I always dug Kevin Mitchell, despite the fact that he was a little psycho, maybe because he was a little psycho. He was supposedly a gang banger in bad ass San Diego, but who can dislike a guy who used to eat Vick’s Vapo-rub when he wasn’t feeling well?
When he was playing outfield for the San Francisco Giants, he made the coolest catch I’ve ever seen when he barehanded a fly ball on the dead run. So what if he was in the dugout making plane reservations during the 1986 World Series while Bill Buckner was booting away the Series to his team? So what if he was arrested for beating up his father, he once got a gold tooth after breaking his real one eating a frozen chocolate donut!
But now I find out that there is this whole question as to whether he drunkenly decapitated a cat! I just can’t abide by that.
http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/mitchell.asp
Mitchell, denies it, but it appeared in Dwight Gooden’s autobiography, Heat. They had a bizarre run in over this issue that went like this.
MITCHELL: “Why did you write that I cut off a cat’s head?”
GOODEN: “It wasn’t me.”
MITCHELL: “It wasn’t?”
GOODEN: “Nope.”
MITCHELL: “Okay. We’re cool.”
Genius, using the it wasn’t me excuse! But wait, it was in his own autobiography! I can see if your ghostwriter makes up a story about Kevin Mitchell being rude at a restaurant or something, but decapitating a cat? Was the ghostwriter Steven King?
Given the amount of Cocaine splattered all over this story, Snopes puts the stories truth at a coin flip. Personally, I wish I’d never have seen this, which by relating it, I guess, makes me part of the problem.
