HALF-ALLIGATOR HALF-HUMAN KILLS MIAMI MAN--AND ESCAPES FROM

LABORATORY!

This is the startling cover line in the Weekly World News in

David (Boomer) Wells's lap. But unlike the fugitive "Allisapien"

in the story, the New York Yankees lefthander isn't biting. "Oh,

come on!" he says with a wave of the hand. "This is stupid,

man." Still, Wells pages ahead. He pauses at a dispatch

headlined SCIENTISTS BAFFLED BY PLUG AT BOTTOM OF GREAT SALT

LAKE. Wells's brow furrows, his head shakes. "Uh-huh," he says,

sighing deeply. "Yeah, right!"

Onward. Wells stops at yet another bold-faced lie: HUNDREDS OF

EARTH WOMEN RALLY AGAINST EXTRATERRESTRIAL BRUTALITY! Feminist

SAYS SEX ATTACKS BY SPACE ALIENS MUST STOP. Wells tosses the

paper away. "I can't even look at it anymore," he snaps. "Does

anybody actually think these stories are for real?"

For months, Yankees fans have been asking the same question

about stories involving Wells. Since signing a three-year, $13.5

million free-agent contract with the Bronx Bombers last

December, this big cartoon of a man has been providing New

York's sports sections with copy that would be right at home in

a supermarket tabloid.

WELLS' WILD PITCH screamed Newsday in January after he broke his

pitching hand back home in San Diego during an early-morning

street fight over missing car keys. TOTALLY RUTHLESS blared the

New York Post in February when Wells floated the blasphemous

idea of wearing the Babe's retired number. OVER & GOUT bellowed

the New York Daily News after a lumpy-dumpy Wells arrived in

training camp and missed four days of throwing because of an

ailment commonly associated with Ruthian gluttony. WHISKEY

BUSINESS trumpeted the next day's Post after Wells gave new

meaning to the term "high-ball pitcher" by minimizing his bout

with gout: "If [the cause] is beer, then I'll go to whiskey; if

it's whiskey, then I'll go to vodka. Who knows? Maybe I'll have

to drink water. I don't care. I just don't want to hurt." WELLS

& CO. bleated Newsday in early April after disgraced O.J.

detective Mark Fuhrman showed up at a Yankees workout in Seattle

as Wells's guest. While the story questioned the wisdom of

hosting the racially challenged ex-cop during the season that

celebrated the 50th anniversary of baseball's integration, it

skirted the issue of whether the glove in Wells's locker had

been planted.

The unshakable Wells shrugs off these preseason contretemps as

easily as he does a three-run homer. "S--- happens," he says. "I

do what I want to do and say what I want to say. The press hears

what I say but prints what it wants to print. I don't care. In

fact, I don't give a rat's ass what people say or think about

me." He adds, good-naturedly, "Of course, if you print that, I'm

gonna have to kill you."

Wells is a free spirit of the kind baseball once produced in

abundance. If his breed seems like an endangered species, that

may reflect the nature of the modern game. "Baseball is a kid's

game," says Seattle Mariners reliever Mike Timlin, "and Boomer

plays it that way."

PITCHER TURNS BODY INTO FAMILY ALBUM

It's a muggy Maryland night, and Wells comes in from warmups at

Oriole Park damp and disheveled. He sheds his jersey and he's a

little less damp, but with a grubby gray T-shirt blousing over

his belt he looks less like an athlete than like an enforcer

from an outlaw biker band. Yankees manager Joe Torre thinks

Wells may have misconstrued the Eat to Win Diet: "It doesn't

mean the more he eats, the more he wins."

Wells, 34, is 6'4" and weighs maybe 250 pounds. When he sits

down for a postgame meal with his teammates, he fills the table.

On the diamond, straddling the mound, he fills the ballpark.

Wells has presence. He also had a 14-8 record and 4.21 ERA at

week's end. And he has one of the world's most comprehensive

collections of profane T-shirts. In past campaigns Wells has

concealed them under his team jersey. But a FECES PEANUT BUTTER

CUP shirt, even hidden, won't cut it on George Steinbrenner's

Yankees. "George is very particular about what's under the

pinstripes," Wells says. "The Yankees are pretty prim and

proper. It's tradition, so I just go by what George says. He's

the man, and I respect that."

Beneath the shirts Wells is even more impressively decorated. He

commissioned Tom Pennshaw, the Detroit tattoo artiste

responsible for illustrating Dennis Rodman, to etch portraits of

relatives on his anatomy. Peeking out from Wells's right deltoid

is his five-year-old son, Brandon. "It's convenient," Wells

says. "Instead of pulling out my wallet all the time, I can just

flip up my sleeve." Asked what he plans to do when Brandon gets

older, Wells says, "No problem. I'll just have a goatee and a

mustache carved in."

Wells's back bears a likeness of his grandmother, a San Diego

Padres fan who took him to games at Jack Murphy Stadium when he

was a kid. An engraving of his mother, who died in January of

complications from diabetes, appears in blue ink above his

heart. Curiously, the tattoo shows Mom as a three-year-old. "She

looks precious," Wells more or less explains. "When the season's

over, I'll get her tattooed on my back. I'll have it copied off

a photo taken right before she died." He will not add his

ex-wife to the gallery. "Unnecessary," he says. "She's been on

my ass since our divorce."

YANKEES QUIPPER COMMUNES WITH DEAD BIKER MOM

Wells may have inherited a stubborn irascibility from his

mother. Eugenia Ann Wells was an independent woman who had five

kids by four men. Around the gritty Ocean Beach section of San

Diego, her handle was Attitude Annie.

David grew up an Angels fan--a Hell's Angels fan. Attitude's

longtime boyfriend, Crazy Charlie, was a chapter president. On

weekends David, Annie and Charlie would roar off to biker

rallies in Northern California on Charlie's Harley. Angels used

to converge on David's Little League games. The bikers would

each give him a dollar for every strikeout and a five-spot for

every win. "I could pull in $100 a game, and nobody dared to

screw around with me," he says. "Try, and I'd say, 'I'll get my

mom's boyfriend on you.'"

Crazy Charlie wasn't much of a surrogate father, but he had a

swell left hook. "I came into the kitchen once with my fists up,

and he clocked me," Wells says. "I was 12, and I started crying.

I said, 'What'd you do that for?' He said, 'Anytime you put your

hands up, you'd better use 'em.' Other than that, he treated me

like a king."

Wells didn't know his real dad. "I'd always assumed he'd died,"

he says. Until one night when he was 22. He dreamed he had been

given the address of his father's house in West Virginia. He

found the street, but the house was gone. When he awoke, he

asked his mother, "Does my dad live in West Virginia?"

Mom reeled. "How did you know that?"

"I dreamed it," he said. "How can I reach him?" Attitude Annie

rummaged through a drawer and unearthed a phone number. David

dialed it and got his father's sister. She gave him another

number. David dialed again.

A low voice: "Hello."

Wells, nervously: "Hello. Is David Pritt there?"

"Speaking."

"Well, this is your son from California."

"Hi, son."

Wells began to weep. "I didn't know what to do," he says. "My

goal was to meet him before I died or he died."

A month later Wells flew out to see his father in West Virginia,

where he did railroad work, for Thanksgiving. "Dad picked me up

at the airport in Cincinnati," he says. "All I remember is

falling asleep in the car."

These days he talks to his old man about once a month, which is

not nearly as often as he gabs with his dead mother. "Every now

and then I find myself picking up the phone to call her," he

says. "I wind up looking to the sky and having a conversation

that way."

In tight games he has been known to hold pitching conferences

with the woman upstairs. "Most people look to heaven and talk to

God," says Wells. "I go to Mom. She's the newcomer up there. If

help doesn't come, I know she must be pissed."

BALLPLAYER TRAPPED IN FIREMAN'S BODY

As their fellow Yankees tattoo balls from the gossipy shadows of

the batting cage at Toronto's SkyDome, veterans Cecil (Big

Daddy) Fielder and Tim (Rock) Raines go to the Wells. "The guy's

a little weird," says Big Daddy. "Just look at his hair."

"The hair kind of goes straight up," says Rock. "What there is

of it."

"Boomer's got a topflat instead of a flattop."

"With a lot of forehead. The thing with Boomer is, you never

really know where he's coming from."

"To look at him, you'd think he's quiet."

"But he's not."

"Yeah. The guy's a little weird."

Rock rocks back on his heels. "To me, Boomer's a gamer," he

says. "He's normal out there on the mound."

"That's probably his only normal time," says Fielder.

"If you saw him off the mound, you wouldn't think he was a

pitcher."

"Pitcher! You wouldn't think he was a ballplayer!"

"Yeah, maybe a fireman."

"The guy's a little weird."

Rock bobs his head in agreement. "Like that time at Comiskey

Park when he wore the black wig on the bench. Steinbrenner saw

it on TV and let Boomer know he wasn't happy."

"That boy's sick." It's unclear whether Big Daddy means Boomer

or the Boss.

BOOMER TO BOSS: DUCK

Steinbrenner got Wells by default. The Boss had been pursuing

another free-agent pitcher, Roger Clemens, but the Rocket took

off to Toronto. (Clemens's 20-4 record at week's end suggests he

has yet to come down.) Steinbrenner had deemed Jimmy Key, his

own free-agent starter, too fragile for a two-year contract, so

Key bolted to Baltimore, where he's a hardy 14-8.

That left Wells, a 33-year-old southpaw who had spent the

previous five seasons connecting the dots on a map of the big

leagues. He had played for Toronto, Detroit, Cincinnati and,

lastly, Baltimore, where he was uneven (11-14, 5.14 ERA) but

durable (224 1/3 innings). Still, Wells's lifetime numbers in

the Bronx were staggering: 9-1, a 2.84 ERA and a .218 batting

average by opponents. Ruth may have built Yankee Stadium, but

Wells owned it. "David's got that Yankee mystique," says

Steinbrenner. "He goes out there thinking, Ruth played here.

DiMaggio played here. He understands Yankee tradition. That's

hard to say about a guy who looks like a beer-league softball

player."

The Boss, it turns out, was one of Boomer's biggest boosters.

"There's a lot to like about him," says Steinbrenner. "He's a

pitcher who wants the ball, who'll come out on two days' rest.

He's sometimes outrageous and disruptive, but on balance, you

take him."

Before offering Wells a contract, Steinbrenner huddled with him

for nearly an hour. "We talked about everything but baseball,"

Wells says. "It was more of a personality check. George wanted

to see if I was a sane person or the crazy son of a bitch he'd

heard about." Though Steinbrenner concluded that Wells was sane

enough to be a Yankee, the Boss's sanity didn't much concern

Wells. "I'd heard good things and bad things about George," he

says. "He's a generous man and a crazy man. He says things now

and then that are uncalled for, but he's human. With me, he's

been very nice and patient. But I like to have fun, and if he

doesn't like that, I'll deal with the consequences. On the other

hand, I'm not going out of my way to piss the guy off. What he

gets out of me is a 110-percent genuine person who's not afraid

to fail."

A mischievous grin spreads across Wells's face. "I might punch

George before I leave," he says. "We'll see."

GHOST OF BAMBINO FEEDS WELLS

"My dream came true when I became a Yankee," Wells says, and he

means it. "Now I can die happy." His reverence for the team

contrasts oddly with his irreverence toward everything else.

"Yankee Stadium is all history and atmosphere," he says almost

solemnly. "The spirits are still there, feeding everybody. More

so the Babe's, because that was his stomping ground. When you're

out on the field, you suck it all in and bear down."

He was only half kidding when he asked Steinbrenner for Ruth's

number 3. "It's retired," said Steinbrenner.

"Come on, George," Wells said. "Bring it out of retirement."

"Ha!"

"All right then. Just give me oh-three."

"Ha! Ha!"

"O.K., what about point three?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Wells settled for 33. "This way," he reasons, "I can be the Babe

twice over."

While with Baltimore last year, Wells made a pilgrimage to the

city's Babe Ruth Museum. "The place gave me chills," he says. "I

read the walls. I checked out the memorabilia. I paced around

the room he was born in. I went in feeling good and came out

feeling great." His trove of Babeabilia includes a bat, a

jersey, three signed baseballs and a cap that set him back

$35,000.

"It's the strangest thing," says Yankees coach Don Zimmer. "When

he puts that hat on, he looks like the Babe." Ruth wore the cap

in 1934, his final season in New York. Wells donned it to pitch

in the first inning of a game against Cleveland on June 28. When

he returned to the dugout, Torre made him take the cap off. "I

didn't know he had it on [at first]," Torre said. "It wasn't the

standard uniform. Boomer has to live by the same rules as

everybody else."

Wells's memorabilia collection is not limited to Ruthiana, and

he works on it as persistently as he works on hitters. On

Opening Day this year he got Joe DiMaggio to sign three balls.

"Joe was in a good mood, to me at least," says Wells. "He won't

sign for some of the Yankees." Among them is Brian Boehringer,

who has been blown off by the Yankee Clipper three years running.

"Hey, Boomer," said Boehringer. "How'd you get DiMaggio to

sign?" "You've got to know how to talk to the man," said Wells.

"Don't ask him about Marilyn Monroe or he'll get pissed. You

schmooze him a little, tell him what he wants to hear. Then you

shove the ball in his face."

OPPOSING CHANGE, WELLS HEAVES

The great Warren Spahn used to say that hitting is timing, and

pitching is upsetting that timing. Few pitchers upset hitters

more than Wells. He works quickly and doesn't waste a lot of

pitches, throwing inside often enough to make the outside of the

plate his own. "Boomer can get beat up in a hurry," says Torre.

"But for the most part, he keeps hitters in the big part of the

ballpark by jumping ahead with a first-pitch fastball and

throwing strikes whenever and wherever he wants. His control is

that good."

Besides two- and four-seam fastballs, Wells has a slippery

slider and a 12-to-6-o'clock curve that dips, wiggles and does a

fair rendition of Chuck Berry's duck strut. "I love the way

Boomer fires that curve," says Baltimore outfielder Brady

Anderson. "It's like: Here it is, hit it."

One pitch Wells rarely fires at lefties is a changeup. "I've had

no success with it," he says. "It runs against my pitching

philosophy."

That philosophical dispute traces back at least to 1991, when

Wells was with the Blue Jays and Toronto manager Cito Gaston

challenged his lefty dogma during a game against the Boston Red

Sox. With lefthanded Mike Greenwell up, Blue Jays catcher Pat

Borders called for a changeup. Wells shook him off. Borders

flashed the sign again. Wells shook him off again. Borders tried

a third time. Wells wouldn't give in. Finally, Borders ran out

to the mound. "You'd better throw that pitch," he said. "Cito's

calling it."

"He's calling it," growled Wells, "but I'm the one who'll be

taking the loss."

Borders returned to the plate and was rebuffed yet again. On the

catcher's fifth attempt, Wells relented and threw the change.

"Actually, it was more of a lob than a throw," says Toronto's

Joe Carter. "He could have tossed it underhand faster." By the

time Wells got the ball back, Greenwell was on first with a

single.

Gaston tramped angrily to the pitching rubber and demanded the

ball. "If you want it, go get it," Wells muttered and flung the

ball down the third base line.

Wells recalls stalking to the clubhouse, showering and leaving

the stadium. Toronto coach Gene Tenace remembers things

differently: "Believe me, Boomer went straight into Cito's

office. I know, because Cito was right behind him."

HEFTY LEFTY FALLS OFF EARTH

"It was like I had dropped off the face of the planet." That's

Wells describing how he felt when Toronto cut him near the end

of spring training in 1993. For six years he had alternated

between spot starting and long relief. In '92 he figured he

deserved a place in the Blue Jays rotation after winning 15

games in 28 starts and 12 relief appearances in '91. Instead, he

started just 14 games and finished 7-9 with a 5.40 ERA. "The

Blue Jays played me like a yo-yo," he says. "They shouldn't have

made me fight for a starting job. To me, that's just showing

disrespect."

Getting dumped, says Carter, shook Wells out of a deep sleep.

"You always knew he had a great arm, but his talent wasn't being

tapped," Carter says.

Wells credits former Detroit Tigers skipper Sparky Anderson with

turning around his career. After the Tigers signed Wells in

April '93, Anderson made him a full-time starter, helped him

regain his confidence and made him take the gold hoop out of his

earlobe. Remade and remodeled, Wells won four of his first five

starts for Detroit and was 9-1 after his 15th start.

"Sparky really believed in me," Wells says. "He made me what I

am today."

For example, "I've learned to at least listen to what I'm told

before I respond," he says. "When I was a Blue Jay, I never

wanted to listen. Now I just enjoy life. I don't get into

anybody's business. I have fun."

Yet every once in a while the old excitable Boomer resurfaces.

He knocked himself out of the Yankees' game with the Florida

Marlins on June 14 after arguing with plate umpire Greg Bonin.

Wells, who had spit up five runs in the first inning, believed

the ump had squeezed the strike zone on a couple of his pitches.

When he went to bat in the top of the second, he looked at Bonin

and muttered, "You're horse----."

Bonin looked at Wells and snarled, "Did you say I was horse----?"

"Yeah."

"You're outta here."

Fortunately for Wells's ERA, the game was rained out midway

through the third inning. Unfortunately for the Yanks, Torre had

had to dip into an already taxed bullpen. "It was a

spur-of-the-moment thing," Wells said of the comment that got

him ejected. "I did what I did, and I'm not going to criticize

myself."

He left that to Torre, who called his behavior "terrible and

unprofessional" and added, "He left us hanging." Torre and New

York pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre refused to speak to Wells

until he expressed contrition. Wells apologized three days

later, just before he pitched the Yanks to a 6-3 victory over

the New York Mets. One tabloid's headline read LEFTY'S FEAST

STARTS WITH HUMBLE pie.

TWO-HEADED BEAST FOUND IN REDS DUGOUT: CAN PITCH AND MAKE LINEUPS!

Davey Johnson has managed Wells--if that's possible--twice: in

Cincinnati (1995) and Baltimore ('96). "Boomer's a little

different," Johnson says. "Even his signs were reversed. One

finger meant a curve; two, a fastball. He made the catcher

adjust to him. He made everyone adjust to him. The guy wasn't

afraid to butt heads." Johnson ought to know. Wells once

head-butted him.

Wells had gone 10-3 for Detroit in '95 before being dealt that

July to Cincinnati, where he won six games down the stretch for

the playoff-bound Reds. In one of those wins, he had no-hit

Philadelphia through six innings when Johnson made two defensive

switches in the outfield. In the seventh inning Wells gave up

two hits and a run, and he blamed the changes for disrupting his

rhythm. After the third out, Wells made straight for Johnson. "I

yelled, 'You a------,' then smoked him," says Wells, savoring

the memory. "It was a nice little bump."

His noggin and Johnson's collided with such force that it seemed

they might be permanently fused together, like Rosey Grier's and

Ray Milland's in The Thing with Two Heads. "I think it hurt his

head more than mine," says Johnson. "Mine's harder."

But not much. "Boomer can be real hardheaded about staying in a

game," says Yankees catcher Joe Girardi. "Which is exactly the

attitude you want from a starter." It was probably not the

attitude Torre wanted from Wells in a May 11 game with Kansas

City. Top of the ninth, one out, nobody on. The Yankees holding

a roomy 3-2 lead. Torre scaled the dugout steps, signaled for a

reliever and headed for the mound. "Good game," he told Wells.

"I want to stay in," Wells told him.

"Well, it's time to come out."

"No, no, no."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Torre tried to pry the ball from Wells's hand. Wells wouldn't

let go.

"Boomer!" said Torre. "You're making me look bad. Just gimme the

damn ball and get outta here." Reluctantly, Wells handed it

over. "You've got to keep your thumb on Boomer a little," Torre

says, "or he'll try to get away with as much as he can."

"SHAPE UP," UNDERWEAR SALESMAN TELLS WELLS

Jim Palmer, the Hall of Fame pitcher and Jockey pitchman, is

relating a brief encounter with Wells. It was on the first day

of spring training in 1996, Wells's first day as an Oriole. He

was a season away from free agency.

"I congratulated David for joining the team," says Palmer, now

an Orioles broadcaster. "He looked at me and said, 'Do you know

anybody in San Diego?'" Palmer was flabbergasted. "Here it is,

Day One with a new team, and he's already thinking of where he's

gonna be in '97."

Wells doesn't deny he was looking ahead. "San Diego and New York

were the only places I wanted to play," he says. "I figured this

would be my final contract, and I should finish my career where

I felt most comfortable."

He never felt comfortable in Baltimore. He hated the ballpark

almost as much as he loved the ballplayers. "I'm a fly-ball

pitcher," Wells says, "and fly balls are home runs in Camden

Yards." And he cared little for Baltimore ("If you cruise around

anywhere outside the Inner Harbor, it's dead," he says) or

Baltimoreans ("I kept getting hassled by idiots on the street").

Palmer objects to the bit about Baltimoreans. "Go around in tank

tops and tattoos," he says, "and you'll get hassled anywhere."

Self-discipline is what Palmer found wanting in Wells. "I've

always loved Boomer," he says diplomatically. "If he doesn't get

the gout or get hassled too much, he's gonna give a team a lot

of innings. But they might have been better innings. If you're

talking about perfection or even the pursuit of perfection, I

get the feeling sometimes that he's not as well prepared or

conditioned as he could be." Palmer invokes Key, for whom Wells

was essentially swapped. "Jimmy is steeped in self-discipline,"

Palmer says. "He's always in shape, he can field his position,

he can hold runners on. You can't say any of that about David.

If Jimmy gets shelled, you think, Hey, he had a bad game. But if

David gets hit around, you think, Hey, maybe this guy should

make some lifestyle changes and lose a few pounds."

Wells doesn't burden himself with such weighty issues. "You

don't run the ball up to the plate," he says. "Besides, how can

somebody who's not me determine what's comfortable for me? He's

not in my body. Nowadays, the concern is more how you look in

the lobby than how you pitch. Nobody bothered Mickey Lolich

about how fat he was."

Hearing Wells's gut reactions, Palmer remarks, "Yeah, but Lolich

was a 25-game winner. David's never had more than 16 victories

in a season. I can't help wondering how great he really could

be. He might not wonder about that. Which is O.K. Some guys

don't ever want to find out."

YANKEES PITCHER HAS DOUBLE LIFE AND DOUBLE WIFE

Wells's night-crawler ways may explain why, during day games,

his pitching arm sometimes goes as dead as a hooked wiggler. His

nocturnal ERA is so much lower than his daytime run allowance

that Torre has considered tweaking the starting rotation to give

Wells more late-shift work. "David can handle New York," Orioles

general manager Pat Gillick said recently, "but I don't know if

New York can handle him."

Can David handle another David? Seven, maybe eight years ago,

somebody went around the country passing himself off as Wells.

"He didn't really resemble me," says Wells. "Well, maybe if you

just glanced at him."

Who was handsomer?

Wells narrows his eyes. "Who do you think, man?"

The Wells impostor was not nearly as benign as the Genuine

Article. "That knucklehead was a bad cup of tea, man. And

everything bad he did, he did in my name. It was kind of scary.

I could have shown up somewhere he had pulled something and had

the crap beat out of me."

There was, however, one consolation. The double's ex-wife wrote

Wells to alert him of the scam. They met in Toronto. "She

thought she had married me," he says with a 10-inch Wellsian

grin. "And you know what? She was pretty damn good-looking."

Which begs the question: Of all the prominent people in the

world, why was Wells singled out? Was he perhaps mistaken for

Orson Welles? Their silhouettes are somewhat similar, and, like

the pitcher, the director was a headline-grabbing renegade

accused of betraying his talent. The key to Wells may have been

revealed in something Welles once said:

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything

about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live

between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all

of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the

poles. You just recognize them.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER IOOSS JR. Wells's son, Brandon, is one of three loved ones whose faces have gotten under his skin. [David Wells displaying tattoo of Brandon Wells]

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER IOOSS JR. Like his alter ego, Ruth, Wells has shown a disregard for convention and a regard for beer. [David Wells]

B/W PHOTO: NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY [See caption above--Babe Ruth]

COLOR PHOTO: ADAM STOLTMAN In contrast to his off-the-field behavior, Wells's pitching is characterized by control and efficiency. [David Wells pitching]

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER IOOSS JR. While David grew up going to Hell's Angels reunions, Brandon gets to visit the Yankees' Monument Park. [David Wells and Brandon Wells sitting on monument to Babe Ruth]

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER IOOSS JR. Like his mother and son, Wells's baseball-loving grandmother is with him everywhere he goes. [David Wells displaying tattoo of grandmother]

Torre thinks Wells got the Eat to Win Diet wrong: "It doesn't

mean the more he eats, the more he wins."