Fergie Jenkins Used To Sleep In A Hookers’ Hotel, Funeral Home
It’s no secret life on the road for minor leaguers is rough. There’s long bus rides, little money and the sleeping arrangements aren’t always the best. It’s the price one must pay if they want to ascend to the majors, or wallow away in A ball and realize your dream of making MLB isn’t going to happen. Ever.
But you think kids today have it bad? Pssh. Cub great Fergie Jenkins has them topped. Why? Because he used to sleep in a funeral home. And a whore house.
From his new book: Fergie: My Life from the Cubs to Cooperstown.
“Another time, for games in St. Petersburg, the black players slept in a funeral home. This was not an old funeral home, or a funeral home converted into a hotel. This was an active, working funeral home. It was just us and the dead bodies.”
“On a trip to Palatka, where we stayed in black neighborhoods, they put us up in a hookers’ hotel. The team had about five rooms, and in the rest of the hotel they rented rooms by the hour. We saw girls coming back and forth, back and forth. Cars were driving up and parking, and cars were driving away. Sometimes in the middle of the night we got a knock on our doors, and some guy yelled, “Is Julie in there?” or, “Is Barbara in there?” I’d just yell back through the closed door, “No, wrong room fella!” I never told my parents about that experience. Welcome to Class D baseball in Palatka, Florida.”
See, that’s really taking it to another level. Though, it could have been worse. It could have been a funeral home that doubled as a whore house.
And now I think I’ve gone too far.
This excerpt from Fergie: My Life From the Cubs to Cooperstown is printed with the permission of Triumph Books / www.triumphbooks.com.
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