Fan’s tribute to departed friend a flush of brilliance

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/05/2017 (3059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As regular readers already are aware, I have developed something of an unhealthy obsession with toilets.

It’s possible this is because, when you are a newspaper humour columnist, toilets offer an almost endless source of inspiration.

Over the years, I have written a great many groundbreaking columns on toilets, including toilets malfunctioning on the International Space Station, major contests wherein you can win a toilet equipped with a big-screen TV and state-of-the-art stereo system, motion-activated night lights that transform your toilet into a 1970s-style disco ball and people sitting on toilets who have been bitten by snakes in sensitive areas, by which I mean Australia.

Not to mention a Canadian stuntwoman who recently set a world record for being the fastest person on a toilet after equipping her commode with wheels and an engine and racing it at a speed of 75 km/h around Sydney Olympic Park in Australia.

This toilet tracking began for me about 10 years ago, when I wrote a column about how my wife decided the garishly pink commode in our main bathroom no longer fit our decor. She ordered me to haul it out to the back alley and leave it for the garbage collectors, but it was as heavy as a battleship, so I managed only to drag it into the middle of our backyard. That’s where I left it.

Instead of threatening to divorce me, my wife simply filled the toilet with potting soil and turned it into a planter, which she used to grow strawberries for years until recently when, for reasons I do not understand, she smashed it to smithereens with a sledgehammer.

Despite my personal crusade to defend the public’s right to know about major toilet-related news items, my heroic efforts have so far failed to be rewarded with a major journalism prize.

I suspect, however, that is about to change, because I recently stumbled on a powerful and emotionally moving toilet-related drama that most likely will reduce you to a quivering puddle of goo. It is the story of a friendship so deep that it reaches beyond the grave and into the washrooms of Major League Baseball parks throughout North America.

It’s the story of Tom McDonald, a retired New York City Transit Authority office worker and baseball fanatic who has written an estimated 3,000 poems, most of them about the game he loves with all his heart.

It’s also the story of his best pal, Roy Riegel, a plumber and fellow baseball fanatic whom McDonald grew up with near the New York Mets beloved old home, Shea Stadium, in the incredible, aptly named neighbourhood Flushing Meadows.

According to the New York Times, which rarely makes this stuff up, Riegel, who lived life in the fast lane, died at the age of 48 on April 9, 2008, which just happened to be the day of the home opener of the Mets’ final season at Shea Stadium. McDonald attended the game without Riegel and returned home to find out his old friend had died.

“I mean, I went to so many Mets games with him,” McDonald told the CBC. “You know, I have a bunch of friends who are big Mets fans, but he was as big a Mets fan as anybody I ever knew.”

According to dozens of online reports, that’s when Riegel’s mom gave him some of his friend’s cremated remains, which he keeps in a Planters peanuts can, wrapped in Mets’ tickets stubs and stored next to a set of World Series highlight videos and McDonald’s collection of 149 autographs of baseball Hall-of-Famers.

This is where we get back to the inspirational theme of toilets, because this baseball-loving poet embarked on a bizarre mission to honour his lifelong friend by flushing the remains of the former plumber down Major League Baseball toilets around North America.

So far, his journey to flush his friend has taken him to 16 big-league stadiums. “I know people might think it’s weird and, if it were anyone else’s ashes, I’d agree,” he told the Times. “But for Roy, this is the perfect tribute to a plumber and a baseball fan and just a brilliant, wild guy.”

One of the parks where he has measured out a toilet tribute to his departed friend is Rogers Centre in Toronto, where he watched the game from the hotel attached to the stadium.

“I used the one in the hotel room, only because it’s part of the ballpark. Sort of like a twist on the whole thing,” McDonald told the CBC.

“Me, I go first — get it out of the way — then I flush and then I do Roy. There wasn’t any, like, mixing.”

Like a lot of baseball fanatics, he draws a line in the sand and refuses to flush his friend at certain ballparks, like Chicago’s Wrigley Field. “No, we’re Mets fans. We don’t like the Cubs, ever since we were kids,” he has said. “And Yankee Stadium I’m not doing neither.”

Personally, when I first heard that a Mets fan was flushing a buddy’s ashes down ballpark toilets, my initial reaction was: “Ewwwww!”

But along with being somewhat disgusted, I was also deeply moved by the unusual series of sendoffs.

Despite my powerful association with commodes, I want to state here and now that I have no desire to exit this world via the plumbing at sports-related venues. No, I have something much grander in mind.

I have long thought it would be fun to have my ashes fired out of one of those cannons they use to blast hotdogs and T-shirts into the stands at Bombers games. Even better, however, would be to have my remains stuffed inside a giant firework, like a Roman Candle, which would soar into the heavens and spread my leftovers far and wide.

At which point my grieving loved ones can casually remark: “Well, that’s Doug all over!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca