No. 45: TONY FERNANDEZ, DAMASO GARCIA, JOHN MAYBERRY & RAMBO / Which one doesn't belong? The last one in line, the one who put fantasy into the Dominican fantasy camp.

We came for a week at baseball fantasy camp. We wound up at the hot corner, where fantasy intersected with delusion. The signpost up ahead: The D.R. An episode right out of The Twilight Zone.

By reason of my iconoclasm and cluelessness, I’ve almost inevitably ended up in ridiculous situations in the course of business, but none stranger than the assignment that took me to the Dominican Republic for a feature on a baseball fantasy camp 35 years ago. For me, fantasy became a nightmare before even the first game was played. I focused on one celebrity, Blue Jays shortstop Tony Fernandez, and on one camper who was anointed Rambo not out respect (though I don’t think he put that together).

Tony Fernandez, late 80’s vintage

What follows here for paid subscribers (and a few to whom I’ve offered a free trial) is the unabridged text of a chapter from Audible Original, How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying), which gave this Substack its title. Here’s a link to Audible’s Canadian site for readers north of the border. Readers in the U.S., well, just go to audible.com or Amazon.