Joseph Gallo - AJ's Book

 

When I was in college, I had a friend his name was AJ. And the first time that we ever hung out, we went to see the movie, Field of Dreams. And at the conclusion of the movie, we ended up on the roof deck of this parking garage in a mall in South Jersey, and the two of us are crying our eyes out. We barely knew each other and we’re doing circles around my car, refusing to look at each other. We're going. “Are you okay?” “I'm okay.” “Can you drive?” “Yeah, I can drive.” And that's how the two of us became friends. We bonded over baseball. 

 

After we graduated from college, we moved to Hoboken and we became neighbors. I had a TV and AJ didn't have a TV. He used to like to come over to my house and watch games. He liked the Yankees, I liked the Mets. But the one thing, the one thing that we both loved together was the Yankee announcer, Phil Rizzuto. 

 

Now, Phil Rizzuto had a Hall of Fame career as a shortstop. When he retired, he became the voice of the Yankees, or the Yankee broadcaster for 40 years. He was known for his catchphrases, “Holy cow, did you see that? Unbelievable.” And he became immortalized in the meatloaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Light. He calls the game that takes place in the backseat of the car.

 

And the thing though that AJ and I love the most about Phil Rizzuto was his stream of consciousness storytelling. Stories used to spring from him out of seemingly nowhere. You never knew where they were going to go. You never knew where they were going to end. In fact, they were so epic that Rizzuto himself, in his own scorecard over a particular inning, would write the initials W.W. which stood for Wasn't Watching. [audience laughter] 

 

Anyway, one day, AJ invites me over to his house and he presents me with a gift. It's a book. And the book is called O Holy Cow! And what these two writers have done, they've taken Rizzuto's broadcasts, and they transcribed them, and they culled and edited them down to the stories that we both loved. He said he got the book because he saw it, he thought of me, he wanted me to have it. He knew I collected books and loved books and I'd appreciate it. And then, he sat me down and he said, “I have something to tell you. I've been to the doctors and I have been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.” And a month later, AJ dies. 

 

So, now fast forward 25 years, and my mother, who is a widow, who lives alone in the house that I grew up in, she suffers a massive stroke. She survives, but she ends up in a nursing home. I am taxed with the job of breaking down my childhood home. Now, anyone who's ever had to do this, it's a sad, emotionally exhausting, horrible experience. One of the jobs that I have to do is I have to do something with boxes and boxes of books that I have accumulated over 25 years. I live in an apartment. I have no room for books, and I stored them in my mother's basement and now I have to do something with them. 

 

And so, one day, I'm driving out to my mother's nursing home and I pass this used bookstore, and I think, I'm going to donate them there. And so, I drive back to my mother's house, I pack up the car and I take the books to the store. And the woman who owns the store looks exactly like Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. [audience laughter] She is completely 100% delighted. She's going through the boxes, she's opening them all up. I look down and I see the copy of O Holy Cow! I am so emotionally exhausted that I do nothing and I let the book go. I watch the boxes go to the back of the store and they disappear. 

 

A ritual begins. I go to visit my mother in the nursing home, I pass the bookstore and I think, AJ's book's in there. I go to the nursing home, I pass the bookstore, I think, AJ's book's in there. I realized that the book is starting to take on this amazing power, certainly far more than it ever had when it was in a box in my mother's basement I thought of it only once in a great while. And I realize that the power stems from the fact that my mother is still alive. And as long as my mother is alive, the book is alive. And if the book is alive, then in some abstract way, AJ is alive. And I want them to be alive. I want them alive. 

 

And so, one day, I'm driving to the nursing home. I see the bookstore and I can't take it anymore. I pull into the bookstore. Angela Merkel recognizes me right away, [audience laughter] and I say, “Listen, I gave you a book and I need it back.” And she says, “Well, if we still have it.” And so, we search the bookstore and we can't find it. And so, she brings me into the basement. And the basement looks like a mini version of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's just aisles and aisles and aisles of books stacked from floor to ceiling. And Angela Merkel is checking the shelves for the book, and I tell her everything that I've just told you here tonight. 

 

And finally, she finds the book, and she takes it off the shelf and she looks down at the cover O, Holy Cow! and she smiles. She opens it up, and she reads the inscription inside aloud. “To Joseph, instant stories from the field of dreams. I thought you would enjoy this. Love, AJ.” She closes the book, and she hands it to me and she says, “You should tell that story.” And so, I just did. Thank you for listening.