Pretty big WTF? story about former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton. I'll skip the stuff about the DWIs and divorces--that's requisite ex-athlete behavior--Daulton's got a whole other thing going on.
At 44, Daulton is not nearly the same guy he was at 24 or even 34. "I didn't have my first out-of-body experience until I was 35," he says. Curiously, the epiphany occurred at one of baseball's holiest shrines -- Wrigley Field. "I hit a line-drive just inside the third base line to help win a game," he recalls. "The strange thing was I didn't hit that ball. I never hit balls inside the third base line!"
He left the ballpark in tears. "I told my wife, 'It wasn't me who swung that bat! It wasn't me!'" he says. "She thought I was Looney Tunes." She's not alone.
[...]
Home alone in Tampa, Daulton spends much of his spare time typing up his mystical musings. The notes read like they were dictated by the True Believers who hitched a ride with Comet Hale-Bopp. "Reality is created and guarded by numeric patterns that overlap and awaken human consciousness, like a giant matrix or hologram," writes the .245 lifetime hitter. "They are created by sacred geometry -- numbers, the language of the universe, codes of awakening -- such as 11:11, which represent twin strands of DNA about to return to balance. Eleven equals BALANCE."
During the Dutch Enlightenment, No. 11 has been as significant as it was in Spinal Tap. "I'll wake up at night and look at the clock and it's 11:11," he says. "I'll turn on the TV and see a baseball game tied at 11 in the 11th inning. I'll look out the window and see a car passing with 1111 on the license plate. The car will turn into a driveway with 1111 on the mailbox."
I thought the "Dutch Enlightenment" line was pretty good. Anyway, he's looking to organize his notes into a larger text. This way the world will know stuff like this:
He believes the Mayan temples were built not by the Mayans, who were merely caretakers, but by a lost civilization. Possibly the Atlanteans, who allegedly disappeared beneath the waves. Possibly space aliens.
Daulton can ramble in mind-numbing detail about Dark Forces, the illusion of substance, the limitations of linear time. "The universe is made of vibrating energy," he says. "When energy vibrates fast enough on our 3-D plane, matter becomes invisible. Everything you see is vibrating at a certain level. A dirt clod, a rock..."
Whoa.