Drinking allowed me to commune with Darryl [Strawberry] and Kevin Mitchell, who was a funny, but very wild and sometimes very dangerous guy. I liked Mitch, but I knew better than to ever f–k with him. I’d heard stories about his background in San Diego, some of which included rumors that he’d hurt some people in gang-related violence. I don’t know about that, but I got to witness, firsthand, Mitch’s temper.
I dropped by his house along with Meade Chassky, a card show-and-events entrepreneur with whom I became good friends over the years. Meade and I had had lunch at my house, and we decided to pay Mitch an unannounced visit. That was a mistake.
When we got there, I realized Kevin was both drunk and angry, a dangerous combination. He was holding a twelve-inch knife in his hands, having an argument with his live-in girlfriend. Kevin was right in the girl’s face, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“I told you not to f–k with me, but you don’t want to f–kin’ listen to me, do you?” Mitch said.
I saw this and started to turn around, but then Mitch wheeled on me and Meade. Now that we’d walked in, we were fair game..
“Sit the f–k down, the two of you. You’re not going anywhere.”
He was serious. I could tell. I wouldn’t have wanted Mitch mad at me without a knife. With it, all he had to do was say jump, and I’d say, How high?
Somehow, Mitch got it in his head that Meade and I were being followed by the cops and they were outside, staking him out. So he told us to barricade the doors. We looked at him like he was crazy, which, at that moment, he was.
“You think I’m kidding? Do what I tell you,” Mitch shouted.
Poor Meade; he was so scared, I swear he peed in his pants. I can’t say I blamed him, either, because I was worried about how crazy Mitch might get. His temper was one thing; but that knife in his hand was another. I had no choice but to barricade the front door. We put a couch in front of it, then stacked two chairs on top of the couch. After that, Mitch ordered us to pull the blinds down on all the windows, then he ripped the phone out of the wall.
Finally, I tried to plead with him.
“Mitch, listen to me. It’s okay, there’s nobody out there,” I said gently.
“You calling me a liar, motherf–ker?” he shouted. He met my eyes with a glaze so fierce, I had to look away.
His girlfriend tried reasoning with Mitch, too.
“Kevin, stop acting so crazy, these people are your friends,” she said. With that, Mitch turned to her and raised his anger to yet another level. Still holding the knife in his right hand, he grabbed his girlfriend’s little cat, who had the misfortune to be walking near his feet at that very moment.
In one awful sweep of his hand, Mitch pulled the cat’s head back, exposing its throat.
“You think I’m kidding when I say don’t ever f–k with me?” he shouted. Before the girl could answer, Mitch took the knife to the cat, and cut its head off.
Clean.
I was horrified by the sight: Mitch was still holding the cat’s head in one hand, while the body dropped to the floor, blood pouring out from where the head once was, limbs still twitching.
The girl was practically out of control, screaming so loud I’m shocked the cops didn’t actually show up. Meade tried to run for the door, but Mitch wasn’t about to become reasonable yet.
“Sit the f–k down, Meade. You and Doc, sit down on that couch and don’t move,” he said.
Considering he had a severed cat’s head and a knife in his hands, he didn’t get an argument from either one of us.
We sat down. So did the girlfriend. And Mitch sat across from us, shooting darts at us with his eyes. Sort of like a modern-day Mexican standoff. We remained like this for almost two hours, no one saying a word, until Mitch finally started to nod off.
He’d start to close his eyes, then open them quickly, almost like he was testing us. Finally, for some reason, the dark cloud over him moved on. Mitch half smiled and said, “You guys can go.”
We left, in about a half second, of course. The next day at the ballpark, I approached Mitch and asked, “You feeling okay?”
Looking straight ahead, he said, “Yesterday never happened.” And we never mentioned it again.
