Bobby Don Southworth hired to lead Tribe

[RebelYell]

Hey Amanda,
Sure miss you even when it's just for a few days.

Finished off Kansas City this afternoon and we'll be in a little before midnight. Still too late to have the kids wait up, but I'll get up and get them off to school for you tomorrow.

We've still got some drama swirling here. I didn't say anything about this to the reporters, but we had a couple of pitchers throwing 70 percent curve balls instead of the other way around. I've come to find out they were doing it in honor of Charlie and there was a lot of "Uncle Charlie" talk in the dugout while we were batting.

I'm just taking it in stride. Not sure if I'm the target of something or if this is some kind of criticism of management. I'm more surprised that the guys have taken up Charlie's fight instead of Cliff Lee's.

The nickname game has grown, too.
We've got "Spider-Man," "Count Chocula," "Honest Abe," and then me, your same ol' "Bead."
Spider-Man gets hung on any guy who climbs a wall to rob somebody of a home run. Count Chocula is a cereal one of the guys eats whenever he gets a chance. You would think with a guy named Coco Crisp that we would all have cereal names.

I wanna be Crunch Berries if that's the case.

Everybody else is like me. They get called by the initials of their name. Aaron Boone is "Abe." Makes sense.

I'm glad "Bead" stuck for me. I'll never forget the only time I almost punched my own teammate was when he looked at me and said "I don't know why they call you 'Beady' ... your eyes look pretty normal to me."

I told him it was my initials. B and D.

"Oh. I get it."

Yeah, whatever.

I got him back when the nickname "Scabby" stuck on him. He never knew it was me that named him that and he still doesn't know, to this day, why people call him that.

He sure did grow on people in an irritating kind of way.

See you soon,
BD

[RebelYell]

Indians avoid sweep by Orioles
The Cleveland Indians lost the first two games of the series to the Baltimore Orioles and trailed 6-1 on Sunday at Jacobs Field.

But four different Indians hit solo homers and Bob Howry, horrible in his debut with the Tribe on Friday, was the pitcher of record when Cleveland overtook the Orioles in a 7-6 decision.

"For 22 innings, they just battered our pitching," Bobby Don Southworth said. "They're a pretty good hitting ballclub. We were just fortunate that our bats came around when they did."

Jermaine Clark went 3-for-4 and clubbed the go-ahead home run in the eighth off Howry as Baltimore won the first game, 6-3. On Saturday, the hits kept coming for the Orioles. They slapped Kevin Millwood around for 12 hits in four innings and romped to an 11-5 victory.

Melvin Mora belted two home runs and knocked in five runs.

"Mark Grace always talked about finding a fat old ugly woman to bust your hitting slump," Southworth said. "Seems some of these guys just need to see our pitching to snap out of theirs."

The series was about to go completely down the tubes before Cleveland awoke in the sixth inning of Sunday's finale. Grady Sizemore rapped three hits in five trips and Brandon Phillips extended his hitting streak to 16 games. Both participated in Cleveland's parade of solo-shot home runs.

"It's a good way to start off May," said Southworth, whose team leads the AL Central by 4.5 games. "It was a little disconcerting to be down 6-1 after losing the first two games and having the Yankees coming to town on top of all of that. We found a way to salvage a win, though, and that's the important thing."

New York invades for three games, starting tonight. The feature game of the series will have Cleveland's 22-year-old lefty Jeremy Sowers facing for Indian Jaret Wright.

[RebelYell]

Sizzling start has Clevelanders starting to take notice
(Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a weekly feature where fans can send their questions to Indians manager Bobby Don Southworth. Answers to selected questions will appear in a weekly column from Southworth.)

Q: BD, is it possible for the Indians to get back where we want to be sooner than we've expected?

A: Sure, anything is possible. Baseball is a game of momentum and emotion as much as it is a game of batting averages and ERAs. With a young team, you can multiply the momentum and emotion factors by about two or three times as, say, a veteran ballclub. Little things affect a young team more and how the team reacts and handles those things will be reflected in the standings. Do I think we can have a winning record? Win the Central Division? Make the ALCS? Yes to all of them. But they're going to come like everything else: One step at a time. We're still taking baby steps right now. We've got a long way to go.


Q: We saw the Royals game on TV this week where Jeremy Sowers pitched. Are we bringing him along too fast?

A: Jeremy looked great in spring training and he had a couple of good starts at Kinston. He's not going to get challenged in A ball; the AA and AAA rosters are chock full of guys who need every start they can get; and Jeremy was one of about three or four guys we promised ourselves to take a look at early in the season. He's started out great and hopefully he can keep it going Tuesday against the Yankees.


Q: Grady Sizemore is tearing it up, but I noticed we don't utilize his speed very much. Without him, this team is pretty slow, especially for being so young. Is there any kind of a conscious effort going on to inject some speed into the lineup?

A: You've hit on the one thing I really can't do much about but would love to change. We're a slow team and we've had to play a lot of station-to-station baseball. We have sluggers in the lineup to hit home runs and when they don't do it, they're on base and we have to deal with it. If you went to my games in Akron the last few years, you know I love to play the short game, run on everybody, take extra bases, bunt, squeeze. We can't do that much with this team. It's a team that's filled with guys who can swing the bat, but there isn't a lot of speed. We just have to make do with what we've got.


Q: Coach, what do you do in your down time on the road?

A: There isn't as much down time as people think when we're on the road. There are a few hours in the morning and late at night when you have to find some entertainment. I usually read and watch TV and I do a lot of walking.

[RebelYell]

Tribe turns back Yankees to win series
Travis Hafner has found his stroke and the Cleveland Indians may have uncovered a gem of a pitcher.

Hafner clubbed three home runs in three games and left-hander Jeremy Sowers was spotted to another substantial lead as Cleveland bounced back from Monday's loss to the New York Yankees to win a three-game series and extend its AL Central lead.

Hafner went 4-for-4 with two home runs in a 7-5 rubber-game victory over the Yankees. Hafner's home run total has ballooned to eight after he hit just five in the Indians' first 25 games.

Now 19-8, Cleveland is five full games up on its nearest competitor in the Central Division. The Indians also took over the league's best record mantle from the Yankees by percentage points.

On Tuesday, Hafner knocked in four runs and Cleveland staked Sowers to an insurmountable nine-run lead on the way to a 13-1 victory. Sowers gave the Indians 6 1/3 innings of effective pitching to improve to 2-0.

Derek Jeter went 3-for-5 with two home runs to lead the Yankees to a 10-2 win in the series opener. Denny Stark took the loss for the Tribe.

"Those leadoff guys are killing us," Indians manager Bobby Don Southworth said. "Jeter, Damon, that DH that led off for the A's, [Brian] Sellier ... The leadoff guys are hurting us."

Fortunately, Cleveland has countered with a good leadoff man of its own: Grady Sizemore.

Sizemore named Player of the Week
In 32 at-bats, Sizemore hit .563 with three home runs and five RBIs to be named the American League Player of the Week.

"Grady has done everything we ask for in a leadoff man," Southworth said. "He handles the bat well; He's selective in what he takes a swing at and he's good on the bases. He makes the guys behind him, the meat of our order, a much better group of hitters."

Sizemore's influence on the rest of the order is reflected in the Indians' .304 team batting average. Seven players in the everyday lineup are hitting over .320.

Sizemore also leads the team in stolen bases and runs scored.

The Indians travel to Boston this weekend for a rematch with the Red Sox.

[RebelYell]

Ever made a promise to God?

You know, when you were a kid. You were out camping and it got cold or something and you prayed "Dear Lord, if you just keep me safe and get me home tomorrow morning, I swear I'll never ... "
Just ill in the blank.

I'll never do it again, God. I swear it.
I've almost outgrown that need to cut late-in-the-game deals with God. I vividly remember the last time I did make a deal like that, though.

We were in Tulsa in the middle of the season and staying in a little three-floor hotel downtown, not too far from Drillers Stadium. We were staying on the second floor and it was a hot day. Third or fourth game of a long, dusty six-game series. The air conditioning worked well enough in the rooms of the building, but it was a little warm in the hallway.
Toasty.

Now one thing my momma and my wife can tell you about me is that I do like to be warm. It's nothing for me to have a blanket on the bed in August. Open the windows and let fresh air into the room? Not in my house nor in my room. Not unless its 80 degrees outside or there's the scent of rain. I do like the smell of an approaching thunderstorm.

Anyway, me and a teammate were on the second floor and waiting for an elevator. The stairs were closer to our rooms, but there was something about breaking the unwritten law of riding an elevator to the lobby from the second floor. Lo and behold, the elevator opens and there were two attractive girls staring at us.

They didn't like us immediately. We had broken the unwritten rule of etiquette for riding an elevator.

We sneered in kind back at the girls and then looked them over. Very nice. AAA, we decided. Just one step below the majors.

Shortly after the elevator door closed, there was a strange noise from overhead and the elevator seized up and lurched downward. No idea how far the car fell, probably just a foot or so, but it was enough to throw the girls into a panic.

And, of course, it was all our fault. We shouldn't have even been on the elevator.

But there we were. For the next two hours, we sweated in that elevator like it was a sauna.
During that time, I stayed pretty still and quiet. But after more than an hour, I finally made one of those deals with God.
"Dear Lord," I thought to myself, "just get me out of here and I'll never ride another hotel elevator less than 20 floors again in my life."

I thought of that again tonight when we got booked into our rooms in Boston.

We're on the 19th floor. The bellboy will take my stuff up.

But for me ... it's the stairs.

[RebelYell]

Red Sox pitchers bring Indians back to Earth
BOSTON (AP) -- Cleveland scored most of the runs it was going to get off the Boston Red Sox in the first game of their three-game weekend series at Fenway Park.

After scoring 13 runs to clobber the Sox, the Indians were limited to a total of three runs in the next two games and left town with consecutive losses for only the third time this season.

Byung-Hyun Kim survived sitting in the dugout for 43 minutes while his mates put eight runs on the board in the second inning to win the deciding game of the three-game set, 10-1.

"It was a tough weekend," Indians first-year manager Bobby Don Southworth said. "We used up all of our hits Friday night and then couldn't touch [David] Wells or Kim."

Travis Hafner's power surge peaked in the opener when the Tribe designated hitter clubbed three home runs off Red Sox pitching. Hafner drove in five runs and that was the difference in a 13-8 victory. Kevin Millwood endured for seven-plus innings on the mound and Boston rallied against the Cleveland mop-up men.

Hafner slugged his 12th homer of the season in Saturday's 3-2 defeat. C.C. Sabathia went eight innings, but Wells prevailed for his first win of the year.

Kevin Millar knocked in five runs in Sunday's wrap-up and Boston bolted to an early lead against Denny Stark.

"I said it the other day in Cleveland and I'll say it again. Leadoff hitters are killing us. We can't seem to get them out," Southworth said. "If it wasn't for our pitching staff, guys like Johnny Damon would look more like Johnny Mendoza.

"We'll go to Seattle and try to regroup," Southworth added, shaking off a follow-up question about the early-season scheduling. "We've got a plane to catch and some better baseball to play."

Jeremy Sowers will put his 2-0 record on the line Monday against the Mariners.

[RebelYell]

For me, it's my first time in Seattle other than a flight stopover. I flew through here once on my way to play summer ball in Alaska. It was raining the last time I was here. Imagine that.

We've got the 11th floor all to ourselves in the hotel and, while there's a little time, I'll go on a short scouting excursion. It's important to check out the surroundings.

I put on a comfortable shirt, sunglasses, the shorts I'll probably end up sleeping in and my trusty topsiders. Saves on the need for socks. Most importantly, I grab the CD carrier and put the headphones on. Won't be gone more than an hour.

She's a rebel; She's a saint
She's the salt of the Earth
And she's dangerous

She's a rebel; Vigilante
Missing link on the brink
Of destruction

From Seattle; To Toronto
She's the one that they call
Old Whatsername

She's the symbol; Of Resistance
And she's holding on my heart
Like a hand grenade

Seattle is a Greenday kind of place for me. As pessimistic as their music is, it makes me feel happy. Young. Ready to take on all that is wrong in the world.
It's the way I approach life: I like to hear about the misery and distaste people have for their situation.

Hell, I like reality television for that very reason. I like watching people compete and, seeing that they're still unhappy with a million bucks dangling in front of them. I know my life must be pretty good.

I move along the streets of Seattle in anonymity, satisfied that my music is all the company I need.

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

Scouting out some of the places to eat later, I take a mental note of a couple in particular. The find of the trip, though, is a pool hall that's going to be open until 2 a.m. Don't know if I can make it that late -- That's 5 a.m. back home -- but it's nice to know I've got a place to go if I get restless tonight. There have been many restless spells in my history.

On the way back up the steps to my room, I count. It's what catchers do. We count pitches, count balls and strikes, keep up with the count. It got to be a game when I returned to the dugout at my different stops. The guy charting the pitches would quiz me in the sixth or seventh inning with the starter still in the game.

"Bead, how many pitches do you have for Nicky?"
He's thrown mid-70s. I'd say 74, I reply.

"Damn, I must have missed one. I've got 73. Did he throw seven to their 3-hole last inning?"
Yeah. Seven.
"I had six. A 3-2 walk."
No, he tipped a two-strike curve.

So I count. I notice that there always seems to be an odd number of steps between floors. It's two levels between each floor. Eleven steps up, turn the other way and go 12 steps to the next entrance.

Twenty-three steps up 10 floors ... 230 steps taken, for the most part, two at a time.

Back on our floor -- our home for the next three days -- all is quiet. Some of the players and coaches have gone to get some lunch. Some of the support crew may already be out at the ballpark four or five hours before game time. Especially for the start of a series.

A few of the guys' doors are open. Everybody shares a room except for me. I'm one of those who leaves my door open. It's a college dorm thing. You want visitors, you leave your door open. Door closed, nobody will even knock.

I walk by one of the rooms and glance in. Three of the guys are sitting on their two queen-sized beds and talking to a new friend. I stop and pull my headphones off about the time I hear Greenday singing:

She's an extraordinary girl in an ordinary world

She's very pretty. Long light-colored hair with all those little curls in each strand. She's fairly tan for this early in the season and she sits up straight and tall in her chair.

"Hey Bead, this is ... This is our manager. He's the guy who has us in first place," says one of the players.

I can't hear the name at all. My ears are still ringing from the music.
I nod and look at the young girl -- she's 17 or 18 I'd guess and a red flag is going off in my mind.
I say hello, nod and smile and give the girl one more look after taking a mental note of who is in the room with her. She's wearing a colorful striped V-neck sweater that plunges farther down than I'd like to see my daughter wearing. She smiles at me and, sitting with her legs crossed and facing the players, I see one last distinguising feature before turning away.

She has a tattoo of thorns around her left ankle.

[RebelYell]

Seattle Solves Sowers,
Hands Cleveland 5-1
Series-Opening Loss
SEATTLE -- Joel Pineiro put the breaks on the AL Central Division's runaway train, the Cleveland Indians, and handed 22-year-old rookie Jeremy Sowers his first defeat Monday night at Safeco Field.

Pineiro sparkled by scattering seven hits over nine innings and allowing only a single earned run.
For the first time in three starts, Sowers was not granted a big lead from the outset. Cleveland scored 11 runs in Sowers' first start and 13 in his second outing.

"We didn't stake him to a big lead, but [Sowers] didn't buckle," Indians manager Bobby Don Southworth said. "We just didn't do much for him with our bats."

The Indians have scored only four runs in their last three games and have suffered three consecutive defeats for the first time this season.

"That's not like us to be so inept at the plate," Southworth said. "But we'll tip our hat to their pitcher and hope to have a little more luck with the next guy tomorrow."

Thornton shuts down Indians, hands Westbrook first loss
SEATTLE -- Jake Westbrook has been a little bit lucky so far in 2005.
His luck ran out Tuesday night.

Rewarded for most of the season by good production from Cleveland's potent lineup, Westbrook squandered an early 3-1 lead and suffered his first loss in six decisions, 7-3.

Matt Thornton registered the win, weathering the Indians' two-inning rain dance of runs before shutting down the opposition.

Bucky Jacobsen clubbed a two-run homer in the fourth to put Seattle ahead and tacked on two more RBIs as the Mariners pulled away.

The defeat was the fourth in a row for Cleveland, which leads the AL Central by four games over Detroit.

"Give Seattle a lot of credit. They've hung losses on two unbeaten pitchers," said Cleveland skipper Bobby Don Southworth. "We'll try again with Kevin Millwood and hope for a different result.
But we've got to know and understand that we're not going to win many ballgames scoring one, two or three runs. We have to have more offense. That's all there is to it."

[RebelYell]

Amanda --

Miss you guys. Don't know if you stayed up late enough to watch the game, but it
sucked.

We're just in a funk right now. Inconsistency is the mark of a young team, I guess. We're definitely not very consistent.

We've got a late afternoon game tomorrow and then we don't leave for home until Thursday morning. Going to be a long day ... a long weekend. Four games with the Tigers and I see they're the team creeping up on us.

Maybe we can swat them back down the ladder some.

See you soon.
BD

[RebelYell]

Baseball players superstitious?
Absolutely.

No other humans in the world more superstitious.
And that's where I'm a little different.

I've got nothing against the number 13, black cats, ladders ...

But because I hung around baseball players, I know not to step on the chalk between innings. I know you have to put your bat with the head down in the rack. I know that you never say anything to a pitcher unless he asks you a direct question.

That's not superstitious. That's plain ol' common sense.

There are rituals, too. They aren't superstitions, but things you do to keep the baseball gods happy. Karma.

On losing streaks in the minors, the guys would all go out to the pancake house or waffle hut across the street. When the streak got bad, everybody ate steak and eggs. After a while, you started looking forward to steak and eggs every night and losing didn't hurt quite as bad.
It could get expensive on that 250-dollar-per-week salary, though.

We're going through our first losing streak now and I'll probably be up all night trying to figure out if there's something I'm doing wrong. Is there a way I can change this things around? Stop the skid maybe??

I've already thought about what I'm going to do on Wednesday. Ballgame at 5:05, go eat and head for that pool hall. It just looked relaxing.

Outside of winning and losing a ballgame, that's the most important thing on my agenda.
I think about it as I doze off in front of late-night television.

Oh, and I remind myself that the first thing I have to do after I get up is find the nearest Waffle House.

It never hurts to dial up the steak and eggs.

[RebelYell]

Swept Out of Seattle
Indians' losing streak reaches five in a row
SEATTLE -- Scott Atchison paid attention over the last two days.

Atchison limited Cleveland to six hits during seven-plus innings and the Seattle Mariners completed a three-game sweep of the Indians with a 5-1 victory Wednesday evening.

Atchison walked two and struck out five, allowing only a sacrifice fly by Ronnie Belliard.

That fly was enough, however, to keep Cleveland on top until the sixth. Kevin Millwood, sharp through five, suffered a sixth-inning implosion that was helped along by Ichiro Suzuki's tie-breaking double and Jeremy Reed's two-run single.

Shigetoshi Hasegawa came on in the eighth and pitched a flawless ninth to earn his first save.

"We didn't want a loss hanging over our heads on the trip back home," Cleveland manager Bobby Don Southworth said. "A sweep, though, that goes without saying. We really wanted to pull out all the stops to keep that from happening."

Southworth took some of the blame for not having relief ready for Millwood when he needed it.
"He was just breezing along and then 'poof,'" Southworth said. "His pitch count was fine, but by the time he got out of the sixth, it was too late.
"And we still didn't have anybody ready to go."

The Indians will face their stiffest AL Central challenger this weekend when Detroit comes to Jacobs Field. The Tigers have trimmed the Tribe's lead down to three games.

"They can overtake us if we keep playing like this," Southworth said. "Just not enough run production. We've got to get the bats going."

========= ===========

After the game, I was miserable.
Losing happens in baseball. You learn to accept it.

What makes it hard is knowing your next chance to prove yourself is more than a day -- and a 2,000-mile plane ride -- away.

I had a plan, though.
I went back to the hotel, went down the east-side stairs and headed for the pool hall. Sure, I was going to return to the hotel with smoke-stinky clothes, but I was going to burn off some steam.

No better way to do that than to play some pool.

Better yet, this hall -- a nice-sized old bar with nine tables -- had snooker tables. If you're ever going to shoot pool, learn how to play some snooker. The balls and pockets are smaller and the table is longer. After about an hour of playing, the pool balls resemble cantaloupes rolling into laundry baskets.

I lost all track of time playing pool. Found a guy killing time just like me and we played for a couple of hours. All I knew was that I had downed six beverages. That usually works out to four hours for me. Turns out it was five hours and I had made it to the last call.

I paid my tab and headed back to the hotel. It was just a three-block walk. I went in through the east stairwell, the same way I left and the one I had found was lesser used. The west stairs took you right to the front desk.

I made it up to my room and was still feeling restless. "Perry Mason" on cable wasn't going to be the tranquilizer I'd often found it to be.

I needed to go do something else. Suddenly, I realized that I might be looking at an all-nighter with departure for the airport scheduled for 7 a.m.

So be it.

I stepped quietly into the hallway and checked up and down for any sign of people. Nobody.
There's no curfew tonight. Just make sure you're on the plane is all I asked of the coaches and players.

It's quiet, though. All quiet as I head for the west end of the hotel.

And then I turn around and go back to my room. Forgot something.

I grabbed my headphones. They were still blaring. Great batteries trump my bad memory for turning the thing off.

Thought I ran into you down on the street
Then it turned out to only be a dream
I made a point to burn all of the photographs
She went away and then I took a different path

I began bounding down the stairs, counting them along the way. I know there were 230 of them, but I counted anyway.

I can remember the face but I can't recall the name
Now I wonder how ###whatshername### has been
Seems that she disappeared without a trace ...

I get to the fourth floor and stop suddenly. In the corner near the door is a baseball bat. It's one of the team's bats. The very bat I would have used if I were still playing. Perfect weight, good length.

Out of habit, I grab it and continue on my trek toward the lobby.
Why am I even going to the lobby?
I just want to see another human being. Share with them the same sleepless misery I'm suffering through tonight.

Third floor ...

Now I wonder how ###whatshername### has been
Remember, whatever ...

And then I stop stone cold as I turn to go down the next-to-last set of stairs.
There she is.

It's the girl I saw in the room with a few of my players. Who was it in there with her? Grady, Bruce and one other guy. Travis?
No. Ludwick.
Yeah, Ryan Ludwick.

But nevermind that. It's the girl.
Same twirled hair resting on the same multi-colored sweater. She's wearing the same sweater she had on when I saw her two days ago. It's yellow and orange and either navy or black. Eight horizontal stripes in alternating fashion up and down her front and back.

And there's the tattoo. It's the same group of thorns wrapped tightly around her ankle.
Her left ankle.
And I just stare at her.

[RebelYell]

As tightly as the thorns appear to be wrapped around her ankle, there is something even more tightly wound around the young girl's hands, securing them behind her back. She is just laying at the bottom of the stairwell.

She is not breathing. Best I can tell, she may have been dead for some time.

I edge down the stairs with the baseball bat to help me balance my weakening legs. The girl's hands are an awful shade of purple and blue. Telephone cord has been used to cut off the circulation and it has cut into her wrists.

Across her back, there is a long mark and it's possible one of her arms has been broken.
I look at the bat in my hand and wonder if it was a weapon in this crime.

Below her sweater and hands is nothing but the milky white flesh of her bottom. She seemed so tan when I saw her for the first time on Monday. Now you can barely tell where her tan line began on her naked hips.

Around the back of her head is a piece of cloth. A bandana, possibly. It, too, is knotted, obviously used as a gag.

I move close enough to touch her and only reach for her hair, pulling it back away from her face.

Her mouth is stuffed with a washcloth which is held in by the bandana.

There's nothing I can do for her now. And even though I saw her when she was living and breathing and beautiful, I never even heard her name.

I run up the stairs for my room. I need to get to a phone.

I'm taking the bat with me.

[RebelYell]

I quit thinking shortly after I realized the girl was dead in the stairwell.
Once in my room, I dialed 911 and reported what I had seen. I gave my name, who I was and everything I had discovered -- minus the bat.

Right away, I had decided the bat had been part of the crime. I sit here thinking before getting on the plane to go back home and realize that I could be wrong. But I packed the bat away with my fungo.

Besides, when the detectives discover the girl had been hit across the back with something, breaking one of her arms in the process, I figured the bat would be high on the list of possible weapons.

The real murder weapon, I came to find out through a 15-minute interview with a detective was probably a long telephone cord. Not the cord that hooks the earpiece to the phone, but the cord that goes from the back of the phone into the wall.

The girl had been strangled, it appeared to them. It was a crime of passion, they said.

I thought again about what I had seen over the past couple of days: The girl in a room with a few of our players; The girl wearing the same clothes two days later; The girl in the stairwell of our hotel and located just two floors above was a baseball bat that belonged to our team.

Is it possible that one of my players had killed her?
I looked among them as we began boarding our plane. None of them knew any more than somebody had been killed near our hotel during the night. That's enough to get my curiousity going, but these guys were pretty calm about it. None of them knew who the girl was or that it was even a girl who had been killed. I told the detectives that all of my players were in their rooms at a midnight bed-check.

Yeah, sure, it was an out-and-out lie.

Asked if it was possible for any of the players to have sneaked out, I told them that I had been out myself and checked again when I came in at 3 a.m. I was pretty sure there hadn't been any movement outside of the players' rooms and, therefore, none of them could have possibly been involved with the crime.

Along with the baseball bat, I conveniently left out the fact that I had seen the girl with three of my players only two days before her death.
But what did that mean, anyway?

I got on the plane and prayed I could sleep.

[RebelYell]

I didn't intend to kill Tina.
That's what she told me her name was, anyway.

I only wanted to keep her. I wanted her to be mine. Something about her made me want to have her around and so I did keep Tina all to myself.
Her prison for two days was my fourth-floor room at one of the nicest hotels in Seattle. For me, hotel life is my life. I wanted it to be her life, too.
As it turned out, it became her death.

I go from city to city on business. I don't have anybody to answer to after I leave home and I enjoy my travels.
Lately, though, I've been wanting more than restaurant food, cable television and barflies. I started scanning newspaper ads and looking up the numbers of escort services in the phone book. I had found ladies who would spend evenings with me, but that was all. They would take my money, give me a friendly hug and then I would never see them again.
I could tell these ladies anything. I could lie to them and it didn't matter if they believed me or not.

But Tina was different. She was a turning point in my life. I met her and believed I could save her from a life full of traveling salesmen and "johns" whom she would only use for money. She would fall into some kind of drug addiction, have an unwanted pregnancy, even become the property of some pimp whose only interest in her was cash flow.
I wanted to do something for her. I wanted to be something more to her.

She stayed well into Tuesday morning and when I awoke and she was still there beside me, I was certain she was the woman for whom I was searching. Maybe she felt obligated since I had paid her twice her normal asking price. I asked her if she would stay until I returned Tuesday evening and she said yes.

I was excited. I gave her a couple hundred more dollars so she could go out and have herself a good lunch and maybe buy some new clothes. I felt like I had found my own "Pretty Woman."
But when I arrived Tuesday night, I found Tina on the phone setting up a late-night encounter with another man. She insisted that her late rendezvous would not spoil our evening. She was going to allow me to have my way with her before she had to go.

I was going to have my way with her, but she wasn't going anywhere.

By the time I was through, Tina was in no condition to go anywhere. I turned off her cell phone and then looked at her and the helpless way I had left her. She wasn't going anywhere for a while. I just needed a few hours to think about what I could do to convince her to stay -- without the help of the two telephone cords I had used to tie her to the end of the bed.

When I returned, I knew that I could convince the girl to come with me to my next destination. We would get her cleaned up, buy her some nice things and she would understand I wasn't a bad person.
I was going to take the gag out of her mouth when she began to scream and struggle. This wasn't going to work.
But I didn't mean to kill her.

I sat in my room for an hour trying to figure out what to do with her lifeless body. I waited until there was no movement in the hallway and looked out to see what my options were. I was close enough to the stairway door to take her there, down past the lobby and to the underground parking garage. I could just leave her there.

This is Seattle, after all ... the home of grunge music and serial killers.

I carried her to the stairwell door and began going down the steps when, up above, I heard a door open. It might be 8 or 10 floors up, but I panicked. I put her down carefully, quietly, and headed back up toward my room. At my floor, I slid through the door as the footsteps from above got closer. Seconds later, I watched as a person flashed by the small window. Then he stopped and reached toward the door.

I froze. Did he see me?

And then he continued to go down the stairs with a baseball bat he had just picked up from out of the corner of the stairwell.

I was safe. I went back to remove any evidence from the scene of the crime.

[UngratefulDead]

This dynasty has certainly taken an unexpected turn.