David Wells goes to Africa, eats lots of things

Why am I only mildly surprised that Boomer treated the serengetti like his own personal buffet?

PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Lions and leopards and Boomer, oh my.
David Wells, a former resident of the Bronx Zoo and one of baseball’s notable party animals, came away from a three-week African safari with a sense of awe, a rare admission that he was scared and a full stomach.
“Ostrich was phenomenal. Warthog was outstanding. A little different taste, but it’s really good,” the San Diego Padres’ southpaw said while recounting his trip. “Hardebeest, wildebeest, gazelle, all that stuff. Very, very tasty. It’s just the zebra you don’t want to eat. We shot them for bait. For lions.”
Even a dik-dik, a furry little antelope, ended up on Wells’ dinner plate after he “double-lunged it” from 30 yards with his bow.
“That was probably one of the best eating things I had,” he said. “It doesn’t sound good. Cute little suckers, too.”
Wells sounded enthralled with the trip.
“It was scary, though,” he added.
Boomer frightened? This is a man, after all, who’s gotten into his share of trouble on both coasts, learned to play baseball by playing catch with members of the Hells Angels in a rough-edged San Diego neighborhood and said in a book that he had a “skull-rattling hangover” when he pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in 1998.
“Yeah man, you don’t know if you walk around a tree and there’s a lion coming right at you,” Wells said after throwing a bullpen session this week. “There’s a lot of things that can go wrong over there. A lot of things.”
None did, and the 43-year-old Wells lived to pitch another season. He’s scheduled to make his first spring training start on Friday against the Los Angeles Angels.
Wells went to Tanzania in November, not long after the Padres were eliminated from the playoffs by the St. Louis Cardinals. He seemingly was done with baseball, having said that it would take a “stupid” offer to get him back in uniform. He planned to do a lot of hunting and jumped right into an excellent adventure.
“Just being a hunter, that’s kind of the ultimate hunt, going over to Africa,” said Wells, who co-owns a hunting ranch in Michigan with former big leaguer Kirk Gibson.
Wells didn’t bag a lion, but said he shot a leopard and “all the plains game. You name it, pretty much got it. That’s what we had to survive on, to eat. All the animals over there. I don’t know all the names of them. Had some fun.”
Wells said nothing has ever scared him as much as the prospect of coming face-to-face with a lion.
“There’s nothing like walking up a cliff and hearing a lion roaring at you and you don’t know where it’s at. And it scares the tar out of you and all of a sudden you see it and it’s 40 yards from you behind a bush with two cubs. You don’t shoot females, anyway. But in that type of situation, anything can happen, a lion protecting her young, and they’ll attack you,” Wells said.
“But to see the animals hands-on ... I saw cheetahs and all that kind of stuff. An elephant walked two feet in front of our truck. As long as you stay cool, calm and collected they’re not going to attack you. Thank gosh. That thing would have pummeled us. It was a big elephant.”
Then there was the prospect of encountering poisonous snakes such as black mambas and puff adders.
“I’d rather get eaten by a lion than get bitten by a snake,” Wells said. “That’s just an eerie thing because you’re crawling in tall grass, so you’re on all fours crawling, you don’t know if one’s right there.”
The big lefty didn’t stumble upon snakes or other creepy-crawlies.
Although Wells didn’t decide to return to the Padres until mid-January, the safari got him in shape.
“A lot of walking in 110-degree weather,” he said. “So I came back fit. I survived 21 days in the bush.”
Not generally a softy, Wells said he came away with a respect for the African people.
“Over there it’s survival,” he said. “You have little kids walking all over the place with nothing and you think they’re scared? They don’t seem like they’re scared, and I’m petrified. I would not do what they do on an everyday basis over there, unless that’s the way I was raised.”
He also appreciation for the comforts of home.
“It’s not like you can go to a 7-Eleven and buy a Slurpee,” he said. “There’s nothing around.”
Padres ace Jake Peavy has hunted at Wells’ ranch and can imagine Boomer, with rifle in hand, in Africa.
“Boomer’s not bad. Boomer is an outdoorsman and enjoys getting out there,” Peavy said.
“It was very, very awesome,” Wells said of the safari. “I’m going to take my kids next year.”

 

If you're left-handed and can walk and chew gum at the same time there's a spot for you in a major league rotation.

 

If I was an animal and I knew Boom was gonna cook me up, I'd stick my head inside a lion's mouth ASAP. LOL

 

My only question: How the hell did the animals not see him coming?

 

Does anyone really believe this?

Besides, you walked (a lot) in 110-degree weather, but you ATE EVERYTHING YOU SAW! And I'm guessing he wasn't a) counting calories or b) watching portion sizes.

 

So PETA won't be sending him a Christmas card this year? I wonder if he had a bib with a little wildebeest on it?

I just can't shake the image of a bunch of animals sharing a watering hole and seeing the puddle tremble and ripple, ala Jurassic Park. They look nervously over their shoulders and see Boomer tromping through the brush. As he swings the rifle to his shoulder and lets out a mighty growl, every animal from antelope to zebra takes flight, trampling each other in a life-or-death scramble to get away from the big white beast.
One zebra trips up an ostrich, which is blasted by Wells' rifle and turned into that day's dinner. The zebra snickers as he gallops to freedom. He never liked that fucking ostrich anyway.

 

This story has taught me something important.

David Wells eats dik-dik.

 

The lions fucked up because they could have fed off Wells for months.

His flesh could restock an entire ecosystem.

 

Somebody give me a byline, stat.

This article was awesomely written.

Pells?

 

Yeah, The Cheif Mufasa is fuckin' up. [Chappelle]

 

Written by Bernie Wilson

 

my thought, too. not sure why fatty wells gets any criticism because he went on a safari to africa and shot a bunch of wild animals.