During the summer of
1988, on the cusp of my senior year of high school, I decided I needed throw a
no-hitter and/or perfect game in the Commodore 64 baseball game, Hardball! Essentially, I wanted to do
this because I was rather lonely and awkward in high school after being very
popular in grade school, and I needed something positive and/or winning to
occupy my summer months.
I’ll be sharing
excerpts on this blog from the journal I kept for each game I played. These
entries have been edited and/or re-written a bit with some “adult” perspective
and clarity. A few names have been changed here and there as well.
GAME 35 – AUGUST 18, 1988
What would a summer be with underage drinking shenanigans?
It wouldn’t be much of a summer, truth be told…especially if you grew up in
Northeast Philadelphia and attended one
of the many Catholic high schools in the area. Weekend keggers were a way of
life all throughout the school year, but it was a way of life that I (mostly)
had zero to do with. It just wasn’t my bag. I never understood the appeal of
standing in the woods in the freezing cold just to drink shitty beer out of a
plastic cup. And besides, I was rarely ever invited.
I had an on-again-off-again friend who lived just around the corner by the name of Mark Greenberg. Mark was a year older then me and could be a bit of a loner and loose cannon, hence why we were "on-again-off-again" friends. His parents and sister were down the shore for
the week (in Wildwood, New Jersey…that hive of scum and villainy where most of
NE Philly absconded to during the summer months), so he decided, in true “Risky
Business” fashion, to throw a party.
If only it turned out like the infamous party Joel Goodsen
threw in that classic, 80s flick. All teenage boys of that era dreamed about
hosting a balls-to-the-wall bash of that magnitude. I mean, who wouldn’t want
to party with the stunningly gorgeous Rebecca De Mornay and her hooker friends?
As long as Guido the Killer Pimp didn’t make an appearance all would be well.
This “party” wasn’t that. At all. In fact, being chased by
an irate pimp would have been more exciting on many levels. Since I had to work
that night and ended up walking home, I didn’t make it to Mark’s house until a
little after 10 PM…just when any good party should be morphing into the
“baddest jam in the land” as Prince’s “Housequake” so aptly stated.
But, alas, Mark’s house was deader than Dillinger. The
basement door was open and the faint sounds of a baseball game wafted out
towards the street. As I glided closer to the door, the distinctive, familial banter
of Harry Kalas and “Whitey” Ashburn was a welcome sound to my ears, as it typically
was to all Phillies fans throughout the Delaware Valley.
 |
| "Hard to believe no one's here, Harry..." |
The sounds of the game drew me through the door, down the
narrow laundry room hallway and into the basement proper. There Mark sat all by
his lonesome. The aforementioned Phillies game was playing on a small, 13”
color TV against the far wall. There was an open cooler with a case of Budwiser
cans (No keg?? Sacrilege!) bobbing about in the half melted ice. About five or six
empty cans were littered about Mark on the couch.
“Hey man...join the party,” he slurred, waving towards the empty room.
I grabbed a beer out of the cooler and sat down on a chair
adjacent to the couch. “Who’s winning,”
I asked. I cared about the game, even though the scuffling Phils were waaaaay
out of contention by this point of the season, but this was more small talk
until I could get to the bigger question of WHY THE FLYING FUCK WAS NO ONE ELSE
HERE???
“Phillies are up one-nothing, but it’s only the second
inning out in LA,” Mark said while polishing off another can.
He heaved the can across the room and it struck the far wall
with weirdly muted metallic sound. I could tell he was super pissed that I was
the only person who bothered to show up. I would have to pick my words carefully
here. Mark could be volatile; this guy was well-known for pummeling dudes out
on the ice during pick-up hockey games just for breathing on him wrong.
“So,” I began as I cracked my beer and took a healthy swig
as if I did this every damn day of my life. It went down easy. Too easy. This
could be the beginning of an interesting evening.
“Noah couldn’t make it?”
Noah was Mark’s best friend and a bit of a strange ranger in
my books. I didn’t think there could be a guy more awkward and gawky than
myself at age 17, but Noah was definitely that guy. At least I was coordinated
and good at sports. I’ve always maintained that being sporty saved me from a
good deal of ridicule and bullying growing up. Oh, you think it’s fucking stupid that I dig Dungeons & Dragons,
video games and comic books? Well, let’s see what you think about that when I
school your ass out on the court/field of your choice, motherfucker. I just
rolled a natural 20. Kiss my ass. Twice, bitch.
Unfortunately, Noah was neither graceful nor athletically
inclined. On top of that, he was just socially inept…constantly telling
awkward, unfunny jokes and then laughing like a fool at said jokes. But I mean,
realistically, who doesn’t want to party with a guy named Noah out of sheer curiosity?
There could be full-blown ark shenanigans involved after all.
“He called,” Mark spat while fishing another can out of the
cooler. “Said he wasn’t feeling well or some shit. I don’t know.”
“Well, looks like it’s just you and me then,” was my winning
response.
Mark glared at me for a moment. I wasn’t real sure what was
going to happen in that bone-chilling moment. I steeled myself for the worst…but
then he raised his can in toast fashion, exclaiming: “Here’s to that then!”
We clinked cans and continued to watch a ballgame that was
indicative of the Fightin’ Phils ‘88 campaign: Kevin Gross threw a complete
game, striking out five Dodger assholes, but the Phils still managed to lose
2-1 basically because Ramon Martinez (older brother of Pedro) was the better
hurler that night. And, oh yeah, the Phillies sucked. Real hard.
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| This line-up struck fear in to the hearts...of no one. |
As the game ended, Mark flipped off the TV then staggered up
the stairs with nary a word of goodbye. He had consumed a good 12 beers by the
end of the game to my six, so I wasn’t all that offended by his lapse in end-of-evening
etiquette. The time had come to go home and continue on my quest to beat that
damn game into submission.
Luckily, my house was almost literally right in front of
Mark’s on the neighboring street, so all I had to do was hop a couple fences
and I was home. This return trip almost went off without a hitch, but my Jedi-
like reflexes had to be brought to bear as I hopped the final fence which put
me on the deck of the above ground pool in my yard. When I hit the deck after
flipping over the rickety, wooden fence, I teetered a bit being somewhat drunk.
My stumble-bum momentum would have carried me right into the pool, but I was
able to reach out and steady myself on the pool’s ladder before I took the
“Nestea Plunge.”
I quickly laughed this off and within moments I was back in the
cool stillness of my basement lair – my inner sanctum. And with two quick
motions, my C64 and disc drive were ready to rock. I typed LOAD “*”, 8, 1
without even looking down at the keyboard. Drunk or not, I could type in this
command line with my eyes glued shut.
Soon the Hardball! load screen was in front of my face,
mocking me once again. I cursed the names of the programmers and designers: Bob
Whitehead…what a tool! Ed Bogas…he molests collies! Mimi Doggett…she’s a dirty
ho and so is her momma!
 |
| I stared at this damn screen quite in a bit during my teenage years. |
I cackled to myself as these silly insults ran through my mind,
and in that moment I really wished I had the foresight to snag a road beer from
the cooler before I left Mark’s house. Such is life…
As the torturously slow C64 loading process continued I
wondered if Cara was home yet. I snuck a peek at the house neighboring mine out
of the row of small windows above my computer desk. The light was still on
above the Campozzi’s side door. That meant she was still out and about with
whatever asshole that currently wasn’t me. And here it is past 1:30 AM on a
Thursday night. What a naughty, naughty minx Cara was this evening. Again, not
with me.
Finally, the game booted up and I got down to the brass
tacks. I chose my red and white clad All-Stars, set my line-up the way I liked
it and thus began the thirty-fifth game of my summer series.
Things were going very well right out of the gate. I crushed
a three-run homer in the bottom of the first and was pitching lights out
baseball. I was calling all the shots tonight, like a loaded gun…to paraphrase lyrics from
Aerosmith’s awesome “Back in the Saddle.”
But in the top of the sixth inning, the game cheated and
that dickhead Hank Contos ruined the perfect game I had going with the dreaded
“glitch” hit where the game suddenly sped up then slowed down, making the ball nigh
impossible to get to before it dropped in for a hit.
I sat in muted silence for a moment with the joystick
resting limply in my hands. “Fuck,” I exclaimed while reaching for the
computer’s power switch.
“…you,” I finished as I clicked the switch off as forcefully
as I could without busting the machine itself.
I went to bed. There was nothing else to do at that point.
The damn game had bested me yet again.
I went to sleep that night with flights of Anheuser Busch
angels singing me to my rest. I dreamt that Clydesdale horses were dressed in
Phillies pinstripes, taking the places of Juan Samuel, Chris James and Darren
Daulton out on the diamond.
 |
| Don't drink this. Ever. Just say no, kids. |
I didn’t know horses could play baseball, but they looked
like goddamn equine all-stars in my dream. It was like something out of an
old-school, Merrie Melodies cartoon come to life in my alcohol addled brain. It
was funny, sure, but oddly off-putting all the same.
I awoke the next morning with a very dry mouth, a throbbing
skull and the distinct thought that the vile swill that flows in vast rivers
from the factories in St. Louis, Missouri was the piss of Satan himself…
…and I never wanted to partake in it again.
