It was a shelling that lasted the whole season. Jake Peavy, a journeyman fastballer for the San Francisco Giants, was greeted in the early part of the 2016 season with the news that he’d been bilked out of $15 million by a financial adviser. As the summer wore on, meetings with lawyers outnumbered strikeouts, depositions over-shadowed wins, and Peavy’s ERA soared to a career high of 5.54. His season was cut short when he stepped on a pair of scissors, forcing the two-time World Series winner to sit out the postseason, too. He returned home only to be served with divorce papers.
Undoubtedly, it was a very bad year for Jake Peavy, but you wouldn’t know it by the party he hosted in early December. Seventy friends and family trekked out to Catherine, Alabama (pop. 22), 80 miles west of Montgomery. It’s the pitcher’s offseason home away from home, a 5,400-acre ranch and hunting camp named Southern Falls. Guests packed the property’s spacious bar-room/concert venue/bowling alley, the Mill Creek Saloon, as if it were a championship locker room, hoisting bottles and cans, moonshine jars and joints.
To read more, please click on the photograph that accompanied the piece in the September 2017 issue of Men's Journal:
