"So, folks, welcome back to the bottom half of the eighth inning, or as it's better known, the Gerry's Gelatin Home Run Inning." "Gerry's Gelatin..." "nutritious, delicious, and fun." "G-G-G-Gerry's." "If someone knocks one out of the park in a long Italian boat, for a gondola," "Dan Hobert of Sedalia's gonna win a six-month supply of gelatin, so good luck, Dan." "You know, folks, the great Vin Scully once told me that the only way to call a baseball game is to keep your eyes open and to tell the truth." "As Ibañez swings and misses at a fastball, 0 and 1." "Folks, here's the truth..." "Today is the 20th anniversary of the very first time that I told my lovely wife Lucy that I loved her." "And ever since that day, as many of you know," "I've signed off every single game the exact same way, with a message to her." "Lucy, put supper on the stove, my dear, because this ball game is over, as Pedro delivers a slider into the dirt." "Count evens, 1 and 1." "Any-hoos, I had some time at the ball park this afternoon to reflect upon this wonderful anniversary as Ibañez slashes one foul into the right side." "And I decided to go on home and surprise my wife Lucy with some gardenias." "They're her favorite flower." "Please imagine my surprise when I opened my front door to find about a half-dozen naked folks sprawled out in my living room, engaged in what can only be described as a desperate and a hungry account of a love-making," "and right in the center of it all was my wi..." "My wife, Lucy." "She was wearing a strap-on, and she was plowing our neighbor, Bob Greenwald, and folks, I do mean right in the ass." "Fastball misses." "Just low." "Count goes full 3 and 2." "Did he just say "strap-on?"" "Hey, for you kids at home, a strap-on is a belt with a dildo on it that mommies use to penetrate daddies as Ibañez strikes out on a high fastball." "That'll bring Clark up to bat." "Clark having himself a heck of an afternoon with two doubles." "Bob Greenwald." "Bob Greenwald!" "I mean, that two-faced S.O.B. I hosted his kid's Bar Mitzvah." "I hosted his kid's Bar Mitzvah!" "Here's the kicker." "Here's what kills me." "My wife Lucy has the stone, she has the unmitigated gall to turn to me and tell me that she is a sexual astronaut." "I mean, what is that?" "What does that even mean?" "I mean, granted, Bob Greenwald's ass might be as big as the goddamn moon." "That does not mean that my wife has been to outer space, okay?" "And that is a deep fly ball to right center field." " That one is way back there!" " Jim!" "Jim!" "That's either out of here or lost inside my wife's big, fat, cheating vagina!" "Congratulations, Dan Hobert of Sedalia." "I only hope you enjoy gelatin half as much as my lovely wife enjoys..." "Jim!" "Just call the game!" "I am calling the goddamn game." "Jim!" "Calm down, Jim!" "God damn!" "No, why don't you calm down?" "Whore!" "You people be professional!" "Gerry's Gelatin... delicious, nutritious, and fun." "G-G-G-Gerry's." "Today might say Spring on the calendar, but Old Man Winter is still reaching his hand inside your coat and giving one last squeeze, isn't he?" "Still..." "Anything beats that three-hour bus ride from Pittsburgh." "Very difficult not to get claustrophobic around all of that concentrated sadness." "And as a result," "Brockmire's gonna reach for the doobie early." "Well." "Let's see who we have in attendance here today." "I see we have some feral dogs." "And a boy with a gun." "And Brockmire is officially disturbed." "Oh, shit!" " Jim Brockmire?" " Yeah." "I'm Julia James." "I'm the owner of the team here in Morristown." "Yeah." "Ms. James..." "Oh, call me Jules." "Whatever." "Um, fire." "Yeah, we get those around here." "Are you ready to get started?" "What can I grab?" "Uh, careful." "You're wearing your jacket!" "Welcome to the minor leagues, Jim Brockmire." "Oh, what is that smell?" "Oh, that's waster water from the fracking runoff." "To, um..." "To get natural gas from the shale, they have to pump all kinds of nasty shit into the ground." "Where do they do all that?" "Right here." "Here, right now, where we are?" "Well, here, there." "Pretty much everywhere beneath Morristown." "One of the perks of owning the bar... no corkage." "Keep it Brockmire." "Mm-hmm." "Mnh." "On the phone, you said you haven't been back to the states since the, um..." "In a long time." "No, I've been spanning the globe." "I've been calling every kind of sporting event that exists." "Finally, I would up in Manila where I've been calling the cock fights on television." "Ah, what the hell?" "I figure by now I'm just a joke that everybody's forgotten about." "Yeah, right." "Are you serious?" "Do you not use the Internet?" "No, I don't bother with that thing." "If I need porn, I just buy a nudie mag, like my father and his father before him." "Okay, so, "Keepin' it Brockmire", that means nothing to you?" "Should it?" "Try to look past the wear and tear to the reservoir of charm underneath." "It should be like looking in the mirror." "This is it, and this is Charles." "He'll be, uh..." "He'll be helping you with your broadcasts." "All right." "Well, may I ask your qualifications, son?" "He's, uh, basically an Internet whiz kid." "Uh, yeah." "I, um..." "I have the most Twitter followers in town." "I, uh, have over 4 million Vine loops in total." "DJ Khaled once shouted me out on a jet ski." "All right." "Where's my actual radio producer, though?" "Currently, we don't have a radio contract." "Well, then who am I broadcasting to?" "You'll be doing exclusive play-by-play to the stadium that people pay admission to hear." "I'm the P.A. announcer?" "Darling, on the phone, you promised me a multi-platform distribution dealy." "Yeah, that was kind a euphemism for the Internet where Charles here will be uploading clips of your broadcasts." "Yeah." "I, um..." "I've been working on keeping my hand really steady." "Um, you lied to me." "I hustled you." "There's a difference." "Hey." "Hey!" "I didn't just take a 12-hour plane ride to get a semantics lesson, all right?" "And who in the world is gonna watch video clips of me on the Innernet?" "He's never seen any of them." " Well, you know what?" "Pull one up." " How..." "How is that?" "Yeah, he doesn't own a computer." "Can you..." "Let's just show him." "It'll be easier if we just show you." "Show me w-what?" "I'll do the conference room one." "Oh, yeah, that's good." "It's my favorite, anyway." "I want to apologize to the people of Kansas City, and most importantly, to my wife Lucy, who I can still smell." "I think she's..." "Yeah, she's... she's in my jacket." "Excuse me." "Please, bear with me." "I'd like to apologize to the people..." "No, it's..." "I can still smell her." "She's in my shirt." "I can still smell her." "I can't do this if I can smell her." "Lucy, you are not a whore." "Whores get paid money." "You are a slut." "A dirty, dirty slut." "I apologize for that, too." "Why can I still smell her?" "Well, she's in my skin, is why." "No, no." "Kevin." "I've got it." "Anyway." "So..." "Mm. 10 years ago, your breakdown in the booth and... and press conference were like the original viral videos." "So that's pretty neat." "Right?" " I mean..." " There's a lady on my face!" "Are you kidding me?" "There's a lady..." "I'm so..." "I'm sorry." "That..." "That part, it always gets me." "Steve!" "There's a lady on my face!" "All right, just get it off." "Get it off, please." "Get it off of where?" "Make it go away." "Well, I can't." "No, don't pause..." "Just get it..." " Get it off of there." " Hey, the thing is," "I can't get it off 'cause it's on the Internet." " So it's... it's forever." " It's permanent." "So people just watch videos of the worst moments of my life and just laugh at my pain?" " No." " Yes." "Oh, my God." "I mean, you know," "I thought I hit rock bottom in a handicapped stall in Bangkok when a Thai lady-boy snorted crank off my Johnson while a sunburned German watched us on the toilet." "There he is." "You can still paint a picture." "Yeah, but that..." "That is a good deal worse." "Brockmire, listen to me." "That is not what you're gonna be remembered for." "Trust me." "I have a plan." "Uh, quick question." "So, the... the German guy..." "Was he on the toilet or was he, like, on the toilet?" "The guys are dying to meet you!" "Uh, let's head down to the locker room." "There's a lady on my face!" "Okay?" "There's a lady on my face!" "There's a lady on my face, Kevin." "Oh, Kevin!" "There's a lady on my face!" "Hey!" "Everybody decent?" "Damn, boss." "Why you dressed up today?" "What?" "I'm not!" "This will be your legacy." "Calling Morristown's magical 2017 season." "Guys, no smoking." "Come on." "I-I'm sorry, but am I... am I supposed to be impressed by this?" "I convinced Major League players, coaches, and one legendary broadcaster to come to Morristown, Pennsylvania." "Heck yeah, you should be impressed!" "No." "No!" "She's on my face." "Lady on my face!" " That's the guy!" " Brockmire!" "Guys, no!" "Wait!" "Brockmire, the bus doesn't even leave till tomorrow!" "Hey." "I know a place where you can drink for free." "And by free, I meant well drinks with half-off top shelf." "The silent treatment?" "Really?" "Okay." "While I have the floor," "I'd like to direct your attention to the memorial my father made to his favorite player." ""Pops" himself, Willie Stargell." "I'm 8 years old." "He pulls me out of school in the middle of the day to see Pops' last game." "He tells my teachers, "When God retires, the least you could do is give him a round of applause."" "We had seats down the first base line." "Pops got his last hit right in front of us." "Just a little squib back to the pitcher." "Guy's a Hall of Famer, but in that moment, he's just an overweight, middle-aged man in yellow spandex hustling to beat out an infield single." "And it taught me a lesson I never forgot." "You do whatever you can to accomplish what you can when you can." "I sold my house and took out a second mortgage on the bar to buy the Frackers, and I did it for one reason." "It's the same reason you flew 9,000 miles to be here." "Neither of us can imagine a life without baseball." ""Frackers" is a very stupid name for a baseball team." "Yeah?" "Well, before this, we were the Morristown Savages, and our mascot was a little baseball with a headdress who rolled around drunk." "So Frackers is an upgrade." "I hung out with Pops once or twice." "What?" "!" "Bury the lead!" "What was he like?" "Pops?" "He made you feel like you could climb Everest, as long as he was in front of you throwing down the rope." "See?" "That's the kind of stuff you need to be saying into a microphone at one of my games." "Don't go back to Manila." "Besides, it'd be pointless." "You can't run away from the truth now that you've heard it." "Stay here." "You know what?" "You are absolutely right, Ms. James." "Of course I am." "About which part?" "Ignorance is no longer an option for me." "I need to know everything, and I need to know it now." "At this point, you're a way of life." "People "keep it Brockmire."" "Yeah." "I keep seeing pictures of tattoos that say that." "What is that?" "Yeah, well, Drake started it." ""She was a 7, but I still set her pussy on fire," "You know your boy keep it Brockmire."" "B..." "You're a legend." "Who care if it's because your wife Lucy'd Bob Greenwald?" "I'm sorry, my wife what?" "Mnh." ""Lucy'd" is slang for when a woman does a man in the butt." "You want to get high?" "So I need stimulants to outrun the waves of depression currently approaching high tide in my body." "So we're chewing some khat here." "This is a habit that I picked up in Yemen." "Are you bitching out on me?" "Is that what you're doing?" "Psht." "Just chew it up there." "There you go." "Son, I have a question for you." "And I'd like you to, uh, keep it Brockmire." "Mm-hmm." "You think I'm ever gonna be remembered for anything except for the worst moments of my life?" "They got you on video, dude..." "Twice." "You're Brutal Brockmire till the day you die." "Yeah, that's what I thought." "You know, I don't feel anything." "Oh, just give it time." "Whoo!" "This is fun!" "Fun!" "Fu-u-u-u-un!" "Yeah, khat is somewhere between 10 cups of coffee and very low-grade cocaine, so..." "It's my first time on a baseball field!" "Fun!" "How's that even possible?" "Because baseball is one of those old-timey things you don't need anymore, like cursive or e-mail!" "Stop!" "Right now." "Freeze." "It's August 16, 1920." "Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians steps into the batter's box at New York to face the Yankees." "He looks out at the pitcher, but in the afternoon light of the Polo Grounds, the infield is just totally bathed in shadow." "Pitcher wound up and he delivered the ball, but that ball had been rubbed and covered in tobacco and dirt, hell, even some licorice, till it just exactly as dark as the infield shadows that complete hid it from Ray Chapman." " Bam!" " Aah!" "Down he went!" "He got hit right in the temple!" "Never saw it coming." "He died right there, right at home plate!" "W-Why..." "Why..." "Why are you telling me this?" "I'm high and very fragile right now." "Why would you tell me an awful story in which some guy dies?" "!" "The thing is, was it awful, though?" "Think about it..." "Ray Chapman spent his last moments on Earth playing a wonderful game on a warm summer afternoon." "And is there a better way to go out than that?" "Well, that's just a waste of good khat." "I'm really glad you decided to stay." "Today's gonna be a big day." "Oh, yes, indeed, 'cause I decided to call one final baseball game and then kill myself." "Please give that suicide note to Lucy after I'm gone." "It just says you." "She'll know what it's regarding'." "All right, two outs now." "Bottom of the eighth." "Or as I used to know it, the Gerry's Gelatin Home Run Inning." "Let's go, Frackers!" "Hey, a fun fact, folks." "Gelatin is made from the bones of slaughtered cows and pigs, which are then crushed and treatment with acids and chemicals until they reduce to a fine collagen powder." "Fastball just catches the inside corner, 0 and 1." "I ask you, Morristown, what kind of a creature doesn't just kill its prey, but then uses science to rob it of its very living essence?" "Stevens just misses with a breaking ball outside." "Count evens, 1 and 1." "Make no mistake." "There's nothing decent about human beings, folks." "No objective, definable form of good." "Not really a soul." "More like the absence of a soul." "Juuuuuuuust blackness." "So, if you want to stare into the gaping yawn of oblivion, don't look up to the heavens." "No, no." "Just look squarely into the mirror." "Strike 3!" "Strike 3 called, and that'll end the eighth." "What the hell was that, Brockmire?" "!" "I'm trying to focus here!" "Enough of the kid glove shit, okay?" "So, boo-hoo, your wife Lucy'd your neighbor." "That's just a word everybody uses?" "Babies, grandmas, just everybody?" "Personally, when I stare into the gaping yawn of oblivion, or whatever you were talking about," "I ball my fists and take a swing!" "Well, hey, good for you." "If you're gonna eat a bullet, so be it." "Nobody here's gonna stop you." "Well, no, no, no." "I love naps, so it's pills with a bag over my head for me." "Might even draw a little smiley face on the bag, add a sense of whimsy to the proceedings." "Whatever way you want to do it, sounds great." "But if you go, you're gonna miss a hell of a season." "Darling, I have seen enough baseball to last me 100 lifetimes." ""Darling," you've never seen anything like this." "All right." "Stepping in to pinch-hit now for the Frackers is former competitive eater," "Fatty Boombalatty." "That's right, I said Fatty Boombalatty." "And at 400 pounds, he is officially the fattest player in the history of baseball." "Folks, that's no small feat because fat guys have been a part of this game from the beginning." "Babe Ruth himself, the very greatest of the greats, was also a big, fat piece of shit, so wonderful bit of history we are looking at here." "Ah, here comes the pitch." "Whew!" "Ouch." "Well, that was nothing if not predictable." "And as he makes his way to first, stepping in now for the Frackers is who I believe to be the second-fattest man in the history of baseball, former long-haul trucker and gout survivor." "Mr. Doug Romero." "Ohh!" "That was fast." "Okay." "Two on now, and folks, see if you can sense a pattern here." "Oh, shit!" "Ooh, that one had some anger behind it, didn't it?" "All right." "Bases loaded as Pedro Uribe steps in." "Uribe during his time in the big leagues was known as "The Grand Slam King."" "Frackers have used some pretty ingenious gamesmanship to load the bases." "Let's see if they can do anything with it." "Hello, baby." "Here comes the pitch." " Pedro!" " Bring it home, Pedro!" "Oh, folks, that ball cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery because it just got tattooed!" "Oh, man!" "$1,000 worth of cured Italian meat." "A grand salami!" "Pedro Uribe cuts the lead to only eight runs." "Score is 12 to 4." "I suppose you have more of that kind of stuff planned?" "Every game." "I want top-shelf liquor included in my free drinks." "Monday through Thursday." "Ah, it." "I'm in." "Yes!" "Yeah!" "Okay, for now." "I'm also pretty shitfaced, so best to take everything I say with a big, fat grain of salt." "Please tell me you got that home run on video." "Oh, psht." " Yes." " Now here's a minor league clip a viewer sent in." "A home run estimated to have traveled an impressive 580 feet." "But check out the elephant parade running around the bases." "$1,000 worth of cured Italian meat." " Jimmy?" " A grand salami!" "Pedro Uribe" " cuts the lead to only eight runs." " You're still alive?" "Frackers fans just found a prize in the Cracker Jack box in the form of a bunch of fat men."