You might think the life of a Barsto0l writer is all fame, glory, dinners on the house and women naming their vibrators after you.  And you’d be mostly correct.  But it’s also tons of work.  Most of the time you kill the blogs, but every so often a blog comes along that kills you.  Such is the case with Red Sox catcher Jerrod Saltalamacchia.

Saltalamacchia was a footnote last year.  But once  the Sox announced he was going to be their starter this winter, I read up on him and found out that his wife Ashley is 16 years older than him and they met when she was teaching gym at his high school.  Now this was old news at his previous Major League stops, but for me it was a eureka moment.  A Boston athlete, playing a critical role, with a potentially smoking wife and also part of a Sex Scandal Teacher story?  It was the perfect storm of my blogging life.  The reason I was put on this Earth.  And I knew that everything I’d ever done to this point… from breaking into stand-up doing Red Sox bits to doing the HBO thing to the day I walked into El Pres’ office asking for a job… had led me to this point.  But I knew the story would be worthless without some A+ pictures of Mrs. Saltalamacchia, so I started digging.  I Googled.  I Binged.  I searched the other sports blogs.  I Facebooked.  I thought about MySpacing except I’m not 15 and this isn’t 2006.  I went to the library like Morgan Freeman in Se7en and checked the microfilm.  Then the microfiche.  I did everything short of the cop show cliche of walking into a strip joint and asking around and if someone said they didn’t know anything, peeling off a 20 and asking if this refreshes their memory.  And for all that work, this is what I came up with:

(That’s her on the far left)

… And that’s it.  That’s all I could come up with after days and nights of exhaustive research.  Three pictures that indicate she might be hot.  She could have a little April Buchanon in her, but who knows?  These pictures wouldn’t give you a positive ID in a police photo array.  The former teacher now cougar wife of a professional athlete and somehow the internet acts like she never existed.  And it’s killing me.  Ashley Saltalamacchia is my White Whale. My 50 year storm.  My one armed man.  My interest in her grew into desire, the desire into need, and the need into obsession, and now I think it’s going to destroy me the way Quints obsession for sharks did him in.

This is like Shaughnessy finding out Curt Schilling faked the bloody sock or Borges finding the SpyGate tape and then not being able to do the story justice.  It’s torture.  But the bottom line is I failed you. And EP and Buck, Jenna, the NYC guys and the whole Barstool universe.  This was my mission and I couldn’t get the job done, and I’m sorry.  If anyone can produce pictures of Ashley (note: that first Google image that says it’s her is not), I’ll post them and fall on the sword.  In the meantime, all I have are these three and my deepest apology.  @jerrythornton1