In the 2000-2001 offseason, Grow arranged a number of events that celebrated history and forced participating club members to confront their fears. After the annual organizational banquet in October, Grow arranged for a number of players and front office personnel to be kidnapped, bound and gagged, and transported in the trunks of multiple late model American cars to diversee cemetaries in downstate Illinois. Some players didn't take it so well, but team archivist Shirley Johnson expressed delight at what she discovered at the cemetary in New Boston once she had worked her way out of her bindings. It seems that there are three different tombstones for one of the town's founding fathers, William Dennison, one with an 1840 date and no month and two with August dates three days apart. "This gives new meaning to dying by degrees," quipped Grow. To unravel the mystery, Johnson subsequently spent much of the fall combing through archives at the Mercer County Historical Society. She hopes to have results of her search available later this year. Meanwhile, her sprained ankle and lacerated ear have healed nicely.
The cemetary into which Ana Pulak was dumped held no such mystery. "Most of its stones had been knocked down or broken. And there was this god awful smell." While wandering in the dark, she came across a pig sty, well, fell into it. At first, awash in filth and nuzzled by pigglets, Ana was inclined to sue Grow and the Greens, but once she stopped her crying, pushed off the pigglets, and gathered herself and her strength, she "considered the parable of the prodigal son" and pronounced herself a converted vegetarian. "I know too much now about bacon," said Ana, "to ever visit Bob Evans again." Remarked Grow, "From fear comes growth, whatta ya think?" Other Halloween abductees also took the prank in good humor, thanks to some restructured contracts and out-of-court settlements.
The club's main off-season trip took Grow and a group of ten others to a remote village in the Peruvian Andes, though not by design. The plan had been to visit Machu Picchu, but the bus broke down and their tour guide took ill. The guano truck that finally rescued them wound through treacherous mountain passes and labyrinthian dirt roads before landing them in the town of Melk in the district of Uqbar. After cleaning themselves at a local spring, the group spent four days stranded in that village among goats, locals, and circular ruins before a second caravan of lost tourists happened upon them and radioed for help. "We ate a lot of goat and maca root. We drank a fair amount of a local drink that translated into something like 'mountain princess on a dungheap.' The sweetest bunch of people in that village, even if none of 'em spoke English. By the time that second bus showed up, we didn't much care about missing Machu Picchu. I miss those guys."
By comparison the January visit to the historic John Deere site at Grand Detour, Illinois, and the February Snow Stonehenge Festival in Praire du Chien, Wisconsin, were tame stuff. "The passports, the visas, the flight arrangements and the hotels, the vaccinations, the constipation, the bribes, the lawyers, the flowers, the hired help, the car reservations, the steady diet of excrement, and for all that off-season planning," said Grow, shaking her head, "the best days, the best days we spent in that happy lost village in Peru. Who'd'a thunk it?"
Do the standards get raised with each passing year for Greens' cultural liaison Dineen Grow? "Not really," says Grow with a hearty laugh. "I just pick out stuff I think will float the team's boat, stretch its mental muscles, tickle its fancy, mix its metaphors, that sort of thing." Most of Grow's work is concentrated during the off season. While the verdant fellows trample between the lines at Moline Park, Grow limits herself to arranging hospital and school visitations and smoothing over altercations at strip clubs in East Moline--"but I'm not naming names," she says, "the clubs or the players."