The last time Evan Gattis was in New York, he stayed at a hostel, ran out of money and ate from someone’s unfinished meal at an airport food court.
He returned this week as a bona fide celebrity, a Braves rookie who’s become one of the biggest stories in baseball with 10 home runs in 121 at-bats before Friday, including a grand slam Wednesday and three pinch-hit homers.
The guy who was once broke and hungry in New York, was a guest of honor Friday at the MLB Fan Cave on Broadway.
“That’s crazy, huh?” Gattis said, shaking his head.
He remembers plenty of details of his last trip to New York, which he said was around 2007. It was a year or two after he had quit playing college baseball, at some point between his months spent in Colorado working as a ski-lift operator and his stint as a janitor in Dallas. (Gattis was out of baseball for nearly four years.)
He had come to New York on one of his journeys in search of new-age spiritual enlightenment.
“I came here to see a guy, a spiritual teacher. Mooji,” he said. “I think his real name is Anthony (Paul Moo-Young), a Jamaican-born guy who lives in London now, or somewhere outside of London. I came and saw him. It was a three-day (seminar). I think I was here for, like, five days.
“I was here a while. I stayed at the Big Apple Hostel.”
Gattis said when he went to buy lunch at a hot-dog stand, his debit card was declined.
“So I go to the ATM real quick and I look, and I have, like, negative 17 dollars,” he said. “And I’m like, (expletive), I’m broke, in New York City. I’m, like, 19 or 20. And I’m like, what am I going to do? I was just lost. So beaten. I was bawling. I was crying, dude. Trying to sell, like, a bag of clothes. ‘Hey, you want a bag of clothes? Ten bucks, so I can get on a train to get to JFK.’”
Gattis said at one point he sat with a homeless person playing guitar in the New York subway. “I was crying because I was so bummed about the money,” he said. “I was sitting right next to him, just bawling. And it was like, whatever happened, who cares? Like, no money, no problem.
“It was all good after that, for some reason. It’s weird.”
Gattis said a police officer let him ride the train to JFK to catch his flight home. Gattis said he asked some people for food, including an Irish traveler who gave him $10, which he spent on burgers at a fast-food joint before his flight home.
Catching plans: As expected, catcher Brian McCann was back in the Braves' lineup for Friday's series opener, and veteran backup Gerald Laird was penciled in to catch Julio Teheran's start in Sunday's series finale.
Manager Fredi Gonzalez wouldn’t divulge catching plans for Saturday, but said Gattis and McCann would fill the catching and designated hitter positions for two interleague games Monday and Tuesday at Toronto.
“One will catch and one will DH (at Toronto),” said Gonzalez, who didn’t offer any more specifics.
For now, the Braves are carrying three catchers and six relief pitchers — one more catcher and one fewer reliever than they’ve traditionally carried. Gonzalez said he wanted to go with six relievers at least through the series at Toronto.
If the Braves drop a position player, it seems unlikely it’ll be a catcher. Gonzalez said Gattis wouldn’t be sent to the minors.
“We’re not going to do that,” said Gonzalez, who joked: “Before we do that, I’ll go down.”
Coach out for back exam: Third-base coach Brian Snitker stayed in Atlanta to have his back examined Friday after experiencing what Gonzalez described as leg numbness or "drop foot" symptoms. Snitker was expected to rejoin the team in New York for Saturday's game.
“Last couple of days he’s been fighting this back (issue), so he stayed back to see the specialist this morning,” Gonzalez said Friday. “ It wasn’t as bad as we thought it was, so he’ll be back tomorrow.”
Gonzalez said bench coach Carlos Tosca would serve as third-base coach in Snitker’s absence.
The Mayo Clinic website says that foot drop, sometimes called drop foot, “is a general term for difficulty lifting the front part of the foot. If you have foot drop, you may drag the front of your foot on the ground when you walk. Foot drop isn’t a disease. Rather, foot drop is a sign of an underlying neurological, muscular or anatomical problem.”
