The Ringer

by Bill Scheft

  “Is there anyone else you’d like to talk with?”

  “The actor.”

  “Ah…”

  “My nephew, the actor.”

  4

  “Get down! Get down!”

  He didn’t.

  “Out!”

  He pretended to angrily grab the ball from the catcher, but the kid just smiled and rolled it back to the mound. End of the inning.

  “Didn’t you hear me tell you to slide?” said Roy.

  He grabbed his glove. “Yeah. I thought I had it beat. Too bad. That makes it only an eight-run lead.”

  “That’s not the point, College Boy.”

  Thirty-five years old, and they still called him College Boy. He tucked in his “Roy’s Pizza” jersey. And his head. “Sorry, Roy.”

  “Don’t worry,” Roy said. “This won’t cost you anything.”

  College Boy did not slide into home plate after June 1 on Diamond #4, Heckscher Fields, Central Park, Manhattan. Before Memorial Day, it was fine. But after, the right-handed batter’s box on Diamond #4 looked like something Dad had started in the backyard to give the family ferret a proper sendoff. By July, a sherpa was needed just to get out of the box. By then, College Boy was batting lefthanded, and it would still be another week before enough league commissioners would give enough cash to The Dirt King to allow the entire home plate area at Diamond #4 to be resurrected completely above sea level. Fucking guy.

  Enough. Don’t get College Boy started. He wasn’t going to slide into home plate and get his ankle swallowed or slingshot his hamstring. Not today, June something. The 4th. Not for the greater glory of—Tuesday afternoon, New York Restaurant League, look at your shirt, shithead—ah, Roy’s Pizza. Roy’s Original Pizza. Roy’s Original Pizza after the out-of-court settlement with Ray’s Original Pizza. Not today. Not with an eight-run lead. Not after two doubles and a home run. And not for fifty dollars.

  And not, especially not, when he still had over a dozen more fifty-dollar bills to make that week. No. When you’re a softball ringer, there’s only two things that close your wallet. Rain and injury. Fortunately, rain only postpones the money a few weeks. Injury, that’s just good-bye. You ain’t getting paid. Try and catch me. And you can’t. Busted wheel.

  There’s really only one injury. The legs. The wheels. You make your money hitting and fielding and throwing and hitting some more, but in between all that, it’s all wheels. The wheels are your fortune. The best thing a softball ringer can hear that first time up every game is a couple guys in the field yelling, “Good stick! Good wheels!” Or, if you’re College Boy, “Good stick. Good wheels…still!”

  College Boy jogged out to left-center field, trying to recall the last time he’d been thrown out at home. Never. Sure, it was June and he wasn’t sliding and The Dirt King’s an asshole and it’s an eight-run lead and bip bip bip bip bip. But he wasn’t lying to Roy. He thought he could make it. He thought he could make it to the point where he didn’t think about it. Didn’t have to. He never got thrown out at the plate. Never. All wheels all the time. Sometimes, he’d slow up between third and home to draw a throw so the other runners could move up. Decoy. Make them think they had a shot. Slow up, check the relay man’s motion—he’s coming home, he bit!—boom! Wheels! “Safe!” Always thinking. Well, sure. He was a college boy.

  Final score: Roy’s Pizza 13, Il Vagabondo 6. They score a run in the bottom of the seventh on two walks and a bloop single over shortstop College Boy had no chance of getting. None. Not even fourteen years ago, when he first showed up in the park and the first Spanish guy called him College Boy. When the wheels were still under warranty. Rookie ringer. He broke fast, always did, but the ball was too shallow and the runner on second was off, some kid with good wheels. He picked it up on the second bounce and felt the heat when he threw it in to third. Dull, fast heat. Hot, then gone. On the back of the right leg. The hamstring. Like the flicker of a dashboard indicator light. Hot, then gone.

  But not forgotten. It was 5:25. He had forty-five minutes. He could stretch the hamstring for forty-five minutes before he had to leave for the subway to the ferry to the bus to the park, where he could stretch for another forty-five minutes to overcome the stiffness from the subway to the ferry to the bus to the park. In the last four years, he’d gone from a guy who was paid to play softball to a guy for whom softball supported his full-time occupation: Stretching. Specifically, stretching his hamstring.

  What’s it, Tuesday? Staten Island. Thank the fucking Lord it’s Staten Island, thought College Boy. Which made him the only person who was grateful to be taking New York City public transportation to Staten Island during rush hour on a summer weeknight. Ever. He was not thankful for the schlep. Shit, Rikers was less of a schlep. He was thankful for the destination. Tuesday night, 8 o’clock, Stapleton Modified Fast-Pitch. No bunting, no stealing. And on this team, “T. J.’s Tavern,” he played third. Not the outfield, his usual ringer realm. So, no bunting, no stealing, no wheels. He’d stretch forty-five minutes before, then between every odd inning. After the game, he’d get a lift into Manhattan from Julio and do Epsom salts in the tub till Carson’s monologue. The next day, he’d stretch a half hour after he got up, an hour before the 1 P.M. New York Press League game in Central Park, and an hour after. And between all that and a six-Advil dinner, he’d nurture his hamstring back to 90 percent. That would be enough, and that would be right around the time he’d been arriving in Queens for his 7 P.M. game. The Bayside Elite Softball League. Windmill. Three-man outfield. Bunting. Stealing. Wheels required. No exceptions.

  When was the last time he’d shown up five minutes before a game? When his entire warmup consisted of double-knotting his spikes and shaping the bill on his cap? Had to be ten years, but it felt like never. Never, like the last time he’d been thrown out at home. Twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Born limber. College Boy. Roll out of some bed, maybe his own, grab the converted Prince Tennis tote bag with all nine jerseys (He was only playing for pay in nine leagues back then. A nascent legend.), devour the sidewalk and whatever the vendor with nobody on line was selling as the crow flew to Central Park. Maybe, maybe he’d stop to eat along the way. But that was only if the sign read DONT WALK. And only if he didn’t feel like showing off his wheels against oncoming traffic.

  Those days, when he swore his batting eye was better with a hangover and he didn’t fuck with a batting eye that worked. When four hours sleep and two No-Doz guaranteed he’d tag and score on a routine fly. From second. When the only muscle he ever pulled was late at night, in the company of Manhattan Cable Channel J.

  By 1984, already seven years ago, his body had begun to send him first notices of delinquent care. So, he, College Boy, began to stretch. And what had looked like $40 for ninety minutes of running around in Central Park for seven innings metastasized into a pre-game war against spasm that built up faster than Nixon’s Cambodia. By then, College Boy was getting fifty dollars a game, but the Cost-of-Ringering increase barely covered what he now had to carry in his equipment bag. The Prince satchel had died years ago from overuse and lack of space. The streamlined days of toting nine jerseys, a glove, spikes, six tokens, and maybe a condom around Greater New York had vanished like Crazy Eddie. Now, you saw College Boy’s bag before you saw College Boy. Huge. One of those black nylon hockey gear U-Hauls with “Cooper” in white rubberized letters on the side where it might as well have said “Bekins.” With the padded-leather/sheepskin shoulder strap he’d picked up at Nevada Bob’s Discount Golf House for sixty dollars. He never figured out how much of his stretching was devoted to counteracting the effects of just lugging this thing, Bagzilla, around. Softball was his livelihood, but College Boy knew when he showed up at the field, at least forty-five minutes before game time, he looked like someone who should have Freddie Couples and a gallery walking alongside him.

  He had thought about getting one of those fold-up luggage carts that every third person at the airport seemed to be pulling, but then he
remembered how much he hated every third person at the airport. He had thought about getting two lighter bags and dividing his week. Monday through Wednesday, Thursday through Sunday. Nah. Okay, how about a Central Park bag and a Queens-Staten Island-Brooklyn bag? And go home in the middle of the day? Like some fisherman? No thanks. How about a bag for every day of the week? Well, that was just silly. How about getting up fifteen minutes earlier and just packing for that day’s games? Okay, stop right there with the subversive thoughts. No. Bagzilla lives. It was meant to be slung over College Boy’s shoulders. Like the weight of the world, plus five pounds.

  And once he set the thing down on the bleachers and provoked its main zipper to screams, opening Bagzilla for business, he looked like someone who could have used a stock boy. Thirteen jerseys, an extra pair of white baseball pants, an extra pair of gray baseball pants, two gloves (infield and outfield), three bats (slo-pitch, fast-pitch, windmill), spikes, six hats, four batting gloves, three pairs of white tube socks, extra shoe laces, a sweatshirt, a turtleneck, a windbreaker, a light jacket, a decent shirt/pair of pants/dark socks if he had to be somewhere, two towels, two clean pair of underwear and an umbrella.

  That was Aisle One. Aisle Two: Glove oil, a lighter, and three wine corks (for applying burnt cork under his eyes to cut the glare), twenty pieces of Bazooka original, deodorant, shampoo, Cruex, Desenex, baby powder, hairbrush, two pens, three crossword puzzles, notebook, address book, family-size bottle of Advil, family-size bottle of Excedrin, No-Doz, Chlor-Trimeton, Vicks 8-Hour Nasal Spray, Nytol, extra-strength Pepto-Bismol, trial-size Mylanta, Tums, Imodium, vitamins B1, B6, B12, C, E, and Super Mega-one multis, Bactine, Tiger Balm, Sportscreme, ice bag, Band-Aids, ace bandage, thirty packs of Equal and two 32 oz. bottles of Gatorade—one lemon-lime, one citrus cooler. One of the guys he played with on the team from the Improvisation in the Monday morning Performing Arts League, a comic, Jon Hayman, came up with the best line: Hey, College Boy, I just went through your bag. The card section’s a little weak.”

  The lock-zippered back pocket held his watch, wallet, keys, sunglasses, tokens. There was no room anymore for a condom. Under his free shoulder, he tucked the News and the Post like some laughable counterweight. His 1991 New Year’s resolution had been to go the entire season without making this noise when he saddled himself with Bagzilla: “Unhumph!” He’d made it through Week Two.

  But what could he take out? Go ahead. Tell College Boy one thing he doesn’t need in there. Try. Two Gatorades? Okay, you pay two dollars for sixteen ounces in the park, if the guy shows up, instead of $1.79 for thirty-two ounces in the rest of the universe. Advil and Excedrin? What is a human being supposed to take an hour after four Excedrin haven’t worked? Crossword puzzles? What else is there to do on the Staten Island Ferry twice a week, sight-see? Six hats? Okay, four went with other jerseys, one was the lucky Angels cap. The other was for slumps, when the Angels cap wasn’t lucky.

  Friday was Laundry Day. By then, College Boy had sweated through ten of the thirteen jerseys and both pants. The underwear and socks were replaced by strict rotation. Every day, or every day after a teammate said, “Whew! Who opened the Dumpster?” He had only one game on Fridays. The 6 P.M. Wall Street League at Heckscher. He’d finish at the radio station by ten, do the laundry, pick up whatever health and beauty aids Bagzilla had coughed up during the week, eat a black-and-blue Romanian tenderloin from the coffee shop next to the Laundromat while everything was in the dryer. Which would still leave four and a half hours for his weekly five-milligram Valium nap. Half a blue. A whole yellow. Two whites. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a white Valium. When had Uncle Mort stopped taking them? When had he stopped taking them from Uncle Mort?

  Friday was also Vague Legitimacy Day. He had to be at the radio station, WLLS (“Wheels-102”), by 6 A.M. And by 6:05, when the news ended, he had to be in his chair. The once-a-week in-studio mascot chair. Then, for the next three hours, fifty minutes, College Boy laughed at everything Dan Drake said on the air. Especially the stuff that wasn’t all that funny. For this noise, which he was good at, and the occasional line or two in a sketch, which he could deliver just north of amateur, he was paid $125. After taxes, $101.14, but 125 AFTRA dollars before taxes. Just enough to put him in the union. Just enough for health benefits. Just enough for a union card, which insured he could play unhassled in three show-business-related leagues Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Just enough so when people asked him what he did, he could say, with Vague Legitimacy, “I’m an actor.” That’s what he could say, because AFTRA had no category for what he really was at Wheels-102. A laugh ringer.

  He got two hundred dollars a game in the Wall Street League. It had been fifty dollars, like everywhere else, but six years ago he, College Boy, was the object of a spirited bidding war between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He went 4-for-4 for Morgan in the championship game, along with five RBIs and two SportsCenter catches in the outfield. After the game, some old guy in a suit, Goldman maybe, came up to him as his arms were about to be swallowed by Bagzilla.

  “What do you do for Morgan Stanley, College Boy?”

  “Work in the mailroom.”

  “You’re a little old to be working in the mailroom. It can’t pay much.”

  “Well, how much does your mailroom pay?”

  “Seventy-five dollars.”

  At that point, another old guy in a suit, Morgan perhaps, redirected the discussion his way. It went $100, $150, $200, until Goldman or Sachs said, “Fucking keep him.” That’s when they started outlawing ringers in the Wall Street League. That’s when College Boy started working in the mailroom at Morgan Stanley. One day a year. Three thousand dollars. To be paid in fifteen cash installments of two hundred dollars, April–August. Eighteen, if Morgan Stanley went all the way in the playoffs. And they always did. $3,600. The only guy in Central Park who could make that kind of cash for one day of real work was The Dirt King. Fucking guy.

  College Boy learned a valuable lesson from Morgan Stanley. Take care of your investment. For two hundred dollars a game, you got a two-hundred-dollar game from College Boy. He showed up an hour and a half early, stretched, pitched batting practice, gave tips to whoever didn’t want to throw or swing a bat like an investment banker, coached third when he wasn’t up or on base, and generally high-fived and ass-patted these disdain-filled nouveau geeks like they were managing his portfolio. Or like he really gave a shit. It was the most money he made all week and the jersey he liked wearing the least. By far. It was the one day he took off from being a ringer and worked his other job. Whore. Only a Valium nap could get him ready for this gig. And only four furiously gulped Wild Turkey and sodas on the way home chased it away.

  But now it was still Tuesday and his wheels needed work. College Boy turned his hat around backward, as he had done ten years before any of the brothers, and went to it. Eight minutes of lunges. Then he hopped up. Two minutes of calf raises. Four minutes of hip stretches. Then back down. Two minutes of groin stretches. Back up. Four minutes of quad stretches. College Boy never knew he had quadricep muscles until 1985, when he caught both games of a doubleheader in the Astoria North Fast-Pitch League (Mondays, 7:00 P.M.). A month later, bowlegging home from the Broadway Show League (Thursdays, noon), he saw Tim McCarver, the Mets broadcaster, out in front of the Regency Hotel on Park and Sixty-second.

  “Hey, Tim, big fan, great job,” said College Boy.

  “Thanks.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You caught over 1,000 games in the big leagues in 20 years.”

  “1,387.”

  “When did your quads stop hurting?”

  “They haven’t.”

  The last twenty-five minutes were devoted to the hamstrings. Ten minutes on each, then an extra five to the one the judges (calfs, hips, groin, quads) decided was the most deserving. Alone in foul territory on Heckscher Field, Diamond #4, College Boy hurdled in place, while two women’s slo-pitc
h squads straggled out and ignored him as only women could.

  He saw The Dirt King over at Diamond #3, filling in the hole in front of the pitching rubber.

  “Hey, Ernie,” he yelled. “How about saving some of that for Diamond #4?”

  Ernest Giovia, The Dirt King of Central Park, straightened up to his full five feet four and one half inches, put his ringed hand to his mouth and yelled back, much louder, “Hey, how about sucking my dick?” So much louder, the women’s teams stopped straggling and began to glare. Glare, until they realized they might piss off The Dirt King. So, they stopped and went back to ignoring College Boy.

  He finished with the hamstrings. Better. Wheels stable but guarded. He threw in two more minutes of lunges. For the rhomboids. He’d learned the lunges from Julio and they quieted his spasming upper back as Tylenol with codeine had not. But occasionally, the beginnings of a toothache back there would holler. Like today. He’d have to ice it down on the ferry. For an extra buck, the guy at the snack bar on the Staten Island Ferry filled his ice bag after he bought an overpriced Diet Coke. What a racket. Until then, Bagzilla would be confined to his left shoulder.

  Thank God for Julio. Julio Rentas, “Papa J” to his fellow ringers, was a Swedish Institute-trained massage therapist when he wasn’t sending opposing outfielders scurrying. One afternoon, as he and College Boy shared a between-game joint, one of those great-looking women with a stroller in the park wheeled by, then stopped and came back.

  “Julio?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Peggy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Last Thursday at five.”

  “Oh right.”

  “Well,” she said, “you probably didn’t recognize me with my clothes on.”

  College Boy reaggravated his rhomboids first when he threw his head back laughing, then when he fell off the bench. That’s when Papa J showed him the lunge and prescribed another joint, to be used as directed in the bathtub that night. Healed, he went 2-for-2 in the second game. Two home runs, two intentional walks.