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I have it saved on my server and backed up to the cloud.
FROM SHEA TO THE AIRSTRIP: A NIGHT IN HELL
Submitted by: Big Al on September 29,1999 12:47:29 PM
I knew it was a bad sign when my ex called me at work to tell me my boy wouldn't
be coming down to the city to go to the game with me. She says he had a math
test in the morning and she didn't want him getting home at midnight. I razzed her
about that--it was only one test, the Mets had their backs against the wall, it would
be a good night for him and me, and on and freakin' on--and then she just comes
out and, blammo, hits me with the whole thing. She doesn't want the boy hanging
around with me anymore after what he saw last time in the city, which was this girl
who lives downstairs from me flopping on the couch. Also she said I was a drunk and
I said doesn't going into N.A. and A.A. count for BLEEP! with you? But when I went
into the rehab again that just set off all kind of alarm bells with her. She had
forgotten that I had a problem I guess and it worried her that the boy would be
hanging around with a man always on the verge of heading over a cliff. I said Come
on! I haven't touched even a freakin beer in three months. But forget it. My son
would not be going to the ballgame with me.
You know I am not like these season ticket holders. I am in a "share" and go to a
few ballgames a summer. I thought I was being cagey as hell, back in the winter,
when I selected this Sept. 26 Atlanta game as one of my nights as Shea. For the
last month or so I'd been staring at the ticket and thinking I was some kind of
freakin genius. You and I, we were made for each other! That was my attitude. Even
two weeks ago, I thought I was going to be present for the climax of the pennant
race. But it turned out a whole hell of a lot different. And not only was creaky old
Hershiser on the mound for a game that was just a backs-against-the-wall game
instead of a true pennant-fight game, but my kid couldn't go with me... and my new
boss at this new freakin place where I have been on my "best freakin behavior" for
two months was holding me back, keeping me at work until almost 8 freakin o'clock.
Christ, I hit the N and took it to Queensborough Plaza, switched to the 7 train there.
Read that free paper, New York Press, on the way. That rag always depresses me. I
was also listening to the game on the FAN. Down 5 nothing. Didn't bother me. I
thought, "I will be there when we make our comeback." I had almost that same
thought one Sunday night earlier this summer when I was helping the junkie girl
through a bad time, and the Mets were down 5 zip to the Phils in the 8th--and I
nearly turned the radio off but something told me NO--and we rocked Schilling for 5
runs in the ninth. What a ballgame that was. But that's a long freakin time ago now.
Anyways, there was Shea. First thing I tell myself is, "I will not get a beer tonight. I
will not get a beer." Because that could start the whole slide all over again. A losing
streak of my own.
I go in gate B with my two tickets and right away hit the Italian sausage cart. The
line was long and I swear the guy was makin us wait for no good reason. You always
see a lot of funny guys at Shea, guys who really make you laugh, and the guy in
front of the sausage line was watching the guy turn over the onions and green
peppers with his spatula and searing the meat until it had black stripes on both
sides, and the guy was saying, he said, "I'm gettin' delirious here! I'm having a
hallucination, I'm so hungry. Finish cooking it already!" But the cook kept taking his
damn time. I guess that was the one power the cook had over other people, making
them wait for their freakin sausage, and he was going to take every advantage of it
that he could. I do the same kind of bastardish things at my job, too, I guess.
Because who wants to be a freakin worker, an employee, a cog? Nobody. We were
all kids once. Nobody aspired to be middle management or to stand at a hot sausage
cart. Christ. So I said to myself, "Christ. This world is BLEEP!ed up, get me a beer."
And I paid the freakin $5.50 for a 16-ounce can of Bud poured agonizingly slowly into
a cup.
Got to my seat. I saw Weissman seated a few rows ahead of me and to the left. I
wished my life were simple like Weissman's. Belief in God. Belief in a team. No alimony
payments. No woes beyond what Valentine did or did not do.
The girl sitting right in front of me was just a peach. Man, she looked like a young
Stockard Channing. I always liked Stockard Channing. I have a thing for her. My wife
used to say, my ex-wife, I mean, used to say, "What do you see in her? She looks
like a puppy dog! With you it's her and Swoozie what's her name. Why can't you be
normal and like Christy Brinkley and those kinds of girls," and I would say, "Stockard
and Swoozie just kind of do it for me, what can I say?" She secretly liked it, that I
wasn't into the supermodel types.
I quaffed down the beer. God it tasted good. It felt good too. I immediately kept my
ear open for the beer man but now they got those bonehead waiters by the field
and the beer man never comes.
This Stockard Channing girl was damn smart and she knew it. Her boyfriend was a
bonehead. He says to the other guy they were with, "She was a classics major. Do
you even know what a classics major is?" And the guy goes, "Sure, Roman and
Greek." As the girl starts talking about studying at Oxford and tra la la la di da, I did
something I don't usually do. I started just winking at her blatantly and smiling and
making goofy faces. Her boyfriend couldn't see me. He was directly in front of me.
She was to the side. She smiled at me and gleamed up her eye for me and met my
eye a couple time. God she was great.
On the field the Mets were in hell. Cook couldn't get it over the plate. I felt funny
from the beer and guilty. When Cook came out of the game and started giving it to
the umpire, a weird thing happened to me. I started feeling all jittery. I was WITH
Cook. You know what I mean? I know what it's like to be squeezed by an ump and
it's freakin frustrating. I thought of all the calls I didn't get, maybe, and I stood and
clapped like hell with everybody else. When Cook started covering the outer half of
the plate with dirt, I tried to shout something, but my voice caught and I realized I
was crying. Not like blubbering, but really tearing up and they were running down my
face. I told myself this was not good. But I was really so touched by Cook and his
frustration and the whole damn losing streak and my son not being there and paying
that freakin much for the tickets and getting to the game late and the beer and the
pretty girl--it just sprung out of my eyes or something and I thought it was very
beautiful, what Cook was doing on the field, and sad, too. And even as I was crying
a little I wanted to kill the ump, too, and I mean really kill him. Chase him with
torches through Queens.
The Stockard Channing girl turned around to me. "Are you all right?" "Yeah, yeah," I
go. "It's just... boy they were squeezing Cookie out there." She goes, like,
"Whatever." Probably didn't know what "squeezing" or "Cookie" meant. I wiped my
face. She still had the gleam. The boyfriend, a handsome soft guy, turns around and
gives me the fish eye. "What are you looking at?" I go. He does the classic, "You
two know each other?" I go, "Not yet." That was all. He didn't want a piece of Big
Al.
The bottom of the eighth inning was one of those beautiful baseball moments. The
fans really got up and cheered, even before Henderson's single. It was loud, World
Series loud, and everyone was following the counts and it was great. But then
Piazza hit the ground out and Alfonzo had that soft, soft fly ball--his second terrible
swing of the night. I've never seen him swing the bat with such lack of authority. He
is messed up right now. Either hitting sixth does not suit him anymore or he is in a
radical slump and needs a night on the bench.
All the "good" people filed out after that, including the Stockard Channing girl, who
would not look at me now, after my little altercation with her beauty boy, and it was
only the rabble left. I went behind home plate because I thought I saw an old friend
of mine there, but it was someone else. A guy was wearing a Yankee jacket and a
funny guy started giving him the business from a few rows away. "Yankees suck
dick!" the guy shouted. The usher told him to can the profanity. And the guy said, "I
said a bad thing. I'm sorry." Then he said things that were almost profane but not
quite after that. Another guy started yelling at Rickey in the on deck circle. "You're
old, Rickey! You can't do it anymore. Hall of Famers don't run, right, Rickey? Hall of
Famers don't run!" Rickey shook his head and smiled. It got uglier thought when
another heckler called him "boy." I wanted to kill that guy. That guy would have
been cheering RIckey like crazy if things were going better, so why the "boy" crap?
Why bring this racial BLEEP! into it? Man. Even in the field seats, the Mets fans can
get freakin ugly. I mean, I will boo and yell, but not like that.
After the ragged ninth inning, everybody left, but I noticed these two hot girls
sitting with some guy. I mean, these women were incredible, one in tight leather
pants with humongous cha chas under a tight sweater. "What's going on here?" I
said to myself and waited for them to leave their seats. I followed them into the
parking lot, and I was right. These were not usual fans. They were strippers from
this place called the Airstrip and outside they and some other girls started passing
out fliers to people. I took one. Christ.
I got in a cab with some drunk fellows, Wall Street guys, who were going to check
the place out. We got there and it was... you know. It's in the zone where you can
legally have a strip club in New York. A "waitress" asked me what I wanted. I said
Scotch, God help me.
You know when Chris Rock does that routine, something about the girls don't do it in
the Champagne room? Well, they do it, friends, they do it.
I left there at about 5 A.M., much poorer both financially and spiritually. I was drunk,
too, and couldn't find a cab. I walked out to the water. There was trash in it. What
a losing streak. What a night. I had for some reason a pack of cigarettes in my
pocket. I smoked one there. A guy was waking up by the dock. The planes started
coming in from Europe overhead. The dirty seagulls and pigeons were battling it out
as usual. I started walking until eventually I found the Jackson Heights subway stop
and rode the 7 back to Manhattan. I stopped by my place for a shave and shower,
slugged down a hell of a lot of coffee, went to work. And here I am at my desk, still
looped a little bit, and the boss has been giving me kind of a cold look. I must look
the way I feel. Hungover. This far from being a bum. But if that guy could have seen
me when I was 17, 18, when my arm was at full strength, and you had the scouts
and everything... ahh, Christ, what's the use. What's the use?
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