discuss the incident, other than defiantly saying, “All the facts aren’t out. The people were 30 feet away. How could somebody 30 feet away be hurt? I wouldn’t throw a firecracker at kids.”10
His career and perhaps he would never be the same. He muddled through four more seasons with four different teams, suffering the indignity of many trips back to the Minor Leagues. The prince turned pauper, the denial grew deeper. He got divorced shortly after the firecracker ordeal. Although he returned to baseball for a few years in the mid-2000s as an instructor in the Cubs organization and resurfaced in 2013 with the Houston Astros, his true love, the team that once lionized him, the St. Louis Cardinals, never hired him back. It hurt Van Go deeply that he could not return home.
Given all that history, I didn’t expect Vincent van Go to make time for me. When I had gotten him on the phone a few weeks ago he was as cordial as a marooned crab. I explained the project, throwing in that I knew all about his uncle Carter’s sweet potato pies and planned on visiting his childhood home in Jacksonville, but he remained completely unimpressed. “Not interested,” he said.
At least with Carlton Fisk I had a lead on where to find him; Van Go could be anywhere. So if I can’t find the man in the present, my only choice is to travel to his past.
* * *
*
Cloudy beads of sweat drip off my arm and onto my steno pad as I powerwalk down a sidewalk flourishing with weeds, causing the blue lines of the paper to smear. The air smells like rotting grass, punctuated by the strident chorus of unseen insects. I reach up and tamp down my damp black hair, hot to the touch.
The ranch-style homes of Moncrief Park are packed tightly together, many bordered by chain-link fences, many with rusted cars parked on the lawn. I walk by a neighborhood watch sign put up by the Police Athletic League with the slogan “Filling Playgrounds, Not Prisons.”
All I’ve got is an address, 4103 West Leonard Court, pulled from a public records search for Van Go and his mom, Willie Pearl. (I could find no record of Van Go’s father.) While I’m not 100 percent certain this is the house Van Go grew up in, it seems likely—I know that he attended Raines High School, only a couple miles away, and I could find no other address listed for Willie Pearl. I don’t know what to expect—I don’t have a plan beyond finding the house and ringing the doorbell. Even if it is the right house, I have no idea if any Colemans still live there.
As I pass two kids playing basketball in the street next to a lot bursting with tall grass, I imagine Van Go and his cousins playing baseball and football here until the sun dipped below the horizon. Retracing his steps, I walk down Leonard Circle West, turning left onto West Leonard Court. Four houses in different shades of pastel with wrought-iron bars over the windows border the half circle, ranch homes with chain-link fences. A red F150 truck is parked in the short driveway of the alleged Coleman homestead behind a fence held shut with a strand of wire. The shiny car belies the rundown appearance of the house, its white paint faded and peeled to reveal splotches of yellow. Stymied by the locked fence, I knock on a neighbor’s door to ask if anyone in the Coleman family still lives next door. A large man with a graying beard wearing a Houston Texans T-shirt answers, greeting me with a smile. “It’s too hot out here for me, buddy,” he says, already wiping his brow.
“Are you a Texans fan?” I ask.
“Yeah. My son plays for them,” he says, proud but not bragging.
What are the odds that an NFL player’s dad answers the door? Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised—this is the same neighborhood that spawned many professional football players.
“Louis Nix III is his name. Nose guard for the Texans. They call him Irish Chocolate.” (I later Google this, baffled by the nickname, and learn that he went to Notre Dame.)
I tell him why I’m standing on his doorstep wearing a backpack and looking like a lost college student, and he says he doesn’t know who lives in the 4103 house, although he’s pretty sure it’s not the Colemans any longer. “Sorry I can’t help more!” he offers apologetically.
I head back to the main street to look for any signs of life in the house other than the truck parked in the driveway. As I snoop, out of the corner of my eye I see a red car approaching to my left. I had noticed the same car circling the block a c
ouple of times, inching along and clearly taking an interest in my presence. I doubt the neighborhood gets much tourist foot traffic, let alone visitors openly toting notebooks in the blistering heat.
The car crawls along, slowing to a stop next to me. The window rolls down.
No sense in hiding. I walk toward the driver’s-side window. “Hi there!” I announce to the driver as if I was expecting her. She’s wearing a wrap around her hair, and she has kind brown eyes. There’s a kid in the backseat and a younger woman with dyed red hair riding shotgun. She leans forward, peering at me with curiosity.
“Who are you looking for?” she asks.
“Vince Coleman. He was a baseball player from here, and I think this is the house he grew up in.”
Any trace of suspicion vanishes from her face. “I don’t think the family lives there anymore,” she says. “I believe the mom passed away. Her sister too.”
Strike 1. I thank them and head back to my car, satisfied that I’ve done all I can. His alma mater, Raines High School, is only two and a half miles away, so I swig some coffee and work my way through the suburban streets. There are still so many unanswered questions: Whatever happened to his dad? How long ago had Willie Pearl passed? And where the hell is Van Go right now anyway?
Raines High, home of the Vikings, was founded in 1965 as School Number 165, built after nearby Jean Ribault High School’s all-white faculty and students rejected the inclusion of African American students. Renamed for local educator William Raines later that year, the school is now 97 percent African American and has sent twenty-one players to the NFL. Being the middle of summer, there’s construction going on in the lobby, and I walk past a trophy case and up to the front desk to ask about Van Go.
“Are there any old yearbooks I could look at?” I ask the receptionist, a woman wearing a white sweater and blue-and-black dress.
“They’re all in the library, and the library is being renovated,” she tells me. A couple of construction guys march into the lobby covered in sweat, seeking the refuge of air-conditioning, followed by two police officers.
“You know, I went to high school with Vince,” she adds.
“Wait, you went here?” I ask, shocked. She doesn’t look old enough to be Vince’s classmate.
“Yes, sir. Leila Robinson. I was in Vince’s class.” The cops suddenly take an interest, wandering over.
“What was he like? Tell me about him!” I say, getting excited and opening my notebook. But Leila wants no part of my inquiries.
“No, no, I don’t want to be interviewed,” she says politely.
One of the cops chimes in. “Wait, I thought you was twenty-five,” he says to Leila.
“I am twenty-five,” she shoots back, cracking everyone up.
“Class of ’78,” I say, remembering my research. Leila does not seem pleased by my contribution to the conversation.
“Shoot, you old enough to be my mama,” the cop jokes.
“Hush,” Leila replies.
Strike 2. My only other lead is the reference to Van Go’s uncle Carter, a deacon at Abyssinia Baptist Church, in a 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. Back in the car, back to the coffee, back on the road. Several miles later, I arrive at a lavish drive-in church decorated with purple and white balloons, with a marquee out front advertising the upcoming vacation Bible school. I walk with purpose, striding past a group of children, looking for the minister’s office. I find Minister Richard Black in sermon prep at his desk, which is cluttered with papers and books. His gray hair is pushed back, and he is wearing all black.
“Was there a deacon here named Carter?” I ask after introducing myself. I realize I don’t even know if Carter is his first or last name. Minister Black nods his head slowly, the gears turning, faint recognition on his face.
“Yes, Robert Carter,” he says. “I believe he passed about thirty years ago.” He has no idea who Vince Coleman is but says he remembers Robert Carter talking about his nephew playing professional ball. But this faint recollection is all I’m going to get. Strike 3.
On the way back to the freeway and the solace of my hotel bed, I take out Van Go’s 1986 baseball card, which pictures him in midstride. His elbows are slightly bent, his shoulders are drawn up toward his ears, his compact frame is puffed out to project as much swagger as possible. The photo says it all. He’s always wanted to be something more, something bigger. He wants to be Vincent van Go instead of just being Vince Coleman.
“His problem is that he’s a follower,” his St. Louis manager, Whitey Herzog, once said.11
As I prepare to leave Florida I’m not disappointed, because I never expected much out of him to begin with. Expectations, after all, are a dangerous thing.
Vincent van Go is gone.
* * *
*
Next up: New York, New England, and a return to Rhode Island for a reunion with my own father. Three Wax Packers condensed in a tight window and time frame and perhaps the biggest score of all: a date with Doc Gooden.
12
Is It September Yet?
I think the hardest thing for any player is to say no more.
—Lee Mazzilli
Days 28–32
July 16–20, 2015
Miles driven: 6,892
Cups of coffee: 76
Jacksonville FL to New York NY
When I left Oakland a month ago, I had no idea how important father figures would be to this story. Of the nine Wax Packers I’ve covered so far, only three had fathers who were reliable, positive influences in their lives (Rance, Tempy, and Jaime); the other six dads ranged from alcoholics to virtual strangers, with plenty of neglect and abuse in between. As I leave the stickiness of Florida in my rearview mirror, I head up the East Coast in pursuit of the next Wax Packer, Lee Mazzilli, and a visit with my own father.
My dad took me to countless ball games as a kid. My memories of those times are a collage of senses—the smell of sausage, peppers, and onions from a vendor outside Fenway Park, a sandwich my dad had to have before every game; his hairy legs outstretched next to me in the bleachers; the steady calm of his voice as he explained how to score a game. Whatever we lacked in common ground or understanding, we made up for with baseball.
10. Lee Mazzilli
He showed me how to wrap tin foil around the antenna of my transistor radio to get the Phillies radio station at night when the signal seemed magically stronger. He threw Wiffle Balls to me in the backyard until his arm felt like rubber. He came to every single Little League game I played and always, always told me how proud he was of me.
I idolized him. He was Google before the internet, his broad interests and voracious literary diet providing answers to any question I asked. And I delighted in the unwavering simplicity with which he explained the world to me.
“Who are the good guys and the bad guys?” I would ask when Tom Brokaw came on the TV to give an update on President Reagan’s latest talks with Mikhail Gorbachev.
“The Russians are bad and we’re good,” he would say, rubbing his bushy black mustache. I became a little Republican, even dressing up one year as George H. W. Bush for Halloween. I sometimes miss that world, a clearly defined place of heroes and villains where my dad made everything feel safe and secure.
I imprinted on the outwardly perfect example that he and my mom set of their marriage, and I assumed that I too would grow up to meet a nice girl in college and have a family that went to church on Sundays. But as I grew into adulthood, developing my own set of beliefs and values and learning to think for myself, I had to deal with the challenges that we all face once the playing field is level with that of our parents. I began to see serious cracks in their marriage, the way that it was too traditional, too asymmetrical; they were stuck in the old-fashioned spheres of wife as homemaker and husband as breadwinner. My mom knew nothing of their finances, and while my dad was fair-minded and kind, he controlled all the purse strings. They grew apart, finding other partners for emotional support, and although my dad
ultimately was the one who wanted a divorce, the foundation of their marriage had long since crumbled. The asymmetry of their marriage made the split harder on my mom, who suddenly found herself a fifty-eight-year-old single woman who hadn’t been in the workforce in thirty years and had never paid her own bills.
The divorce, coupled with the demise of my relationship with Kay, left me hurt and angry. I had been a model teenager who had never given my parents any trouble, but in my twenties I lashed out at both of them for having built up an example that did not endure. But as Don Carman told me, when you’re angry you’re really just feeling sorry for yourself.
The Wax Pack Page 18