Michaela Murphy - The All-Star Game

 

 

I'm very happy to be in Portland, because it reminds me a lot of my hometown, Providence, Rhode Island. When I was a little girl, on every Sunday after mass, my family would make a beeline for the living room and we'd all take our places. My father would sink into his La-Z-Boy recliner, channel 38, and Take your shoes off, put your feet up. It's time to meet up with the Boston Red Sox. Boston's for the Boston Red Sox. Relax, relax and drink a Budweiser. [audience laughter] 

 

We'd all watch the screen riveted, because the quality of our lives was about to be determined by the Boston Red Sox for the rest of the week. We would all hold our breath and watch for Carl Yastrzemski’s next at bat, Don Zimmer's big plan, oh, and that great Green Monster. If the Red Sox won, pizza for dinner. When they lost, my mother cooked and we ate in silence. We all hoped, and we all longed for the year. It was going to be our year. And the Red Sox, they were going to win the series. 

 

When it did finally happen, my dad didn't see it. He died suddenly when I was 16 years old watching a Red Sox game. The medical consensus was that a steady diet of beer, cigarettes and Vienna sausage killed my father. But I was there. I know the Red Sox did it. [audience laughter] 

 

At my father's funeral, as his best friends carried the world's greatest Red Sox fan from the church out to the cemetery, the entire congregation stood up. Together, they sang, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. I haven't felt the same about baseball since. Now, my heartbroken family foisted the whole Red Sox mantle onto my little brother, Tim, who was six years old. And that same summer, there were baseball action figures, and baseball camps and birthday cakes in the shape of a baseball diamond. My Aunt Eileen, who was a nun, a Sister of Mercy, actually hired Red Sox players to come to my brother's birthday party. So, we had Wade Boggs and Denny Doyle in our living room. Now, I would have nothing of it. I just stood there right in the middle of the whole thing reading Sylvia Plath and rolling my eyes. [audience laughter] 

 

I hated baseball now. I didn't want to see another game again, and I dreaded the next season. But I needn't have worried, because the next year was 1981 and it was the summer of the baseball strike. Baseball had been silenced. And then, in the middle of that summer, I get a call from my Aunt Eileen the Nun. “Hi, Keyla. It’s Aunt Eileen. Listen, I just won two tickets to the All-Star Game in Cleveland, Ohio with WJAR radio personality, Norm Sherman. And tomorrow, I'm leaving to go to Rome, Italy, the Vatican, for an audience with the Pope. So, I was wondering, if the strike is resolved while I'm with the Holy Father, would you, could you take your brother to the game?” [audience laughter] 

 

So, I figure this is never going to happen. So, I say, “Sure, Aunt Eileen.” And she says, “You'll get a call.” So, my Aunt Eileen goes to Italy. She is not gone like six hours and the baseball strike is resolved. The very first thing that the baseball commissioner does is to reschedule the All-Star Game for that Tuesday to build up the morale of the disillusioned fan. I get a call, I'm told to meet all of the other WJAR All-Star winners at the Providence Bonanza bus station at 04:30 in the morning. Tell them you're Murphy, are my only instructions. 

 

So, I was living in Newport, that summer. So, the night before the game, I take a bus to Providence and I stay over at my mother's house. I'm 17 years old now, and my little brother decides that he's going to wear his little Red Sox outfit to bed, so that he'll be all ready to go when the alarm goes off at 03:30. So, I set the alarm, and we go to sleep, and the alarm goes off at 04:30. At 04:30. So, the whole house is up, and everybody's screaming and blaming, and I'm just like, “Get in the car. Get in the car now.” 

 

So, we get in the car, we drive through the still dark streets of Providence, we run into the Bonanza bus station and screaming, “I'm Murphy, I'm Murphy.” There are all these old guys standing around with coffee cups and they're like, “You're Murphy. They were waiting for you. They just left.” I'm like, “Oh my God. Where'd they go?” “Logan Airport.” “What airline?” “I don't know.” So, we're just standing there, and we're looking at this empty bus lane. My little brother is standing there in this little baseball outfit with a catcher's mitt like dangling off his arm. He looks like an ad for the Jimmy [unintelligible [00:37:39] [audience laughter]

 

He's standing there. My mother looks at him, and then she looks at me and she goes, “Poor little guy. He's been through a lot.” And I say, “I know what we'll do. I'll go to the bank and I'll take out the $300 that I've saved up this summer waitressing in Newport, and then we'll go to the airport and we'll get two one-way tickets to Cleveland, Ohio, and then we'll go to the stadium and then we'll get there before the first pitch where I know from my dad that they don't make personal announcements after the first pitch, and then we'll have them make announcement to Norm Sherman that we're here and we'll see the game.” My mother just looks at me and she says, “That's a great idea.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, we go to the bank, I get the money, I go to the airport, I go to buy two tickets to Cleveland. But I can't buy two tickets to Cleveland, because that summer in 1981 was also the summer of the air traffic controller’s strike. So, in order to get to Cleveland on time, if our plane left on time for Providence, we could take a plane to Pittsburgh. If that plane left on time, we could get to Cleveland in time for the game. So, I buy the two tickets, and we get on the plane, and my little brother is sitting there and we're waiting and the plane's not taken off. And we're waiting and the plane's not taken off. And then, all of a sudden, all of these other passengers start to bail, because their connections are totally hopeless at this point. 

 

I know I should get off this plane, but I can't. And so, I do that stupid thing, you know, like where you go up and you ask somebody in authority if they can do anything when they can't possibly. So, I go up to the flight attendant and I ask her if there's something she can do, and she's like, “No.” And then, she gestures to the empty first-class cabin and she says, “You can move up to first class if you want.” So, my brother and I are sitting in first class on a plane that's not going anywhere. [audience laughter] 

 

We're sitting there and my brother is going on and on. He had this amazing knowledge of baseball, all these statistics, and he's talking about the starting pitchers and he's wondering where in the lineup will his favorite player be, Mike Easler of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And to the point where the guy across the aisle from us puts down his Wall Street Journal, and he looks over and he says, “Hey, are you guys going to the All-Star Game?” I say really, really loud, “Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Yes, we are going to the All-Star Game.”

And then, finally, an hour and 40 minutes after its scheduled departure, our plane takes off for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, then, I'm standing at the baggage carousel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We have completely missed our connecting flight to Cleveland by an hour. I have $13 in my pocket. I'm standing there with my little brother, and I'm kind of like, “When the guy from first class comes up to me and he says, ‘Hi, my name is Pete, and listen, I know you're trying to get to the All-Star Game, and I was thinking that maybe I could rent a car, because I'm going to Cleveland too, and I could drive you.’” 

 

I think this is exactly what they tell you never to do. [audience laughter] Never accept an interstate ride from some guy named Pete that you meet at the baggage carousel in Pittsburgh. When I look at my little brother and I think, like we could die and I say, “Let's do this.” [audience laughter] So, Pete rents the car, and he's in the driver's seat, and my brother's in the middle, and I'm on the end and we are driving to Cleveland to get to this All-Star Game. Pete cannot believe my brother's knowledge of baseball. He's just blown away by what my brother knows. He also cannot believe that our mother, not only knows about, but has endorsed this trip on our own. [audience laughter] 

 

You see, he's concerned, because he has a daughter who's about my age, and he has a son just like Tim. I look at him and I think, we had a dad just like you. So, Pete drives us to this main box office area. I walk in, and Pete decides he's going to come with us and he's got our suitcase, and I've got my little brother and I walk in saying, “I'm Murphy,” which of course, means absolutely nothing to them. I start to tell them that we're with this WJAR thing and are there any tickets. And, of course, there aren't any tickets. And then, my little brother asks him, “Hey, mister, has Mike Easler been up to bat yet?” 

 

The guy looks at my little brother, and then he holds up his hand and he says, “I'll be right back.” He disappears. But when he comes back with this more superior box office guy. I start to tell him the whole story. He just puts up his hand and he says, “How many tickets do you need?” And out of my mouth, I didn't even think about this, I just say, “Three.” Pete looks at me like, I'm like this scam girl from Rhode Island, you know? [audience laughter] Like, it's my thing. [unintelligible [00:42:14] I just go around conniving my way into all of these major league events, you know? [audience laughter]

 

The guy lifts up the counter and ushers us in. We come in, and we're told to leave our suitcases there, and we can leave the car where it is and then we go into the Municipal Stadium. We're in the underbelly of it, and we're going down all these hallways and then all of a sudden, I start to hear it, that sound of baseball. And then, we follow this guy. We start to go up this ramp, and the sound gets louder. And then, as we go up the ramp, I begin to see it, this sparkling, unbelievable flashes of cameras all around us. And then, I'm standing there and I suddenly look down at the field, at the baseball diamond, and I see nine men standing there ready to play baseball. And then, my brother nudges me, because the usher's taking us to our seats. 

 

We go over to our seats, which are two rows behind then Vice President George Bush. It’s like, oh, my God. So, we're sitting there and then this usher, he's wicked into it. So, he starts sending over hats and souvenir stuff. The game is wild. Like every hit is a run. It's amazing. I wasn't even watching it. Pete and my brother were watching the game. I was frantically looking through 72,000 people trying to find Norm Sherman. I'm looking for, I don't know, like a sign, like a motel room sheet that says, “Murphy, we're here.” It's not until the seventh inning that I realized that Norm Sherman is a radio personality. I have no idea what he looks like. [audience laughter] I'm actually sitting there looking for a voice. 

 

It's the seventh inning, so it's a seventh inning stretch. So, everybody stands up to sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game. They're singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game and I'm just standing there. When I look over and I see Pete just toss his arm around my brother, and they're singing this song. I look at them and I just think, thank God I said three. When Pete suddenly throws his arm around my shoulders, and together were singing, and it's one, two, three strikes, You're out at the old ball game, and then it's over. National League five to four. 

 

What had been this shared experience with 72,000 people came to an end, because 72,000 people got up to go home, and I had $13 in my pocket. That's when Pete said, “Well, I guess you're coming home with me.” So, we retrace our steps. [audience laughter] We get our suitcases. And then, the other goofy thing is like there's no post-game traffic for us, because we just hung onto the coattails of George Bush's motorcade and just sailed out of the stadium. [audience laughter] It was wild. 

 

We're on this highway going north of Cleveland, and we're driving through the night. And then, Pete gets off of the highway, and we're driving down this dark road, and then he turns down this other dark road, and my little brother, Tim, is asleep in my lap when Pete suddenly stops the car. And then, he lowers the window, and there's this keypad, and then he punches in some numbers, and then all of a sudden, these lights come on, and they illuminate this wrought iron gate. Written into the top of the wrought iron gate, it says Goodyear. And then, these gates swing open, and Pete Goodyear drives us onto his palatial estate. [audience cheers and applause]

 

I am like, “Oh, my God.” So, then, Pete picks up my brother, and carries him into the mansion, [audience laughter] and calls over his shoulder to me to get my mother on the phone. So, I go and I get my mother on the phone. I get her on the phone. This is what my mother says to me. Pete's listening in on an extension, so hears this. “Oh, Michaela, thank God it's you. I got the Cleveland police on the other line. I was watching the game. When I didn't see you, I got worried.” [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

Suddenly, it's all making sense to Pete. But Pete reassures my mother, who's not particularly worried at this point, that we will be sent home tomorrow on a plane to Providence. “Okay, have a good time.” [audience laughter]

 

So, the next day, we wake up and this maid has made breakfast. Pete takes us on a tour of downtown Cleveland, and then to his investment banking firm, where his perplexed secretary arranges for two flights to Providence. And then, we get to the airport. Here's the other thing, okay? So, it's the air traffic controller strike. So, our plan, of course, is totally delayed, but so are all of the All-Star players. So, my brother and I just go to all of the domestic gates, and he gets these amazing autographs from including Mike Easler of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he still has these to this day. 

 

And then, we finally got on the plane, and we fly to Providence. We get off the plane, and I see my mother down at the end of the gangway, and I just inexplicably burst into tears. She's completely confused. She's like, “What's wrong? I thought you had a good time. Come on now. What happened?” My brother looks at her and says, “Kind of everything, ma.” [audience laughter] 

 

And so, then, my mother takes me to the bus so I can go back to Newport. So, I'm on the bus back to Newport, and honest to God, on this bus are these two guys, and they're wearing WJAR All-Star hats. So, I look at them and I go, “Hey, you, guys, did you go to the All-Star game?” And they're like, “Yeah.” And I say, “I'm Murphy.” And they go, “You're Murphy. We waited for you.” [audience laughter] And I say, “I know. I missed the bus.” They’re like, “Yeah, you didn't miss nothing. By the time we got there, the game was half over. Our seats sucked, the food sucked. How'd you make out?” [audience laughter] And I said, “I had a good time.” Thank you so much.