They Call Me Baba Booey (18 page)

After my WLIR experience I went internship crazy. My parents were incredibly supportive. They could see how happy I was and knew I was killing myself at school and with weekend jobs—at the kennel, at the gas station—so my dad offered to pay for my car insurance. That meant I could work more gigs for free and not have to pick up hours during the week. In the second semester of my sophomore year, while I was interning at WLIR, I applied for an internship at SportsChannel on Long Island, which carried the Islanders and covered a lot of high school sports.

On my first day there my boss handed me a notebook and told me to go up to master control and log tapes. I didn’t know where master control was, because it wasn’t in SportsChannel’s main headquarters. In fact, it was on top of Long Island Medical Center, the tallest building in the area, which meant it got the best reception. You took the elevator to the roof, then climbed a ladder up to a trailer that was filled with high-end video equipment.

The other problem: I didn’t know what it meant to log tapes, or what I was logging tapes for. This is when it turned into a scene out of
The Karate Kid
. My boss explained that logging meant watching tapes of thirty different high school sporting events—soccer, lacrosse, football, basketball—and writing down the time on the video deck whenever a great play happened. Good kick, log it. Good save, log it. I did that for a week, then I carried the notebook with me whenever I came to work, waiting for him to tell me what we needed it for. It wasn’t until the end of the internship that he sat me down and showed
me how to cut up my logged highlights to create a highlight reel.

Meanwhile, here was the real perk: They gave me a press pass for all the Islanders home games at the Nassau Coliseum, which was walking distance from my house. I showed up for every game at 3:30 and ran through a litany of duties, all grunt work that anyone getting paid would be irritated doing. But I couldn’t wait to get there. There were not enough hours in the week for me to learn what I wanted to learn. When I walked into the Coliseum I never wanted to leave.

The first thing I did when I showed up for work was check the pagers all the refs wore that alerted them when they needed to take a TV time-out. I walked around every spot on the ice checking for dead spots. Then I would dig out the SportsChannel banner from the bowels of stadium storage and unfurl it in front of the booth where the announcers sat during the game.

After that, I spent hours making copies and gophering between the production truck and the stadium and the press room. I got to know everyone from the camera guys to the directors to the Zamboni driver. There wasn’t a part of the job I didn’t see. My favorite guy was Stan Fischler, a legendary hockey reporter who did player interviews on TV and wrote for
The Hockey News
. Between every period, players from both teams would stop by Stan’s booth near the locker room and give him five minutes. Then, after the game, he picked a “Star of the Game” to interview. I was Stan’s set decorator and wrangler.

Before the games I had to gather extra team jerseys to hang in Stan’s cubbyhole as backdrops for his interview. The Islander equipment managers just handed the unis over. But the road team’s managers always gave me the once-over—my hair, my mustache—and said the same thing: “You better fucking bring them back.”

When the game ended Stan would make his Star of the Game picks. But the criterion wasn’t who had a hat trick or the most assists; it was above all who would talk to Stan. I’d head into the locker room—Islanders or visitors—with a list of three or four guys Stan voted as that night’s MVP. I’d ask the first guy, “Can you do an interview?” If he said no, I went to the next guy. On and on, until I found a guy who would do the interview. It wasn’t always easy.

One time Stan had written an article for
The Hockey News
about which player he would take first if he were starting a team. This was the early 1980s. Wayne Gretzky was emerging as the greatest player in NHL history and one of the biggest stars in all of sports. He was young, handsome, well spoken. Forget hockey—if people were starting a pro basketball team at the time they would have taken Gretzky. But Stan wrote that his first choice would be the Islanders’ Bryan Trottier. It had become a running joke, with Stan and the Islanders’ lead broadcaster always saying Trottier was the best player in hockey. Truth was, he was scoring fifty goals a season and was the glue that held together an Islanders team that was in the middle of a dynasty. But Stan wrote the story in such a way that it was not so much about why Trottier was great; it gave all the reasons Gretzky wasn’t.

Well, Gretzky happened to read this article. And when he and the Edmonton Oilers came to the Nassau Coliseum and beat up on the Isles, he was named Star of the Game by Stan. It was my job to get him to the interview booth. I walked in shaking at the prospect of having to bother him. When I asked him he said, “Fuck that guy. He wrote an article trashing me.”

I moved down the line to Stan’s second choice for Star of the Game. But as I was asking for an interview Gretzky overheard me and said, “Hold on. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

When Gretzky sat down, Stan said, “So Wayne, another brilliant performance; congrats on being the Star of the Game.” Then he pushed the microphone toward Gretzky’s
mouth. The Great One responded: “I’m just glad to get it, since you told everyone I was no good.” Stan hemmed and hawed and stuttered until Gretzky finally smiled. He was a young Canadian kid. He didn’t have it in him to go for the kill.

Gretzky was about my age and he was one of those guys who, because I saw him up close a couple of times, made me think I was just standing around picking my nose, even though I was working so hard. He was as thin as a hockey stick, had shaggy hair, and a boyish face. The way he skated was inspiring. I was once hanging near the players’ locker rooms another time he was in town. Not too far from me was a board for a game that fans played between periods called ScoreO. This was a huge piece of wood with a mousehole-size opening at the bottom. During intermissions fans came onto the ice and tried to shoot the puck into the hole to win a car. Players on the road had—and still have—a lot of time to kill before games. They usually wound up at the locker room, playing cards and goofing around. Gretzky wandered out into the hallway, saw the board, saw me loitering, and asked me to prop it up. Then I just watched him practice getting it into that tiny hole. There was no one else around, just me and the greatest hockey player ever. He never made it, but he didn’t care. He was just fucking around and had a great time trying.

I have one more memory of the Nassau Coliseum, and it might be the greatest athletic achievement of my entire life.

Back in 1989, Howard and I once got into a discussion on the show about how he believed he was a better athlete than me. He had a tennis court at his house and every once in a while he’d invite me out there and we’d play. He always beat me, but he was taking lessons every week while I played once every three or four years. Truly, I thought we were pretty evenly matched.

Still he kept saying on the air that he was a much better player and that he could actually kick my ass. He laid down the challenge, so we decided we were going to play one more time, once and for all, to settle the matter.

This conversation took place first thing in the morning, as soon as the show went on the air. By seven o’clock someone had called in and said, “I’d like to see you play.”

Good idea, we decided. So then we talked about going to a public court where people could watch. But it continued to evolve. Another listener called and said, “I live in Jersey and there’s a public court out here that has bleachers.” Fantastic, we thought, let’s go there. Next a guy who worked for the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City offered to let us use his four-thousand-seat arena. We could sell tickets! It had morphed from Howard giving me shit to a for-pay exhibition in less than two hours. Then it got so much bigger.

My buddy Ross was working for Ron Delsener, a concert promoter. He said he could get us the Nassau Coliseum, a sixteen-thousand-seat arena, if we were interested. It took a day for the deal to come together. The next morning we announced that the match would be held there. Within four hours the entire joint was sold out. We called it the “U.S. Open Sores” tournament.

This was a place that meant the world to me. I had had my internships there and had gone to Islanders and Nets games there. I’d seen every concert of importance there. Now I was going to be the main event.

When we arrived at the Coliseum the day of the tournament we wanted to warm up. I had on a bright pink warm-up jacket and jeans; Howard wore a bright turquoise shirt and never took off his sunglasses. We hit the ball for a few minutes, then Grandpa from
The Munsters
, Al Lewis, showed up, chomping on a cigar and wearing a fedora. Al, Robin, and Fred the Elephant Boy, one of the original Wack Packers, were
going to be the announcers. While having his makeup applied, Howard piled it on again, telling the camera, “I’m going to kick his ass.” Then they cut to me in my bright pink warm-up jacket and blue tennis shorts.

Finally, we played. Howard was introduced as the mentally fit, empty-jocked radio god. I was the oafish and dim-witted Gary “Beaver Teeth” Dell’Abate. The ball girls, dressed in G-strings, pasties, and sneakers, were lined up along the baseline and at the net. We had screened them in the studio on the air one day, all of them topless and seated around Howard’s desk in the studio. As backup to the ball girls we hired a guy in a wheelchair, who was ready to roll into action if the girls were too slow. I ripped off my pink warm-up jacket—carefully, so I didn’t dislodge the headband I had on to keep my hair out of my face—and revealed a sky-bright turquoise top.

I was ready. The match was best out of seven games, like the World Series. Immediately I took a lead off Howard’s serve. He hit one into the net, the next one out, and soon I was up 1 game to nothing. But the next two games, I struggled and suddenly found myself down 2–1. That’s when fate—and Fred the Elephant Boy—stepped in.

In the fourth game, Howard and I were tied 15 all. Howard won the next point, but Elephant Boy wasn’t paying attention or had become confused by all the crowd noise, and so awarded it to me. He announced that I was now up 30–15. I quickly won the next two as well, before anyone realized what was happening. Not Grandpa Al or Robin or Howard tried correcting him. Now we were tied 2–2. And I was shuffling on the court and pumping my fists like I was a real athlete.

When I won the next game, the crowd started chanting, “Gary sucks! Gary sucks!” They had no idea how little I cared. That weekend was my moment. The night before was my ten-year high school reunion. Now I was on Long Island, five minutes from my house, winning an athletic event in front of
sixteen thousand people. I was so psyched I started pointing my finger at the crowd and yelling back at them. I felt like I was back in my living room.

Midway through the sixth game, with me ahead 30–15, it got even wilder. The half-naked girls were running back and forth whether there were balls to grab or not. The guy in the wheelchair was spinning around. There was a stadium full of people taunting me and I couldn’t stop giving it back to the crowd whenever I won a point. Somewhere in the audience my mom and dad were watching, perhaps the only two people cheering me on. Finally I served the ball and Howard hit a forehand that nearly landed in the stands. It was wide. I won the match, 4–2. I was so excited I sprinted to the other side of the court, shook Howard’s hand, and then threw my arms into the air. Everyone booed. Pretty soon I was surrounded by all the ball girls in their G-strings and pasties. I also won three thousand dollars.

After I accepted the trophy, Howard and I sat down at the broadcasting tables we had set up before the match. I said, “You played a good game. You are not a sports wimp and you probably can beat me. But this week I am going to buy a full-length leather coat with your fucking money.”

I was obsessed with owning a full-length black leather coat that I had seen in a store on Eighth Street in the Village. It had big buttons and a giant leather belt. I had seen Sam Kinison wearing one. Rockers like Dee Snider wore them, too. I thought they were cool. It cost four hundred dollars and I never could have afforded it without that prize money. One day after the show, I took a subway down to Eighth Street, plunked down the money, and walked out with that coat. I looked like an idiot. I wasn’t a rocker. I wasn’t even Kinison. I wore it twice and put it in my closet.

It’s still there. It might work for a costume party one day.

I COULDN’T STOP
with the internships, actually. One summer I worked at a recording studio in the city. It was a jingle house and I was the token gentile. They had no idea how to handle an intern, which is to assign them the crappy work and then show them how to do cool stuff. All I did for them was empty garbage; none of the bosses talked to me. But it did teach me about making your own opportunities and building skills as you go.