ROCHESTER,NY--Like many pitchers, Josh Medwell of the Triple A Rochester Red Wings has a ritual that he performs before every start. No, it’s not eating chicken or listening to a favorite song or meditating – it’s masturbating, right in front of his locker. Needless to say, the ritual is not sitting well with his teammates.

“Josh really needs to stop doing that,” said teammate Tyler Gruden, whose locker is right next to Medwell’s. “I understand he needs to do what he has to do to get ready for his start, but this is just over the top. I wish he would at least do it in the bathroom. But you know how ritualistic baseball players are. He’s got to do it right here, in front of his locker, exactly 45 minutes before he takes the mound. And he has to face east, which is exactly where I’m standing. So you can see the problem here.”

Gruden isn’t the only teammate who’s bothered by Medwell’s pre-game ritual. The entire team expresses discomfort when the righty pulls his pants down and goes to work. Still, Medwell steadfastly refuses to stop.

“He won’t stop. We’ve tried everything,” said shortstop Rick Godslewski. “I’ve personally confronted him about it several times. Man, pitchers are so high maintenance. But this – this is worse than the usual crap. Plus it’s dangerous. He could pull a muscle or something. OK, he’s already pulling a muscle, but you get what I mean.”

According to Gruden, he first discovered the ritual last month when he turned to speak to his teammate and was horrified to find Medwell casually masturbating on a stool. When Gruden questioned him, Medwell said “it’s just something I do before games.”

“You can imagine how mortified I was to find my teammate doing that right in front of me,” Gruden recalled. “I just froze in place and then I was like ‘Dude, cut that shit out! Do that in private!’ And he just looked at me with this nonchalant expression on his face and said ‘It’s just something I do before games. Just turn away if you can’t handle it.’ So I turned away. Then I went and warned our catcher, Edgardo, to wash his hands thoroughly after the game since he's going to be handling that ball all night. I guess I should’ve told the umpire the same thing, but screw him for calling me out at third the other night.”

Medwell does have one supporter in the clubhouse: Manager Ted Tolbert. Tolbert has dealt with ballplayers his whole life and doesn’t see any reason to prevent Medwell from “doing his thing.”

“What’s the big deal? This is just how baseball players are,” said Tolbert. “Everybody has their only little thing to do. Even Gruden has a ritual. He takes three bites of a Snickers bar before each game. Just three bites. No more, no less. Now would it be fair of me to tell Medwell to stop and let Gruden carry on? I don’t think so. As a manager, I can’t play favorites. If one guy is going to be allowed to eat his Snickers bar, the other guy is going to be allowed to masturbate openly.”

Medwell, a 22-year-old prospect out of Pepperdine University, has been performing his ritual since his days in college. Though it’s always been a touchy subject for his teammates, he claims that most of them eventually learned to accept it.

“This is something I’ve gone through before. Teammates do tend to frown on it when you pleasure yourself in the locker room,” said Medwell. “But it’s just something I do. It works for me. When you find a pre-game routine that works for you and makes you comfortable you kind of stick with it. I just hope the guys respect my wishes and let me be. If not, I may have to revert back to my old pre-game ritual of keying all their cars.”

  Copyright 2006, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.

Copyright 2005, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.