I was reading Deadspin today and happened upon the somewhat sad but mostly humorous tale of Joe Winkelsas. Winkelsas is a 32 year-old reliever with the Milwaukee Brewers and notable for a whopper of a hard luck/dumb luck story. He appeared in one game with Atlanta in 1999 and got torched by the Arizona Diamondbacks before heading back to the minors and beyond. Before making the Brew Crew as a longshot out of Spring Training, Winkelsas was working as a garbageman in Buffalo.
How did he end up there? The devil weed. Reefer. The pot. Winkelsas had an addiction to marijuana to the point that he was sent to mandatory drug rehab while with a Brave affiliate in 2000 and that this is the nightmare he cites as his reason for finally kicking the chronic,
“He can see himself coming home from another bar fight at 4 a.m. --- drunk, blood on his face. Bacon grease on the corner of his mouth from eating at a restaurant whose name he can't even remember. Hair all messed up. Drool everywhere.”
Funny, I always thought that was Thursday.
Deadspin links to another site, That's Blogtastic, which dug up some older articles on Winkelsas and his marijuana addiction. An article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes the Behind the Music approach to Winkelsas's failings,
“Winkelsas loved two things when he entered the Braves farm system as a free agent in 1996: baseball and marijuana. But probably in the reverse order.
His career ERA in the big leagues was 54.00. But the ERA wasn’t the only thing about Winkelsas that was high.
This time, Winkelsas isn’t going to let his opportunity go up in smoke.”
I used to suck dick for coke. Now that's an addiction. You ever suck some dick for marijuana?
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