The Pepsi Kid

As much as I drink Pepsi while rolling APBA games, I should do an advertisement for the syrupy, caramel, burp-inducing pop.

I’ll generally buy a 1.2-liter bottle of the elixir under the guise of needing to quench the writing muse when I have magazine stories I need to crank out on deadline. But, I find myself drinking the Pepsi quite a bit during the games I play. There are a lot of, shall we say, brief “rain delays” by the seventh inning stretches during games when I’m hitting the bottle hard.

The advertisement would fit well while I’m playing the 1965 APBA baseball season.

VIDEO: APBA card of New York Mets’ outfielder Joe Christopher. A red and white dice lie next to it with a “4” and “1” roll. The corresponding number on Christopher’s card is a “24,” the roll for a double play.

ANNOUNCER: When playing New York Mets games, nothing makes their tasteless season a bit more palatable than a nice, cold Pepsi. When manager Casey Stengel reaches for the bullpen phone to summon a relief pitcher yet again in the sixth inning, I reach for my bottle of the refreshing soft drink

VIDEO: Shot of Washington Senator’s outfield Frank Howard’s card in the background with a glass of Pepsi in the foreground. The two APBA dice show “66,” the universal roll for a home run.

ANNOUNCER: You’ll be rolling 66s every time you open a bottle of Pepsi.

I actually remember the first Pepsi I ever had. My family was traveling from our northern Minnesota home to western Arkansas on a vacation when I was about 10. We stopped in Joplin, Mo., for the day, partly because my father had been stationed there while in the Army and wanted to see the area and partly because he had heard of the mysterious “Joplin lights” legend that had people believing in flying saucers.

We went inside a roadside dinner next to the motel and ordered food. I was craving a pop and asked for a “RC Cola,” the staple of soft drinks in northern Minnesota. The waiter looked at me like I was a Joplin light.

“What about a Canada Dry ginger ale?” I asked.

Again, the look.

He picked up on my northern accent. His name was “Tom,” based on the nametag on his shirt. How I remember that after 50 years, I have no idea. I can’t remember to tie my shoes half the time and there are days when I get in the car to go to work and realize I forgot my keys. Maybe it was because I had a friend named “Tom” who lived next door to me back then.

“Son,” Tom said in a southern drawl. “We’re in the south. We don’t have any of those Yankee drinks. How ‘bout a Pepsi?”

And so it began.

I got a second one and Tom called me the “Pepsi Kid.”

“Pretty good stuff, isn’t it?” he said. And I agreed.

Now, half a century later my kidneys probably look like some decrepit sponge under the kitchen cabinet and my liver may have the consistency of a brick, but I keep chugging Pepsi. Thanks, Tom.

I once quit drinking it for a year in 1997  just to see what would happen. I lost about 30 pounds during that time, but I missed the flavor. I used to travel with my first wife to craft shows before she passed away 15 years ago. She’d sell women’s hair wrap things we made and I’d spend long hours sitting in convention centers or booths or under tents at shows.  (Once I sat in a mule pen at the Nashville, Tenn., fairgrounds where they held a craft show.)

We were in Jackson, Tenn., one hot afternoon and I put my book down, got up from my chair and asked for change. It had been a year since I had a drink and the craving, the addiction, became unbearable. I walked to a pop machine in a near trance, fed the change slot and pushed the button for “Pepsi.” Somewhere, a chorus of angels sang.

It was one of the best Pepsis ever.

I wrote about my addiction to the drink and the Jackson, Tenn., experience in a column I had at a weekly newspaper. I equated to falling off the wagon like an alcoholic and waking up in an alley, covered in syrup and goo, bottle caps strewn around me.

It wasn’t that flattering of a column, but the local Pepsi bottling plant loved it. They sent me coupons for several crates of Pepsi and a nice tee-shirt. Sadly, the shirt was too small for me – probably because I had quaffed so many Pepsis. It was a Medium. I wanted to call the plant and ask them if they had one in a size Circus Tent, but I was a bit embarrassed. Instead, I just drank away my sorrows with more Pepsi.

I’ve now turned my wife, Holly, into a Pepsi fan. She’ll pour some of the drink from my 1.25-liter bottle into a coffee cup and then put a sandwich bag over it to save it. She may take a drink and then place it into the refrigerator, returning to it later. Later? I’d drink a coffee cup-worth of the stuff in one gulp.

There’s a window ledge by the desk where I write my articles and roll the APBA games. I keep the bottles of pop on the ledge within easy grasp. But as I look now, there’s only an empty bottle.

The two saddest things in life are an empty prescription bottle of Tramadol for pain and an empty bottle of Pepsi.

Looks like I’ll have to make a run to the grocery store to get another round of drinks.

It’ll make the 1965 NY Mets games I play a bit more tasteful.